Hey from San Fernando

So, this week was way good!  I don´t remember if I told you or not but, transfers have come and gone and I´m now one week into my ninth transfer and even worse in a couple of days, five to be exact, I will hit my tenth month mark. estoy viejo ya!

I will probably only be here in San Fernando for five more weeks and even better is that you will get to find out only days later this transfer ends may 11 so the day I call will be two days after I receive the call from president telling me where I´m going next. This is really weird and the next time that I see you all I will literally have 11 months in the mission aghghahghaghagaghahah!.....but I´m definitely going to enjoy the last transfer here, we´ve gotten this barrio up and going and we are now friends with almost all of the members. I have totally improved my Spanish a ton, even the members tell me that. Even better, I´ve been on exchanges to Chiclana and all of the members and investigators were like wow your Spanish is GREAT!  I love getting that complement it´s always really nice to hear that. 

Well, enough tooting my own horn.  We had an amazing conference, we met tons of missionaries from different parts of the Mission and all of them are amazing.  We had a really good time.  Oh, and speaking of new missionaries, in our area we have two new ones in our district.  One is our district leader, his name is Elder Larios and he was in my zone back in Cartagena.  Although he was in a pueblo called Torrevieja, he was still in our zone and we got to see him every once and a while. We also have a new hermana with us her name is Hermana Rindlesbacher, she is from Sandy UT and went to Alta High School.  She was in Sevilla and before that she was in Elche which is in the Alicante Zone. She came every time we had specialist training with president so we´ve kinda been moved around together.  Other cool news, we have a new "she" for our area and it´s Hermana Cameron, she was in the MTC with me in Madrid. That just served to make me feel older knowing that there are now shes (super hermana entrenadoras)from my group just makes me feel weird.  

Well boys, I can´t exactly say I´m surprised that is what you did all week end.  Just revel in it while you can, unfortunately is not something that lasts forever. 

So, I got my hair cut to day but, I didn´t go to a peluqeria like I should have.  We have these investigators Venezuelans and last time I got my hair cut without going to them they about flipped a biscuit, so Elder Christiansen and I took one for the team (him more than me my haircut looks better than his).  Luckily, the only difference between a bad haircut and a good one is two weeks and another trip to the barber shop.

We´ve found some new investigators, thank goodness, we were running low on progressing investigators and we dropped some of them like president told us to.  Within three days we had new investigators, which we hadn´t been getting for a while.  Now it had been about three weeks since we´d had anyone worth contacting.  One of them, his name is Jonathan and he is a Spaniard, very curios and very open. He says that he is an atheist but really he isn´t he´s agnostic.  

Something interesting that I´ve learned lately is that people don´t become menos activo when they are doing three things with regularity.  One, going to church, that is where we most feel the spirit and we are closer to god. Two, reading the book of Mormon, even if we never finish it as long as we are reading the book of Mormon and praying about it and double checking god every once and a while about the principles and the book it self and whether Joseph smith was a prophet or not we will always receive an answer. Third, which is pray, goes right hand in hand with that, just like you wouldn´t know if I were OK if I didn´t email every week.  We have to pray to God so that we are continuing to build that relationship with God otherwise it atrophies and decays and when that happens we think that God doesn´t love us because he´s not "there" for us, when really it's us who have distanced ourselves from God.  No idea why I thought I should share that.

That´s weird you definitely didn´t tell me that Mitch was quitting, what the heck, why in the world would he do that?  And of course, Cory with the big heart to the rescue, he is always thinking about others.

Thanks for the emails this week! 

love Braden