A Long Walk to Kenny

Tuesday, May 13 - Monday, May 19, 2025

Quick Note from Mom - They work seems to be picking up a little now that Gabe and Elder Jara are the only two elders working the area of Cartagena. They still love the bishop and also got to meet the stake president this week and have dinner with his family, and he's awesome too! They met a guy named Kenny from Nigeria and committed him to baptism in a couple weeks! Elder Jara still cooks all of Gabe's meals for him, and a majority of the pics he uploads lately are of the food. lol Here are his notes!

1. Miembros

2. Stake conference 

4. KENNY

3. Amigos

Miembros - We've been working a lot more with members recently and it's been pretty helpful because we've found a couple people through it. We initially started working with the members more because the previous Elders (Leal and Salmeron) made a lot of the members mad for various reasons. One of which was that they ditched a less active family that had invited them over to eat, and the family had 2 friends who were interested in the church. Then the other Elders were mad when the family called and asked why they weren't at their house💀. But overall we've been working really well with the members recently.

Stake Conference - We all got to got the huge chapel of Mar Menor(the average chapel in Utah) for stake conference. It was really good and we got to see President Obando because he spoke at the conference as well.

Kenny - We found Kenny on a park bench when I was on exchanges with Elder Sircable. He only speaks English and is from Nigeria. Our first lesson with him was on Tuesday, and we waited for the bus but it never came. So when he said he was free all evening we decided to walk there. We walked for like an hour on the highway and it's actually crazy how many people yelled at us because they thought we were Jehovah's witnesses. But when we arrived we had a really good lesson and Elder Jara testified at the end with broken English. It was like me when I got to Spain and we had lessons with people in Spanish. But then we meet with him on Thursday and he excepted the invitation to be baptised. So that was awesome! We have his baptismal date set for June 1.

Amigos - We have a couple spouses of members that we found out aren't baptised. So we are working with them to help them be baptised. Then the other people we were teaching before who are kinda ghosting us because they're all younger and have exams right now. But we went from having maybe one lesson a day if we were lucky to a least 2 everyday so we are teaching a lot more now. Which has been awesome.

Gabe's Day-by-Day notes:

Tuesday, May 13: This morning a guy came and gave us wifi because we have no signal in our apartment 🙏📈. Then we had a video call with Enma which was fun. She's gonna come visit in June. Then we had a hype member meal with the Martinez family. Then we had a lesson with Kenny, the guy from Nigeria. There wasn't a bus so we trekked to his house and just walked around till we found his house. We had to use a picture he sent us to find it. It was only like a 3 street town though so it wasn't too hard. Then we had a gas Restoration lesson in English with him. Then we talked to a crazy Spaniard lady for 30 minutes. 

Wednesday, May 14: We had a great lesson today with Kimberly, her husband Gary, and their roommate Mercedes. The roommate and Gary aren't members, and Kimberly has been trying to get them coming to church. They understood everything really well and are going to continue reading the Book of Mormon with Kimberly. Then we had a volleyball activity in the evening. 

Thursday, May 15: We met with a family today who has been receiving lessons for like 20 years and been coming to church but never have been baptised. So we talked about baptism and are going to keep meeting with them to try and get them feeling ready to be baptized. Then we meet with Lovepreet (the Indian guy who only speaks Inglés). He knows absolutely nothing about God and has no solid beliefs so that was interesting. Then we visited a less active family and that went pretty good to be honest. They where a little upset because the other missionaries ditched them when they had a family home evening set up with the family and some other investigators😬. 

Friday, May 16: A lady from the ward gave us a tortilla de patatos again which was awesome. We also had a lesson with Kenny and explained baptism and everything. I was worried because he had told us about his first baptism and how he had traveled to Jerusalem to do it in the River Jordan. But after the lesson, he accepted the invitation to be baptised which was awesome.

Saturday, May 17: We had a good lesson with Carmen this morning and Maria came and helped with the lesson too(member) then we had a soccer activity with the ward again. We also had a lesson with Leydi, which kinda went bad. But then we did a lot of street contacting. ((Ask me about the 2 girls Jara talked too) erase this after you read this) (Note from mom - Basically they talked to two pretty girls. That's it. lol)

Sunday, May 18: We had stake conference today which was great and we got to see everyone so that was fun. Then we had a good lesson with a mom and son from South Africa in English. We having more lessons in English than in Spanish recently😂. Poor Jara.

Monday, May 19: we stayed in Cartagena today for pday because we have a dinner appointment with the stake president and the Hermanas. So we went to the music store and bought the guitar Elder Jara wanted this morning, and then ate and talked with the Hermanas until we needed to leave for the stake president's house. We had a really good meeting the the stake president. His family is really awesome and he's super motivated for missionary work because his daughter is serving in Chile.