Quick Note from Mom - Another 3 weeks have gone by! Avery and I took a trip to Wisconsin and summer is just slipping away too fast, so here we are! Gabe has been in his third area (Alcazar) for about three weeks now with Elder Adams and this is the first time I'm posting about it! Overall, things are going what I would call "fine", nothing too horrible, but nothing too great either. Gabe got there and immediately found out the there weren't a lot of people taking lessons or even really working with the former missionaries at all, so it was kind of like he had his work cut out for him! His first phone call, I think he said something along the lines of, "We got nothing here. NO amigos. No balls." :( But, there's only one way to go, and that's up! On his first P-day there, he started chatting with the barber cutting his hair and gave the whole Restoration lesson! He has even come to church now since that happened! So there's always people just waiting to be found. Here's Gabe's emails!
This whole entry will cover Tuesday, June 24, 2025 - Sunday, July 13, 2025
First, here is Tuesday, June 24 - Sunday, June 29 (First Week in Alcazar)
1. Area review🙏
2. Amigos💀
3. Average day
4. District
5. Finally remarks
1. Well second time in this zone (my first area of Aranjuez was in this zone) but it's basically just Aranjuez but harder. This town is pretty small and we have a bunch of tiny towns around us as well that are in our area. But there's no way to get there if we don't have the car. We have the car every other week. But basically it doesn't seem like Adams and his last comp worked too hard because they had 5 people on baptismal date and none if them were actually ready or wanted to be baptised💀. It was fake😭🙏. But we are trying to find people here in Alcazar so they can actually come to church because sometimes we'll get references of people who live out of Alcazar, but then they have no way to get to church.
2. We got no Amigos😭. We have 1 lady who we found a ride to church for and who won't meet with us during the week for video calls or in person💀. We had 3 amigos in church yesterday which is pretty good considering this area hasn't had 1 amigo in church in like 8 weeks🤯. With our 3 amigos in church on Sunday in total 16 people were there. Branch activities. But the Branch President seem awesome and so do most the members but during the summer in Spain everyone leaves on vacation so it'll only get worse from here.
3. We basically wake up and maybe have 1 or 2 videocalls for people that live far away. Then we street contact all day hunting for people to come to church. In Cartagena, me and Jara ended on a great high note with 3 people on date for baptism and 4 or 5 lessons a day. So it's a interesting change.
4. I'm district leader again and it's me my companion (Elder Adams), 2 hermanas in Cuidad Real and they are pink washing, so Elders were there before. Then we have the STLs. There are actually all doing great and are pretty nice.
5. Although this area basically has nothing right now, I'm still pretty excited to be here. I felt the same way when I first got to Aranjuez and Cartagena. Then little by little they both got better until it felt like we were always busy and we found people to baptise. I know that this area is no different and if we try our hardest and stay obedient we will start to find those who are ready to receive this message. I know there are people here God has prepared for us to find.
Gabe's Day-by-Day notes for week 1:
Tuesday, June 24:
Leaving Cartagena! We woke up this morning and my train to Madrid left at 6:30am but we couldn't take my bags out of the chapel because the chapel doesn't open till 7😭. So we had the APs get me on a different train that left at like 8am and then I took that to Madrid. But when I finally got to Madrid, I found my new companion, Elder Adams, and we took our train to Alcazar. Elder Adams also told me a bunch of stories about him and Lambe being very cooked💀. They had 5 fechas (baptisimal dates) but they were fake. Like, they made them up! This area is a little slow and they didn't do much last transfer, so they got nothing🙂.
Wednesday, June 25: We had the biggest sell of all time this morning because we had woken up early and then taken a train to Ciudad Real for the temple trip with Enma. Unfortunately, we woke up thinking it was Thursday, when in fact, it was actually only Wednesday (Whoops). When the train worker scanned our ticket while we were on the train, he told us we had the wrong day and our tickets were for tomorrow. (I guess I was just REALLY excited to get to go to the temple!) So we took a train to Ciudad Real back to Alcazar. Wasted 30 bucks and literally messaged and cleaned PMG for the rest of the day. We had a 2 cool video lessons though. On one of them, the lady cried as we bore testimony and on the other one, the lady told us she wanted to come to church and read the BOM. So it wasn't a bad day (even though we messed up on the train).
Thursday, June 26: We finally had the long-awaited temple trip with Enma, and it was awesome! One of our trains was late, so we got to the temple right on time. But it was awesome seeing Elder Bradshaw and Enma again, and she loved the temple. (I had gotten special permission a couple weeks ago to leave my area and come meet Enma at the temple, and so had Bradshaw because we had been the ones that taught and baptized her. So me and Elder Adams came by train, and Elder Bradshaw and his companion met us there.) I got to baptise her and she's very short, so baptising her in the temple was a little hard. But then we went and got ice cream and then me and Adams left for Alcazar. We had the 4 hour layover😭. But we made it back to Alcazar at about 10:30 and we had 2 parking tickets totaling 120 Euros because Adams and his former companion, Elder Lambe, had parked the car illegally.
Friday, June 27: We started our day off with a videocall with an amiga we had, and it was great. She starting crying when we talked about how much Jesus loved her and it was great. Until we found out she didn't live in our area. That was sad. We also got a visit from the Frys (matrimonials/Senior missionares) with some driving paperwork and some food🙏. We had 2 video lessons after and they also went good. The hardest part about this area is everyone we are teaching right now lives out of the city and doesn't have cars, so we have to find members who can take them to church. But aside from that, we also did some street contacting and found a lady named Diana that might come to church. We also had district councel which was fun.
Saturday, June 28: We moved our personal study to later in the day so we could do street contacting while passing by members houses when it's not 100 degrees outside😭. The coldest it gets during the whole day is 89🔥😭🔥. But we found a couple people today and I've never been talking to more people while street contacting. We have a couple ladies without cars that we are teaching, and we found members that could take them to church tomorrow! Gina and Maria. So we hope they come🙏. But basically all day we street contacting. This Muslim guy starting getting mad at us and tried to get us into his shop, but we told him "no hace falta, tal vez la proxima vez"💀.
Sunday, June 29: At church today I met the branch president and he's nice. We also had Maria at church. Gina was sick and couldn't come. But two other guys came who we had invited during the week. In total we 16 people at church, members included. It was interesting. Almost all the branch is inactive or on vacation. So it was interesting. But I had district calls with the Hermanas in our district and 2 of them are pink washing and the other 2 are STLs. They're all doing great. But we spent more time street contacting and knocking members' doors the rest of the day.
(WEEK 2 in Alcazar) - Monday, June 30 - Sunday, July 6
1. Area
2. Amigos
3. District
So far the area has remained the same, nothing too exciting has happened. The last elders weren't teaching anyone🫠. And because we've been trying to find people here in Alcazar so they can actually come to church, we've just been doing a lot of street contacting. We maybe had like 2 video calls this week. But street contacting is pretty fun. A lot of people say they're interested, but then never text us back😭. We've been starting conversations in whatever way we can. I've been walking up to old Spainards and talking in English to confuse them and then get them talking. But the second I mention Jesus they rage😂. It has been a lot more fun to do street contacting though. It feels a lot more natural than it did a couple weeks ago just because we've been doing it so much. But I know there's people here who are ready to receive this gospel. They're just hiding.
We only have about 2 people who we've had a second lesson with and neither of them are progressing. So that's unfortunate.
On the other hand the other 2 Hermanas in our district are doing great. We all get along pretty well, and they are all really good missionaries. The Hermanas in Ciudad Real were getting followed by a creepy guy the other day though. So that's bad😬.
Gabe's Day-by-Day notes for week 2:
Monday, June 30:
I've been here for six days now and it's my first P-day here today. We stayed here in the exile of Alcazar for P-day, which was kinda boring. We washed the car and got haircuts, since the barber in Cartagena had ditched me last week. But the guy cutting my hair today had questions about the church, and I ended up teaching him the whole Restoration lesson and he was pretty excited about it. We are going to bring him a BOM tomorrow. His name is Tito.
Tuesday, July 1:
We did a lot of street contacting this morning and talked to a lot of weirdos but nothing too exciting. But then later we had lesson with a Muslim guy, and then had a lesson with a guy we found the other day names Jordi. We told him to meet in the park the park at 9 and today he actually showed up and he had read a little bit of the Book of Mormon and we taught him about the Restoration. He understood it and said he was going to pray tonight about it. We are meeting with him again tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 2:
We went and dropped a Book of Mormon off at the barber shop where Tito works at this morning. Then we did some high quality street contacting. We had a super interesting voice lesson with a lady who might be a little crazy, but she was nice. But we also had another lesson with Jordi and he's homeless and maybe gets in fights with police😬. So we need to be careful with that.
Thursday, July 3:
We had some good street contacting this morning and then did some studies and weekly planning. We had a really good video call with Gina again, and we are trying to find a way to bring her to church on Sunday because she lives in another town. We also had a lesson with an inactive member who told us she was baptised at age 7 🤨. We also found a cool guy named Anderson who took lessons when he lived in the states. We finished our day with dinner with Jaime. He's a member and he's actually the sweetest old guy. He literally goes to the temple every week and then says he's going on a date with his wife (she passed aways a couple years ago)😢. But he has gone to the temple every week for the past 30 years. I also messed with his drunk roommate for like 15 minutes. He was yelling for most the conversation, but I got him to take a Book of Mormon at the end and he calmed down then promised he would read it. We also found 2 people in the street again that we had found last week, and they had never responded😭
Friday, July 4:
We had a good lesson with a member lady today before she goes to visit her family in Pennsylvania tomorrow. She was super nice but told us the majority of Americans were obese😂. Then we had District Counsel which was pretty fun. We basically street contacted the rest of the day, which was funny. We ran into the drunk guy from yesterday twice and both times he interrupted a street contact we were actively talking to. But one of the ladies gave us her number and we are meeting with her tomorrow.
Saturday, July 5:
One of the members named Antonio picked us up this morning for a service project for an old lady in the ward that was supposed to last 2 hour and it was supposed to be just painting. It turned out to be 5 hours and we were installing cabinets and painting🤯. I actually enjoyed it though. It gave me flashbacks to working at the land🪖. But it was funny because Antonio was constantly giving us instructions, but Elder Adams had no idea what was happening because his accent was thick and he was using construction terms. But I painted the whole ceiling, which was fun, and Antonio was like 60 and has been a member for like 30 years and he had a really cool conversion story. Basically, he was like the first member in this area and now a lot of people in this branch are his descendants. Then we had street contacting the rest of the night and found 3 people who told us they would come to church, so we will see how many people pull up tomorrow. It also starting pouring, so we ran back to our piso and were drenched.
Domingo, July 6: At church this morning we had 21 people there! So that was better than last week. It was also fast Sunday, so we broke our fast after church as a ward with food everyone brought. After that I had calls with different hermanas in the district and we literally spent the rest of today street contacting. The teachable people are hiding right now.
(WEEK 3 in Alcazar) - Monday, July 7 - Sunday, July 13
1. AMIGOS!!!😭🙏
2. Zone conference in Madrid
3. Baptism of Lewis (from Cartagena)
Not a lot of stuff has happened this week because we had zone conference and that took up a few days, but we had 3 amigos in the church on Sunday and we are teaching a couple more people as well that are progressing!
We had zone conference in Madrid and interviews with President Obando, which were awesome. We had zone conference on Thursday and interviews on Wednesday. So we actually got there Wednesday morning because of when the train times were. My interview was supposed to be at 8pm. Then at about 3:30 when we were talking to the Senior missionaries, president was like, "Donde esta Elder Rhodes!" Then we had a 35 minute interview😭. Usually they're like 10 to 15 minutes so that was interesting. It was good though. Then we spent the night at the apartment of some elders in Madrid. Then at zone conference, we learned a lot of good ways we can invite people to be baptized more effectively. President also talked about Rexburg in his presentation🙏. He said it was a really safe and peaceful place "because of Elder Rhodes' dad." haha
Right before I left Cartagena, Elder Jara and I had been working with a man named Lewis. He actually had just started rooming with our boy, Kenny, who we had just baptized. We had asked him right before we left there if he would want to be baptized and he had said that he would pray about us and give us an answer later. Then both Elder Jara and I ended up getting transferred that next week. Well, guess what! He got baptized this week! The hermanas that took our place in Cartagena sent me this picture (see picture of two sister missionaries with a black dude - that's Lewis.)
Gabe's Day-by-Day notes for week 3:
Monday, July 7:
Instead of staying in Alcazar, we went to P-day in Madrid today, which was hype, and we did a scavenger hunt around Sol, and it was pretty hot, but it was fun. Then we had a lunch that the Frys (senior missionaries) made for us🙏. Then we just played sports and talked to family the rest of the time. Shoutout to Elder Porter for breaking my ankles🙏 in basketball. Then I drove the car from Madrid to Alcázar, which was a weird feeling. (I haven't driven in a year.) But it was nice.
Tuesday, July 8:
Today was the best day I've had here for sure! We were doing street contacting this morning and got snatched by a crazy Evangelical guy. We met him twice before in the street and every time he said he would love to meet or see us in the Evangelical church he goes to, then he leaves and is super energetic. His name is Diego. Then today while we were talking to a guy, Diego comes out of nowhere and had this random guy that he somehow knew, and wanted him to take a picture of us. Then the other guy ran away and Diego was like, "Wanna come to my house right now and have a coke?" So he led us to his house and we were kinda nervous (it seemed like a trap) but we gotta find people to teach💀🙏. So he took us up to his piso and we ended up having a really good Restoration lesson. He's a Spaniard who has been waiting to get baptised his whole life because he never felt like the other churches were right. So he's promising. Then we had a lesson with Juan who has been receiving lessons for 3 years. We had a great lesson though. Then we had a lesson with Yady who we met the other day in the street. She loves to talk and is kinda sus sometimes (she wants us, but don't worry, she's 40). But she loved the Restoration lesson. We had today and said she's gonna read the Book of Mormon because she "has nothing else going on"😂. Then we finished our day eating kabob with Kevin. He's 23 from Chile and was baptised last year and is now preparing to serve a mission.
Wednesday, July 9: I had a doctor's appointment this morning (for my acne) in Madrid, so we went up early which was fun. We got to see a tiny bit of the Madrid North mission and it was crazy how many trees were there compared to the south mission.The hospital gave me a translator (who was an attractive female) that I didn't end up using, but everything went well and after we went to the office and hung out there until president told me out of nowhere that he wanted to talk to me and we ended up doing my interview 5 hours early. Interviews are usually like 10 to 15 minutes but I was in there for 30+ minutes🤯. It was really good though and after that we hung out and helped around the office and also had a videocall with Gina. Tonight we are staying with the B2 Elders in Madrid.
Thursday, July 10: We had the epic zone conference today and it was awesome. We learned a lot of awesome things about how we can better introduce and treat baptism with our amigos and also how we can be better missionaries. We then ate and went back to Alcazar and I lowkey feel like I have to repent now because I had like a 20 minute argument/ begging a women to take a Book of Mormon. Complete waste of time.
Friday, July 11: We had District councel this week, which was pretty hype. We went to a small town in the middle of nowhere to give a Book of Mormon to the crazy women we have been teaching. Then we meet with some hype members in another city and had a really good Restoration lesson with a guy in the same town. He was super cool and wants to come to church. And he actually can! He has a car. I also called my mom because it was her birthday! (Note from mom - I am feeling blessed as I write this because Gabe will actually only miss ONE of my birthday! He left right after my 40th birthday and will get home probably a day or two before my 42nd birthday!)
Saturday, July 12: Well, another Saturday, another 5 hour service activity with our boy Antonio Rivas. He's super funny and afterward, the Hermana (whose house we were working on) fed us, so everything was great in my opinion. Then we basically street contacted the rest of the night and it was only like 85 degrees, which was hype.
Sunday, July 13: We had 3 amigos come to church today, which was awesome! We had Victor, Tito (the guy who cut my hair that first P-day) and Lena. Lena and Victor were street contacts. Then we joined the online devotional broadcast with Dallin H. Oaks, which was good. Then I had a baptismal interview with a guy that the hermanas in my district are getting ready to baptize, and a couple other calls in the evening.
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