Jan 23, 2017 Still Raining Ha Ha

Hey everyone,

Well this week has been a little slow. Its actually been pretty cold and rained really hard like everyday and when it rains in Spain everyone just goes inside and sleeps haha. So we didn't have a whole lot of lessons this week and saw like a total of 10 people in the street. 

We did have intercambios (missionary exchanges) with the zone leaders in Alicante Friday and Saturday though. On Friday night we had 2 citas (appointments) that went pretty well and we were able to contact this girl on the street and teach her the restauración (Restoration of the Church) right there. So that was pretty cool! My goal for the intercambio was to set a fecha, a baptismal date for one of their investigators and I was able to do it with her. It was so cool to have the spirit so strong as we testified of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon right there in the street. Please pray for Jeanne this week, I hope she will receive an answer and see the importance of the message we shared with her. 

This next week should be pretty interesting. Tomorrow we have interviews with president here in Elche. Then Wednesday is going to be crazy! We have a zone conference in Murcia which will go from 11-5 then right after the worldwide missionary conference from 6-8. Yeahhh... so that's going to be a long day haha. We are all excited to see what goes down at the worldwide missionary conference though. We have been hearing lots of rumors about the daily schedule changing. I guess we will find out soon enough! 

Anyways I think that's about all, hope you all haven't frozen there yet. Sounds like the snow is starting to become a bit of a nuisance. Have a great week though! I'll be praying for you all as always! Let me know if there's anything specific you would like us to pray for!

Love, 

Elder Childers  

Jan 16, 2017 Slow week

Well this week has been pretty basic, nothing really exciting happened. The work is pretty slow right now. We had a couple of lessons with Jesika, we are just going through all of the discussions again after her baptism. She remembers most of it pretty well. But this time it's cool because we get to answer more questions and explain a little more in depth. Everybody has been asking about her at church because she wasn't able to come the past two sundays, first because she had work and second because she went out of town for her moms birthday. So this week she was really excited to finally be able to come again. But of course satan swooped in and stopped that. Saturday night they were at their grandparents house and her son Juan who is like 3 or 4 ate a bunch of his grandpa's pills! So they ended up having to spend the night in the hospital getting his stomach pumped out and making sure he was going to be okay! Its been crazy the trials she has had to go through the past few weeks. First losing her job, her parents being so against her getting baptized, her boyfriend coming in and destroying all of her stuff. Those are just a few of the many things. Its cool that she has been able to keep her faith though and stay strong through all of it. 

Santi our one investigator who was actually progressing has kind of disappeared these past two weeks. I don't know if I have explained his situation before, in case I haven't I will right now. Santi is 13 years old. Elder Llavina and Hammond taught him before I came here. He was like a golden investigator, super interested in learning about the church and was reading and praying to know it was true. He got his answer after just a few weeks and decided he wanted to be baptized. When he went to ask his parents his Mom was alright with it but his Dad said no because he thought it was all just too soon. Anyways so that kind of killed his spirits and excitement for getting baptized. He still was taking lessons from us but his Dad never changed his mind. We tried to stop by three times this week but he was never home. His mom was there once but she said he had gone out with friends for the night. His phone also got broken so we have no way of getting a hold of him. Anyways please just pray for him and his family. Hopefully one day his fathers heart will be softened and they will let him be baptized.

Yesterday after church we went to the Palominos because it was the oldest daughter, Evelyn's birthday. It was super fun my comp and I learned how to cook the shrimp in a papaya pan. Turns out Evelyn's husband served his mission in BOISE, IDAHO!!! Woohoo haha so we spent like the whole time talking about that haha he served in the BSU area and his picture is on the wall at Big Juds for the one pound hamburger challenge! Anyways yeah it was cool, I never thought I would meet a spaniard who knew Idaho, no one here even knows where it is. Im just like, yeah its north of California. All they know is Miami, New York and Los Angeles haha.

Today for P day we just went shopping. Its my comps last Rebajas in his mission so he's just buying a bunch of suits and clothes. Its cool how sales here are actually like sales. He got a really nice suit today for only 65 Euros! Plus they have nice pants for 10-15 Rows like 70% off haha. Anyways yeah hope you all are enjoying the cold and snow there. We are sweating like crazy right now in this heat, I'm scared for the summer 😅 Love you alll! Have an awesome week!! 

Elder Childers 

Jan 9, 2017 SNOWWW

Lol jk no snow here 😂

Well not much has happened here this week. At the moment we don't have any progressing investigators. Santi was doing good last week but then he just disappeared off the face of the earth. 

Anyways so we have just been meeting with our recent converts this week.

On Monday night we were having a family home evening at the Palominos with Jesika. While she was there her ex boyfriend broke into her piso, found all her pamphlets and the Book of Mormon and tore them to bits. It actually looks like he took a knife the the book because there is a hole though the hard cover all the way through the pages. It was pretty crazy! Luckily she had brought her nice new triple with her to the lesson so he didn't get to that. 

My new comp Elder Beckstrom and I get along pretty well. We both have been pretty sick this whole week though so that hasn't been super fun haha. Hopefully we will get over whatever we both have this week. 

Oh yeah also this week we had Three Kings Day, which is like bigger than Christmas for everyone here. There was a big parade that passed by the main road by our piso so we went and saw that. We ran into lots of members and they gave us roasted chestnuts haha it was my first time trying one, they were pretty good.  

That's pretty much everything that's happened this week haha nothin too exciting. 

The big sales were this week so we all got new suits. Discounts here are like crazy, everything just instantly goes 50% off so that's pretty sweet! 

Anyways love you all! Have a great week! 
Love, Elder Childers

Jan 2, 2017 Feliz Año Nuevo

Happy New Year! 

Well this week has been crazy, I honestly don't think there's such thing as a "normal week" in the mission. Stuff is always changing and weird things are always happening. 

This week especially was crazy though Tuesday we had the tri-zone Christmas conference with a talent show and everything. My district did a life nativity and I was baby Jesus haha. Then Wednesday was transfers! Elder Llavina finished his mission and went home. It was super sad to have to say goodbye to him. He had become like my brother and my best friend in the mission. So he left at 9 in the morning and my new comp was coming from the other side of the country and wouldn't be here till 8 that night so I got to stick around with the other elders all day. Anyways so the first few days with my new comp were rough, it was crazy having to take all the calls with my mediocre Spanish and teaching him everything about the area was tough! Especially since I've only been here 6 weeks myself! Things are starting so smooth out now and go well, luckily since Elder Llavina served here for 7 months he had lots of good member friends and families he introduced me to that I have as help now 👍🏾 New Years yesterday was also super fun. We had a little fiesta at the Palominos then at midnight there is a tradition here in Spain where you eat a grape on every ding of the clock tower and make a wish, it's actually kind of challenging but fun haha 

Anyways I hope everyone had a good New Years and made some good goals for the upcoming year! 

Favorite talk of the week: Agency and Anger, Lynn G. Robbins April 1998

Love you guys!

Elder Childers 💙🎉

Feliz Navidad!!

FELIZ NAVIDAD!!!

Hope everyone's Christmas was the best everrrr!! It was hard to be away from the family for the fist time this holiday but I'm so blessed that we have families here that took us in and tried to make us feel at home. We were able to have a huge lunch and dinner on Christmas Day as well as a fun party with the Palominos for Christmas Eve! It was also awesome to be able to skype the family yesterday. Super cool being able to talk to Dad In Spanish! 

We organized caroling with all the missionaries on Thursday and some ward members showed up so that was really cool. My comp and I also started some Christmas traditions for a few families here having secret santas and white elephant gift exchanges. I'm so grateful for my family and for the opportunities my parents have always given us to think of others and serve during the holiday season. I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ and the example he set for us. I hope you have been able to take part in the 25 days of service and seen some miracles along the way! Remember to keep looking for service opportunities throughout the course of this next year! 

Today for p day we climbed a mountain called pika-chu haha it was pretty fun, then we had another barbecue. While we were hiking the office called and asked if my comp could do his last interview in Murcia tonight at 6 so we hurried back to Elche changed in like 10 minutes then sprinted to the train station. We bought our tickets and started running down to the platform. All the people who had just got off were coming up the stairs so we were like pushing though the crowd running as fast as we could. We turned the corner and heard the alarm sounding for the doors to close them jumped on just in time. We asked the lady next to us if we were on the right train and she looked super scared, I'm pretty sure she thought we were CIA agents or something haha 

Anyways that's why my email is so late I love you guys sooo much have a great week!

Elder Childers

Rain go away come back another day!

So it's been raining here like the past 3 days on and off not really that hard but one thing I've learned about Spain is everyone is a bunch of wusses when it comes to rain. Like literally if it's just barely drizzling the streets are empty, the shops all close and if it's a Sunday nobody shows up to church. Anyways so today is the funniest thing, it's raining like a normal storm in Idaho no big deal and they canceled all of school and even the universities. However a city in our zone Orehuela has been having huge floods, like cars and trucks floating down the streets, I'll try to send the video I got from one of the members. For pday we went to Alicante to climb the castle it was pretty fun. This cool guy Joseph who comes to English class every week always wants to hangout with us so we invited him today and he came! He lived in Arizona for like a year with his cousin so he knows like perfect English. He isn't really interested in the gospel but he loves the english classes and he loves the missionaries, hopefully one day!

Other than that this week we had intercambios with the zone leaders this week in Alicante on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was cool because the first cita we went to at the end I asked this family if they would get baptized and they said yes!  Then Jessika called us that night, super excited and said she finished the Book of Mormon. My comp buys all of his converts a pair of nice scriptures after they are baptized so we ordered some for Jesika and we are hoping they will get here by Christmas. Thursday we got a big package from Elder Llavinas mom with matching Christmas outfits so we got to wear those for our ward party and we are going to wear them to the Christmas tri- zone conference, which was supposed to be tomorrow but got rescheduled to the 27th because of the rain lol oh yeah ward parties here are crazy! Of course they had a tv up on the stand with the fútbol game going haha then after the dinner they brought in these huge speakers to have a big dance party that apparently went till 3 AM it was a bummer we had to be back at piso by 11 cause we missed out on the talent show and the dancing since the dinner started. 

Just really excited for Christmas but also nervous to get my new companion! 

Love you all, I hope all is going well there and you're enjoying the snow and the Christmas season with your families. I send my love from Spain 💙

Elder Childers 

Converting and Cooking

Well I'll start off with the best news! Our investigator Jesika had her interview Saturday and she will be getting baptized this week! It's super cool to see how excited she is for it. Its been crazy to see the change in her life just the past 3 weeks that I've known her for. She has some crazy and horrible things happen in her life. Things that still effect her life every day. Its so awesome that through baptism she can be cleaned from her past and start new again. Its so cool to see how excited she is. The other day we went over to visit her and her and her mom made us Paraguayan food it was soooo good! It was so funny because Jesika's son Juan like loves us so much. Every time we leave he cries its so cute haha. The other day we had a family home evening at the Palominos. Jesika had to leave early and when she did Juan ran back in grabbed my comp and I and was trying to drag us out then when we walked back in he just like stared at the ground all sad haha he's so funny.

Oh yeah also this wednesday was crazy. The stake had a big leadership meeting so they asked all the missionaries to make a big lunch for all of them. They said there was going to be about 50 people so we made 9 kg of pasta, my comp and I made 100 cookies and all the other companionships brought everything from bread to soda to salads. It was crazy we had so much food. Then only like 30 people actually ended up coming. But it was alright because we had tons of leftovers and we had tons of cookies to give out to people haha.

Anyways other than that, its so weird there's already so much snow there. Still short sleeve weather here during the day haha I miss the cold 😂 its been raining almost everyday this week and last night after our correllation meeting with the ward mission leader we were walking to the bus stop and a car drove through this huge puddle next to us and we got soaking wet from the big splash in our suits so that was fun 😂😂 

Christmas stuff has been good though its really easy to contact with the christmas cards plus its fun to have a new little video each day. 

I was reading another conference talk the other day in it was this story I liked:

“A group of religion instructors were taking a summer course on the life of the Savior and focusing particularly on the parables.

      “When the final exam time came, … the students arrived at the classroom to find a note that the exam would be given in another building across campus. Moreover, the note said, it must be finished within the two-hour time period that was starting almost at that moment.

      “The students hurried across campus. On the way they passed a little girl crying over a flat tire on her new bike. An old man hobbled painfully toward the library with a cane in one hand, spilling books from a stack he was trying to manage with the other. On a bench by the union building sat a shabbily dressed, bearded man [in obvious distress].

      “Rushing into the other classroom, the students were met by the professor, who announced they had all flunked the final exam.

      “The only true test of whether they understood the Savior’s life and teaching, he said, was how they treated people in need.

      “Their weeks of study at the feet of a capable professor had taught them a great deal of what Christ had said and done.” In their haste to finish the technicalities of the course, however, they failed to recognize the application represented by the three scenes that had been deliberately staged. They learned the letter but not the spirit. Their neglect of the little girl and the two men showed that the profound message of the course had not entered into their inward parts.

      We must at times search our own souls and discover what we really are. Our real character, much as we would wish, cannot be hidden. It shines from within us transparently. Attempts to deceive others only deceive ourselves. We are often like the emperor in the fairy tale who thought he was arrayed in beautiful garments when he was in fact unclothed.

Reading this story also made me think back on all the times I have been in a hurry to get somewhere or do something on my way seeing someone in need but thinking I've got more important things to tend to, I'm to busy right now, or I'm sure someone else is already on their way to help. How selfish I was sometimes. Then I thought about how many times people stopped to serve me, what opportunities were they missing out on? What did they put aside to come help me out? I challenge all of you especially during this special month of service to look out for little acts of service and kindness to do each day I promise you will receive blessings and you will feel good too. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" 😉

Much love from Spain! 🇪🇸 

-Elder Childers