May 26, 2014 Zone Conference and a Monastery

Zone Conference in Vigo

Visited a monastery

my 2 companions

my shoes are beat

Gato

3 of us

Elder Schmidtlein

The Trio

Gonna miss these guys

Family and Friends!!

This week has been a blast!! I don't have too much time but I'll try and do the best I can here.

First off, on Monday and Tuesday we were in Vigo for our zone conference. It was awesome!! We stayed in a hotel down there for the night and the talks during the conference were amazing. I am really loving our trio as well. Elder Schmidtlein is a great addition to El Ferrol.

We had a great day on Thursday and we even got to do splits with our branch president to cover more area. Elder Nickerl and the president went to the hospital to give a ward member a blessing while Elder Schmidtlein and I went out to contact. English class was a hit too and we invited a lot of the students to come to church. After we had a great lesson with Goyos, Irina's husband and he is reading and praying to recieve an answer!! I am so excited for him it's ridiculous!

On Friday we visited Angel at his house and we had a great lesson with him on the plan of salvation. He liked it alot! We found out that he is going to be leaving for England on the 9th but we are going to teach him as much as we can while he is here. He also came to church on Sunday again and is really ready.

On Saturday we went to Ortigueira which is a neighboring town to visit a few investigators. They loved the message of the restauration and the daughter loooves the church. Gotta love seeing potential!! We went with Hermana Dolly and on the way back she contacted someone at the train stop and we got her reference! Her name is Guadalupe and she  was interested in our message! We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was very receptive. Way to go Hermana Dolly!!!

Sunday was great although Elder Nickerl was sick. We stayed in the piso for a while to let him sleep but he is feeling better today. We went to a monastery today which was awesome and took a lot of photos!

This will be my last week in El Ferrol and I am having mixed feelings. I have spent more than half of my mission here and I am really going to miss it. I love the people here and I hope that I have had an impact on them. I am excited to work in the office though with Elder Ward. It will be a great experience!!

I love you all!!

Elder Franklyn

Mother's Day Week and Transfer!

Monday, May 12

Queridos míos.

Well I just realized that I hadn't written a big email yet so this will have to be quick but I'll try to make it good. Some miracles happened this week and it was great!! I am pretty pumped and we got the transfer calls on Saturday so some of you don't even know where I am right now...

Well the big miracle that we have seen this week has been through part member families. We have two amazing ones and both of the fathers are not members. The Goyos family is like my second family and the father has been participating a lot in our lessons recently. On Thursday we had a great lesson with them and invited Goyos (the dad) to take the missionary lessons and he said yes! We are so excited! A few days later we were talking to Hermana Dolly, Wendy's mom, and her husband is also a non member. He lives far away for work but he has been visiting often and we have gotten to know him better. The other day they were talking and Dolly literally just told him to get baptized and he said he was actually thinking about it!! We are going to try to meet with him this week and see how things go. I've never seen any progress with part member families until now but its so amazing to see the joy of the members when their loved ones accept the Gospel. 

The exciting news about transfers is that I am staying in El Ferrol! And we are going to get another missionary tomorrow!!  Buuuut only for three weeks. Then I am going down to Madrid and I am going to be the mission secretary! Exciting stuff! I know that this church is true. For me, honestly, it doesn't matter if I am in Galicia, the Canary Islands, or Madrid. The most important thing above all is preaching the Gospel. There is a great quote from Paul in 1 Corinthians about his view on missionary work and I will try to quote it. This isn't exact but he says: I was not called of Christ to baptize, but to preach the Gospel. Not with wise words, lest the cross of Christ be made of none affect. I love that! We are called to preach the Gospel. Baptisms or not! That is my goal in these two years. I know that Jesus Christ is our Saviour and our Redeemer. I know that my english is not the best now but that is just because I'm trying to focus everything on this short time I have. I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Franklyn

ps: this is Elder Nickerl and I knocking down some percebes.

and talking to my family on Mother's Day....

Lots of Photos of P-Day and Percebes!

May 5, 2014

Some photos of the men. Elder Nickerl, me, Guillermo, and Bruno.

Some mini ramp trash cans in Galicia. Sweet.

Mid-trip-chapa-selfie.

We visited a place today called San Andres de Texiro. It was awesome.

Elder Nickerl and I in front of a city called Cariño.

Here's the percebes. Still not exactly sure what they are. Some sea animal that sticks to the rocks.

A super sweet old house we found

Some photos of the men

Aaaand an awesome light house we visited. This is the most northern part of all of Spain.

Family and Friends!!

This week has been killer hard not going to lie but we never quit and I feel good about that. I love Galicia and the people here but sometimes I feel like the people in the street just really don't like us very much. They see us walking down the street and they cross the road to avoid talking to us. It's like we smell bad or something but I think we smell great! And it can't be that we look weird because we are basically public models. The world may never know.

Well we were in the street a ton this week but I'll try and hit the highlights again.

On Tuesday we helped the Bringa family move. They lived on the second floor and we took all of the stuff out of their apartment and had to bring it down to a big truck. Then we loaded it on to the truck and went to the new house. It was on the fourth floor. And yeah there was no elevator. I probably lost like 10 kilos and Elder Nickerl and I were full sweat by the end. Lets just say we are both still sore but it was a good experience and the family was very grateful for our help. We actually are going to their house tomorrow to help them with some more stuff!

On Wednesday we had intercambios with the missionaries in A Coruña after our zone training meeting. The meeting went really well and then I headed off to A Coruña with Elder Smith, the same one that was with me in my first district and the CCM with me! We had a great time and I interviewed two of their investigators, Josefa and Cindy, for baptism. They were so ready and their testimonies were so strong. It was amazing to meet them and they were both baptized and confirmed last weekend.

On Thursday we had a sweet miracle go down. We had a lesson with Victoria, Angel, and Angel about the restoration and it went really well. At the end, Elder Nickerl invited them all to get baptized with probably the most confusing and difficult invitation ever but they said yes. He then set a date with them as well to be baptized and they accepted it too. Elder Nickerl and I were dying laughing after because of how crazy of an invitation he threw out but thanks to the Spirit, they were able to understand exactly what he was saying.

On Sunday we had a decent day at church. In Spain, yesterday was Mother's Day so the third hour was dedicated to the mothers in the branch. It was awesome even though it made me miss my mom a little bit. Elder Nickerl bore a great testimony on how much he loves his mom and a lot of other great stories were told of some amazing mothers but I've got to say that I have the BEST mom ever! Thanks mom, love you!

Today we visited some awesome sights around north Spain and we actually went to the most northern point in all of Spain, which is in our area, and took some photos. We also ate something called Percebes in spanish which were really good! They look disgusting but we both loved them.

Amidst all of the trials that we are passing through right now in El Ferrol, I can always notice the rays of light that our Heavenly Father casts down to his faithful missionaries. I know that He is watching over us and that He loves all of us so dearly. My testimony of Jesus Christ has grown more than ever as I work alongside Him in this great work. I know that this is the true church and that it was restored on the earth by Joseph Smith. Anyone who says otherwise can just read the Book of Mormon and try to prove me wrong after that. I love you all so much!! Keep up the missionary work in your own areas across the globe!

Love,

Elder Franklyn