Dec 4, 2017 Light the World

Well the week started off good in both our eating citas we got cooking lessons. The Santos family taught Elder Zapata and I how to make Bollito Balón. Its basically a corn flour dumpling filled with chicken. Super good Venezuelan food. Then the next day after district meeting Milagrosa taught us how to make a classic spanish dish. The tortilla de patata. Can’t wait to make it with real Idaho potatoes haha. We also made some rice pudding this week so lots of fun cooking haha. 

We were finally able to teach Nono again this week. He is just a little low on motivation, like he normally keeps his commitments but he lacks the inner desire. Its hard to explain. Anyways we taught his the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it went pretty good. We are going to teach him again this week though and just make sure he understands that baptism is just the beginning not the end goal. His mom came to church so that was awesome but he was feeling sick and stayed home sleeping. 

Oh yeah so my new companion got here this week. Elder Moffat, he’s from Las Vegas. So far we have gotten along pretty well. He’s a big talker so we are always having interesting conversations which is fun. Mostly about business type stuff, studies and such which is good because we are both trying to figure out what in the world we want to do in life. 

On Saturday we had interviews with President which went really well. He told me its getting close to time where I should start thinking a little bit and setting goals for the future. Figuring out what I want to study and whatnot because soon it will be time to apply for scholarships and register for school. It’s crazy how fast the time is going now, feels like November was just a week long. He goes home June 25th so I will have one transfer with the new mission president which will be weird. 

My favorite thing this week was the service project we did. We painted our investigator Cipriano’s house. It was a really dark purple and we painted it a cream/yellow color. It completely changed the place, doesn’t even look like his house anymore. It was fun we invited some other members to come a a couple came. Fernando had been a painter for a few years so he taught us all of the techniques it was cool. Sounds like we are going to be painting another house soon because the Santos want to do theirs now. Good useful skill to learn. 

This past week we have especially been sharing the Light the World video with everyone we talk to. Its a really great video, if you haven’t seen it go check it out at mormon.org. My favorite thing about the video is it shows people serving one another in various ways then it begins to show the savior preforming all of his miracles. It helped make me realize that the little acts of service we do each day can actually be the answers to prayers and miracles in other peoples lives. It think sometimes we see Christ as this great figure that is just so much greater than us that it is simply impossible for us to rise up to his level. What we really need to see though is that even though we may not be able to do the same exact things he did, we can do similar acts with similar results. If you haven’t seen the video go check it out! And get started on the 25 days 25 ways, its never too late! 🎄

- Élder Alex M. Childers Dec 

Oct 30 - Mormons and Maserati’s

Well its been a pretty solid week.

Highlight, well we found a new investigator who is really awesome he is the son of a less active lady in the ward. This week we were able to teach him twice and he came to a family night with us which was fun. His name is Jose Antonio but he goes by Nono. 19 years old and a really good kid. He and his mom both came to church yesterday which was amazing! Oh yeah so church was super interesting. First of all a guy came to drop his wife off at the church. So we are standing in the enternece welcoming people when we smell smoke strongly haha. The guy was standing right in the doorway where everyone enters just smokin a cigar. So the bishop made us go out there and tell him he couldn’t.. it was awkward haha. Then second hour we show up to the gospel principles class and the teacher never shows up so we have 2 investigators in there and a couple of less active members who came and no teacher. So we start flipping through the manual trying to find a good lesson to teach when a member of the bishopric came in and saved the day. His name is Andres, from Chile. He taught an amazing class just on the fly it was awesome. 

Anyways what else.. well Saturday morning we played soccer with the ward. It was way fun and for some reason I was just on my game that day. Somehow I ended up scoring 4 out of the 6 goals hahaha. So now everyone thinks im really good when it was mostly just a lucky day lol. It was fun though and they said now we will get invited back since we set a good first impression hah. Afterwards Juan invited us to breakfast and took us in his Maserati. Man that thing is powerful. It has a 450 horsepower Ferrari engine in it so he literally just taps on the gas pedal and it feels like you are lifting off. Reminded me of flying, it was fun. This guy Juan has basically the entire Book of Mormon memorized like you can open the book read any scripture and he can tell you what chapter its in. So I’ve started to do it myself. So far I have 1st and 2nd Nephi memorized so I know what happens in each chapter. I’m doing it with image mapping in my mind. Its pretty fun my companion quizzes me every night. Its already proved to be really useful so far. We get talking on a subject in the street with someone and I can just open right up to a scripture that explains it pretty cool. 

Yeah so thats basically it. The week was good. We visited and taught tons of members so I have gotten to know them all pretty well and we have some good references coming in. 

This week is going to be absolutely insane. First off tomorrow morning we leave here early at 5:30 to catch a train to Sevilla for a zone meeting with a member of the 70, Elder Bennasar. Then after that we get back and are here for Wednesday which will be our weekly planning for all the morning. Thursday we will travel again to a mission council meeting in Jerez, immediately followed by a trip to Málaga to go pick up my new ID card for residency. Which will be crazy because I have to take a train to Sevilla where I will stay the night then catch another early morning 6:00train down to Málaga. Then that afternoon back up to Sevilla then back down here to Cádiz. That’ll be a long day. So basically I will only be here for Wednesday afternoon and Saturday. Then my comp will be in San Fernando while I’m traveling all over the place.

 So yeah next week you can expect to hear some crazy traveling story, cause something always happens :) It’ll be fun though. 

Hope you all enjoy the photos and have a good week! 

Love ya! 

- Élder Alex M. Childers 

Oct 23 - Welcome to Cádiz

Bienvenido a Cádiz! said Antonio, (the second counselor) over the phone Saturday night, followed by, hey..... could you give a talk in church tomorrow..? Haha yeah so I got to introduce myself and give a talk on my first day! Thank goodness I’m a missionary and can wing these kinda things :) turned out really good though, everyone always seems enjoy my analogies about flying haha. 

Well it sure is beautiful here. We are basically on an island so there is water on all sides. Since the hermana area is closed right now we have the entire place to ourselves. We also have a little place on the other side of the bay called Puerto Real its pretty neat too. 

I arrived with not much trouble, besides 3 of the wheels breaking on my suitcases, thanks cobblestone roads. They clearly didn’t have missionary travel in mind when they designed the streets in this place! In Sevilla they are the worst and with the amount of tourists they have there I thought it was crazy. But I guess regular tourists don’t normally walk the 2 miles from the bus station to the train station so it’s not that big a deal. Yeah anyways my travel was a bus from Badajoz to Sevilla then a train from Sevilla to San Fernando then a Cercanías from there to here. Luckily the Cercanías station is right next to our piso here so I didn’t have to drag the bags much further. Got here at about 10 pm unpacked a few things and hit the hay. 

The past few days have been pretty good, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of the members which has been cool. There are some really awesome families here. There’s also this guy in our ward named Juan who owns like 4 jewelry stores and a few piso buildings. So he’s pretty loaded haha he drives a Mazeratti and just bought a new wake boat that he was trying to get us to go out on. I was pretty tempted by the offer haha but withstood :) 

Oh yeah another crazy thing that happened, my first day here we went to visit with a kid that they had played soccer with earlier this week. He had given them his address and told them they could pass by so we did. When we knocked on the door his mom answered and was super mad that we knew where he lived. I explained that we just play soccer with him but she just kept yelling about how he was still a minor and she gets to choose his friends and she didn’t want people like us being them... so we said alright well we will leave. As we are waiting for the elevator the door suddenly flies open again and the dad comes out in fighting stance with his fists up. He was this short dude who didn’t look very threatening so I kinda smirked just like dude what are you doing we are leaving! Well he didn’t think my smile was funny haha he’s like “You laughin at me kid!? I’m just like no am I not allowed to be happy haha and told him to chill that we were leaving. So he just starts yelling saying never come around here again. I don’t want to see you anywhere near this building you understand me? Yeah so finally the elevator arrived and we got out of there, it was a fun little experience though. I just don’t understand some people.. 

Well yeah that basically sums it up. My new comp is Elder Zapata and I’m greenie breaking him but there’s not a whole lot of breaking to do cause he’s already a beast missionary. He already understands spanish perfectly cause his Dad is from Mexico and his Mom served a mission in Ecuador. So they would speak spanish together whenever they didn’t want the kids to know what they were talking about. Over time though the kids started to understand. 

So yep we’re just hangin out here I took a bunch of pictures today. Its a pretty touristy place. My first afternoon here there were 3 cruise ships in the port. We have also heard a ton of different languages being spoken around us. The coast is super pretty and the beaches looks awesome but we are supposed to avoid the main ones as much as possible cause ya know swimsuits are just too restrictive for the spanish culture, they prefer to let it all hang out.. yikes.

Well that’s about it. Hasta la próxima!

Have a great week, as always I send my love :)

- Elder Childers 

Intercambios, Interviews y Invierno

Hey guys! 

Well its been a good week. First off we had interviews with President Tuesday which was good. During mine President asked how the family was doing so I was telling him about how Mom and Dad got to be tour guides for the new temple and all. Then I told him how Zach was super happy to have shot a big elk. He got so excited and started bringing up all sorts of hunting stuff then paused and was like “Alright we’ve got to change the subject, you’re making me trunky Elder Childers” hahaha it was pretty funny. After our interview we taught Sister Andersen the Plan of Salvation and it went really well. Sometimes she travels around with him and just does little practice lessons with us then gives us advice on how we can improve. It was good that we got to teach lesson 2 this time cause it prepared us perfectly for our lesson we had last night with Jose Antonio. Oh and that lesson went soooo well it was great. His mom is a little bit less active but has been coming a little more since we started teaching him. Anyways normally when we go over there she stays in the other room while we talk in the kitchen or his bedroom. Yesterday we were about halfway through when she came in and asked if she could join. We were like “Claro que si!” And she ended up helping us out perfectly! She shared this really awesome experience and talked about how she had tried to quit smoking on her own for 30 years without success when finally one day she decided to pray with true intent for help.. The addictive feelings were lifted from her. She said the only way she could describe it was as if she had just forgotten completely that she was even a smoker. Suddenly she realized that it had been over a month since her last cigarette and she knelt down and thanked her Heavenly Father for what he had done to help her. 

The rest of the week was pretty good too. We had exchanges with the Elders in Jerez which was good. Saw some miracles there. I was working with Elder Quispe and our cita failed us so we were just out talking with people. We stopped this guy walking his dog named Daniel (he said “yeah I’m Daniel, like the prophet who got thrown in with the lions but they didn’t eat him, that guy.”) yep exactly right haha. This man liked to talk haha he ended up following us around for like the next hour and talking to people on the street with us. At the end were talking to this Guatemalan lady and her daughter and he cuts into the conversation and says. “I just love these ministers they are really nice guys, you really should listen to them.” Haha it was pretty awesome 👏🏽 good dude. 

Yeah well thats basically all, its starting to cool down here quite a bit. Its crazy cause it went to like really hot sweating all day to freezing bundling up in a period of 3 days. All the cockroaches are coming indoors now 🙃 Oh yeah and last night we were walking back home along the bay and saw a nocturn fishing competition which was kinda cool. 

Anyways thats about it, love ya’ll! 🤙🏼

- Élder Alex M. Childers