Starting from the beginning of the week, last Monday night we traveled to Madrid for a zone conference the next day. The conference was really good; we learned a lot about how to be better teachers, which is something that will help us help people want to learn more about the gospel and change their lives. Another interesting thing that the mission president's wife, Hermana Pack, talked about was anxiety for the work. Some people have too much anxiety, and it starts affecting them in negative ways, but we all need to have some of it, because it motivates us to work harder to find the people whose lives can be changed for the better. This is the work of God, and it needs to go unto every person who will receive it. After the conference, we had a bit of time before we had to catch our train to Salamanca, so President Pack did his interviews with us, and we went and found Elder Bridger Allan again (and my companion's friend who is in the MTC). This time he was dressed like a missionary, not dressed up for exercises, and we were able to talk to them a bit. We took pictures again, but he has them, and he didn't send them to me. So if you want to see them, you'll have to read his next email.
We came back and the next morning we followed up on a reference of a lady who was interested in doing family history work. Her name is Mercedes, and she's a 45-50 year old Spanish lady. She's already done a ton of family history work for her own family and for some relatives and friends, but as she was searching online, she found familysearch.org and wanted some help with accessing those records. She put herself in contact with the branch president, who said that the missionaries would come visit her and help her out. We went over with Tiago, from the branch, and sat down in her living room and started to get to know her. As Tiago started introducing himself, he mentioned that he's studying musicology and vocal music at the University of Salamanca, and she mentioned that she teaches music to kids, and that she plays the cello! Before I could say anything, both Tiago and Elder Santiago told her that I play the cello too, and she said that I could try it if I wanted. We helped her make an account for familysearch.org, explained a little bit about why we do family history, and showed her how to use the site. Then she took us upstairs and let me try playing a couple songs. I'm a little out of practice, but for me it was a miracle and one of the best days of my mission at the same time. God truly watches out for us and I can testify of the tender mercies that come. Tiago and I are already planning a musical number, because she said we could use it on a Sunday.
Last big story: A couple weeks ago we got a reference of a lady who talked to missionaries online, and wanted to meet with us in person. The only problem was that she lives 120km away, on the Spanish-Portuguese border. Even worse is that her village, La Alamedilla, is tiny, and there's one bus that goes out there once a week. To visit her, unless we had a car, we'd have to stay a week. At the beginning of last week, we got the news that she was traveling to Madrid, and her sister who lives in Avila was going to pick her up and drive her. We decided to travel out there to meet with her, on the only afternoon she would be there. We took an hour long train, and got there and sat down outside of a restaurant/bar. We gave her a Book of Mormon and started talking to her, and tried to explain as much as we could about the Restoration and the BoM, to take advantage of the time we had. She liked it all, and is already reading the Book of Mormon a lot. It's great to see how God prepares people, and guides them towards the truth, when they're looking for it. We're currently looking into how we can meet with her in the future. If she's going to get baptized, which is possible, it will definitely take a few months.
In between all of that, we met with some other people, talked to a lot of others on the street, and had a great time. I love being on a mission. I love meeting members in such a diverse part of the world, who all have the same beliefs in common. I've already seen that it's helping me in so many ways, and I'm so grateful that I get to take part in God's work.
Talk to you all next week!
-Elder Dobbs
Pictures: A group of members who all ate at Minda's house on Sunday. There is a couple from Argentina visiting Salamanca to find family history records, and they wanted to take pictures with us after Minda invited them over to eat with us
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| All the missionaries at the zone conference |
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