Note from mom: Again, this will cover two weeks! (Tuesday, April 22 - Monday, May 5)
Things seemed to be a little better for Gabe with his Latino room mates this week. Gabe said they were following the rules a little better and working harder, but when I asked Gabe if he would just be content now to have everything stay the same on the next transfer, he looked at me like, "Ummm.... no." I guess Gabe kind of told the mission president, or maybe he told the APs, that he thinks it would be best to split those two up and put them both with really strong companions. As far as Gabe's greenie, Elder Jara, I think they get along pretty well. ***Update - Elder Salmeron and Leal are leaving! I wrote that pervious part a few days ago, and we just talked to Gabe yesterday and he told us that Leal and Salmeron are leaving today! More on that in his notes later...
The other big thing that happened this week was that there was this HUGE power outage in like, all of Spain and some parts of France and Portugal! We had talked to Gabe on Sunday night like usual, and then the next day (Monday, April 28) it was his P-Day and we were planning to message with him in the morning, and then he just didn't respond to any messages! Luckily, Sam Powell's mom emailed the Spain moms group chat we have, and told us we may not hear from the boys because most of Spain was out of power. So, we all just kind of waited and hoped they would respond! I finally got a message back from Gabe at about 2:00pm (about 10pm his time) and he said he was fine and he would message us tomorrow. So that was kind of exciting! Luckily, he was fine. They had traveled to Murcia for P-Day and then just hung out at the church outside and played soccer and volleyball. Then in the evening, they took a bus back home to Cartagena, Elder Jara made dinner on their gas stove, they lit some candles, and the power came back on right before bed!
Here are Gabe's notes!
Tuesday, April 22: Today has been one of the best days of the transfer. Leal and Salmeron were so much better and hardworking. We got blocked on Whatsapp, but we ended up finding three people in the northern part of town that we have lessons planned with now. We probably walked for 7 hours straight, but we have a lot of lessons planned for tomorrow now.
Wednesday, April 23: We had a super good lesson with a man named Miguel Angel today and we had Manuel (a ward member who used to live in Utah) come with us. (We didn't know Manuel very well at the time, and this turned out to be a bad judgement call to take him along... more on that later.) It went really good and we are meeting with Miguel again tomorrow. Then we had a 2 hour long lesson with George (Latino store guy)💀. It could've been shorter but Jara started yapping. We're visiting him tomorrow to see if he prayed about the Book of Mormon. A random guy pushed Elder Jara in the street and tried to fight him because he thought we were Jehovah's witnesses. But nothing else exciting happened.
Thursday, April 24: Today was awesome! We had a lesson with Miguel Angel this morning and it went amazing. Yesterday he told us he would have to pray about baptism and today he told us he wants to be baptised! His baptism will be the 11th of May. Then we also had 2 really good lessons with Ignacio and then with Carlos about the Restoration. Then tonight, we missed a call from the AP's and when we called them back they told us they were standing downstairs outside our door🤯. So that was crazy. I am pretty sure they paid us a surprise visit because they want to check on Leal and Salmeron. We're doing exchanges with them tomorrow.
Friday, April 25: Today was crazy. Me and Elder Farholm (one of the AP's) went to the chapel and did a video lesson with Enma (the lady me and Elder Bradshaw baptized a few weeks ago and then she moved to Ireland.) Then we all had district counsel. After that, the APs left. So nothing crazy. They kind of asked me what I thought would be the best thing for Salmeron and Leal, so I told them I think it would. be best to split them up on the next transfer. But then we had a leccion with Miguel and he even brought a friend which was great! He literally is one of the nicest guys I've meet. Then we had a lesson with Brian Nuñz (lived in Orlando for a while and we haven't been able to meet since our first lesson). But we had a great lesson and now he'll be baptised on the 18th of May. Then we had another lesson with George(Latino store guy). He just has to pray about it. Then, things took kid of a turn for the worst. In our piso right before we were going to bed, Manuel (the ward member guy that we didn't know very well, but who was in lesson with us and Miguel during our first lesson) called us . He told us that Miguel called him and threatened him and said it was because of Manuel he wasn't going to be baptised. Manuel was pissed🤯. We tried calling Miguel but when we called him 5 minutes after he answered, and said he had been sleeping then hung up on us. So that stinks. And we have no idea what happened. We are trying to figure out if Miguel really is crazy, or if the ward member guy is crazy.
Saturday, April 26: Nothing from Miguel still. But we had a great soccer activity this morning with a lot of people, which was awesome. We hurried after to the capilla (church) and had a lesson with Carmen and taught her some English as well. Then me and Leal started our exchange and traveled to Mazzaron and met with the Monroys and their friends. After that, we did contacts and met with George again and he still didn't read the Book of Mormon😭.
Saturday, April 27: We had the baptism of Danna today after church! Danna is the 17-year-old girl that I mentioned last time. We had gone over to her house because he mom was on the lists as a member, but was kind of inactive. The dad is not a member and he was the one I was kind of arguing with about teaching Danna during the week, but he was nice. He just didn't want us to teach her during the week because of her school. It was quite the show because we had the whole ward was there and then the dad's entire extended Catholic family, so the chapel was packed. But it all went well. Then we did studies and street contacting during the evening and met with Margarita again. (We had met her doing street contacting last week.) We explained baptism to her and ask if she would like to be baptised again. She said no so we read and explained Acts 19: 1-6 and she said she would like to be baptised because she understands now why its necessary! We also are having Bishop call Miguel to smooth things over because the bishop did some research and found out the member (Manuel) is the crazy one! I guess our bishop talked to his previous bishop, and he was like, "Don't ever talk to that guy again. He's bad news." Like he was wanted for crimes in America and that's why he came to Spain. Ooooopsss... we probably should not have invited him to come along to teach an amigo about the gospel.
Monday, April 28: We went up to Murcia for Pday like always, but when we got there this morning, the power was off and then after an hour we lost all signal for our phones. At first we had stopped at the local elders' piso and they said their power was out. We just thought it was their apartment having a power issue, but then we went to the church and it didn't have power either. President Obando was able to send a message out before we all lost service, and he told everyone to go back to their home areas and stay in their apartments, but then we asked the senior missionary there at the church if we could just stay, and he said yes! All the missionaries that were there just played card games and soccer all day because we had no power and couldn't call because we had no signal. When we got back to Cartagena in the evening, we went to the store and bought candles and set them up in the piso. At the store, a lot of people were buying stuff and the shelves were getting empty. We had enough food at home, so we weren't really stressing. Right before we were about to eat dinner (thanks to the gas oven🙏) we heard everyone in the city cheering and we tried the lights and everything worked. We still don't have signal, but we have power! The power was out for this entire side of Europe. But literally everyone was outside, which was cool. Everyone was joking about it being the end of the world😂.
Tuesday, April 29: We went to Huercal today for exchanges with Taylor and Sircable which was super fun. We were going to go up last night but couldn't because of the power outage. So we went up this morning and me and Taylor visited some members and did a couple meetings over videocall. Nothing too exciting apart from that though.
Wednesday, April 30: We journeyed back to Cartagena today and passed through Murcia where Jara and Pires switched so we could do another exchange! I was with Pires in Cartagena and it was pretty good. We had a super good lesson with a man named Javier, and then another with George. It was really fun watching Pires teach.
Thurday, May 1: Me and Pires drove to Murcia and I picked up Jara and we went back to Cartagena. We had a lesson with George but besides that we walked around all day and talked to a lot of crazy people.
Friday, May 2: We had district counsel today and it went well then we ate Kabob!!! We got to see Elder and Hermana Fry (the senior couple) when they came to drop off Elder Jara's debit card so that was fun. We also had our first lesson with Jorge which went really well. Then we had another lesson with Javier and he brought his son! We just have to convince him to switch to our church🙏(he's Catholic💀).
Saturday, May 3: This morning we had a lesson with Carmen which went really good. After that though we had practically nothing all day😭. We did street contacting the rest of the day and it was pretty funny. For whatever reason, everyone was in the streets partying. The streets were packed with everyone doing craaaaazy activities. But we found a couple of people.
Sunday, May 4: The other day, the other Elders (Leal and Salmeron) got called and told that they will both be leaving Cartagena! Elder Salmeron is going to be with a different Elder in Torrevieja (because one of the Torrevieja elders is moving to become a tech elder) and Leal is going with ZL Gallup for the week because his former companion, ZL Pires, is now going to become an AP. So for the next week it'll just be me and Jara in our apartment. But yesterday we ate at the Patriarch's house and then street contacted all night. Then we messaged all of Elder Leal and Elder Salmaron's friends (investigators) that we will be teaching from now on, since they both had to leave the area suddenly.
Monday, May 5: We did the 3 hours of cleaning this morning that the whole mission had to do probably because someone's piso was disgusting. But after that we got haircuts and the Muslim barber guy must have not liked that I was a missionary because he basically just gave me a buzzcut. Then we went to Murcia and said our goodbyes to Elder Pires because he's going to Madrid to be an AP. But after that we came back to Cartagena, just me and Jara, and did phone contacting all night. We went though the 60 plus people that Elders Leal and Salmaron hadn't contacted. But we found 3 people from it, so that was awesome. Now we just have to wait until this weekend to find out if we will be getting two new elders into our piso, or if it will just stay me and Jara for the next transfer! I think it would be fun to get two new elders because now it feels a little weird with it being just me and Elder Jara, but I just hope whoever we get is cool and wants to do the work.
