A lot has gone on this week so I'm just going to get right down to it.
Last Wednesday, there were some big changes in the mission world. We had a Worldwide Missionary Broadcast, which was mostly general authorities of the church talking about how we could be teaching people about the gospel, which was really good, but the crazy part was that our daily schedule that we usually have to follow got changed up. Basically here's what happened: daily planning is in the morning instead of at night, and now we choose what time of day we do companionship study, language study, and eat. We have more time in our apartment in the morning so we can get ready for the day better, and we have the option of going to bed earlier to catch up on sleep. But best of all, we have 2 extra hours on preparation days! We don't do companionship study or language study on those days anymore, and we just start the p-day earlier. We're all still getting used to it, but it's a good way of having missionaries learn more about planning, being effective, and making their own choices, which will help with post-mission life.
That was the first night that we spent in Madrid this week. We traveled down on Wednesday afternoon, watched the broadcast that evening, and stayed with the zone leaders in Madrid 5th ward. Then on Monday night we traveled down again to do exchanges with them the next day. I spent the day with Elder Gearig from Utah (surprise) and since it was my first exchange with Madrid, I've learned that Madrid is crazy. Guadalajara and Salamanca have been relatively calm towns. On Tuesday, the day I spent with Elder Gearig in the middle of Madrid, we talked to a Cuban guy on the street who turned out to be a pastor and straight up told Elder Gearig to repent, we met with a really crazy Scandinavian lady who claimed she was the head of the Vikings and that she had her own "pure mission" to save the human race, and we finished the day off with eating some good food from the Dominican Republic. Overall, it was a good day. We taught a couple lessons to people who they were teaching. After spending one last night in their apartment, we went to the temple this morning to do a session, then traveled back to Salamanca by train.
The missionary work in Salamanca is going great. When we work hard and diligently, the Lord blesses us. Our investigator Susana is having trouble believing that Joseph Smith is a prophet, so we've had to postpone her baptism, but she is a very spiritual person, and she knows a lot about the gospel. She basically doesn't want to get baptized until she knows for sure that it's true, and we're doing our best to help her. She really is trying to find out, and we have very high hopes for her.
In other news, we got another investigator this week. His name is Felipe, and he's engaged to a Brazilian member here, Denise, who won't marry him until he's a member of the church. He has a wild, long story. He used to be involved in a lot of crazy stuff, but since then he's matured and humbled himself and he really wants to get baptized. He has cancer and he has less than a year to live, and he's told us he wants to do as much good as he can before then, which involves marrying Denise and helping her out, because she's not in the best situation right now either. He's a very friendly Spanish guy, and we taught him twice in the last week. He's reading the Book of Mormon as much as we can, and he's very sincere. I'm super grateful for the opportunity we have to teach him.
I hope you all have a fantastic beginning of the month of February!
Love,
Elder Dobbs
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| Me and my companion Elder Calder on the train |
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| A picture of outside the train on the way to Madrid |
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| A cool picture of a rainbow |
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