An awesome Miracle

Family and Friends!!

This week was pretty good! There were some ups and downs but all in all, I feel good about the week. One challenge we faced this week was tropical storms! It has been raining on and off all week! It has been a little difficult to contact in the street but we have been making the best of it and we saw some great miracles too! 

Last Monday, we went to Monkey Park! It was super fun. I think I already told all of you that I got spit on by a gorilla but yeah that happened.

The rest of the week was good! We had a really good lesson with our recently new investigator Nelly but we haven't been able to get in touch with her since. Maria Fernanda is doing great and her and Gabriela actually got in contact with my mom. Gotta love technology. 

One awesome miracle that we had happened to do with a woman named Gimena (pronounced Hee men uh). We had received her address in the street and went to pass by. When we knocked on the door, two little kids opened the door and told us that no woman named Gimena lived there. We were kinda bummed but as we were walking down, I looked back at Elder Koeven and said, "Do you want to knock the building?" He replied, "Ehh yeah I guess." We went up stairs and the first door didn't want anything and the second door didn't open up. When we knocked the third door (yessss, third time is aaaalways the charm) a woman opened the door. Elder Koeven immediately recognized her (yeah my memory is still pretty bad) as GIMENA!! Her husband was home and so we went inside and had a suuper good first lesson with her! I know it wasn't a coincidence that I wanted to knock that building. We almost never knock buildings here and the first time we do in a long time, we are led right to the person that we were looking for and that may have been waiting for us. 

I know that God loves us. I know that Jesus is the Christ. I love the mission with all my heart and I am SO grateful for the opportunity that I have to serve. 

Elder Franklyn

Monkey park

Family and Friends,

Not too much time this week but I just wanted to jot down the most important things that have happened this week.

First of all, today we went to a place called Monkey Park in the south end of Tenerife. A large gorilla definitely spit a mouthful of water at me from behind the gate. Sneaky monkey.

This week, we focused it a little bit more on finding some new investigators. And we had some success! We found 4 news this week which was awesome and they all have a great amount of potential! We are really excited to keep teaching them and help them come closer to Jesus Christ. 

Maria Fernanda is doing good and gets one step closer to baptism every time we teach her. We ate at her house with her sister Gabriela and their parents who just looove missionaries. We call their mom, mama Cubana. She's the best.

We also had a cool experience with a lady named Olga. She's a friend of a member here who has come to church twice but I still haven't taught her yet. On Sunday, her member friend told her about blessings of the priesthood and she asked us if she could receive one. We were more than willing of course and so with the help of another member we gave her a blessing of comfort. I was the one speaking and it was amazing to feel impressions of things that I needed to say while blessing her. The words that I said literally were not words that I would have normally used and it was amazing to see how the Spirit was able to guid me in that situation.

Life is great down here in the Canary Islands and I am just trying to do my best to work hard and live it up while I still can. Thank you all for the birthday wishes and also all of the comments on my Facebook wall (my mom told me!). I love you all so much and I am so grateful for your support in this most important work that we have to accomplish.

Elder Franklyn

Birthday Week

     21 YEARS OLD!

           
 This is in a city called Candelaria.                 

This is the awesome theater that they have here in Santa Cruz. Not as cool as the sydney opera house but I think its pretty impressive.

Here's near the port of Santa Cruz

Add Elder Koeven and I today! Yeah I'm getting a haircut...

      


¡Agüita!

I think we all know exactly how Elder Franklyn is doing in the Canary Islands...

FLIPPING GREAT!!!

The weather here is awesome and it reminds me a lot of Newport beach. The people in the street are pretty nice actually and the ward members are the bomb! We've already eaten a few times at a few people's houses and a family also left food for us in the chapel last night. I'm serving in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and I invite all of you to search in on Google maps if you want,  to see exactly what I'm talking about. I am loving it here!

Work-wise... It's pretty similar to everywhere else in Spain to be honest, haha. My companion and his last companion had dropped a good amount of investigators right before I got here, so I basically got transferred into a heap of work in the street. Its a good thing that I just absolutely love contacting in the street for days on end! I'm getting a little bit of a suntan too, so that's always nice.

My companion and I are literally best friends. If anyone knows my brother-in-law Jordan Brady, just imagine he and I  together as companions and you'll basically have a good idea of the magical things happening in Santa Cruz right now! 

Investigators that we have are pretty great. We have a sister of a recent convert named Maria Fernanda who is sooo close to getting baptized. She is awesome and her sister, Gabriela, is a rock in the church out here. Gabi's 18 and Maria is 15. There is another girl named Laura who is 9 and her family just got reactivated and she is getting baptized on the 1st of April. Technically she is our investigator but the ward is doing everything. The members here are awesome!

Well I love you all and I am loving the work out here in Tenerife (that's the name of the island I'm on). Its a blast!  Thanks for the birthday wishes!  

Elder Franklyn

Tenerife - Canary Islands!

Family and friends,

First of all... TRANSFERS. I have been assigned to serve on the beautiful island of TENERIFE!!!!!  I am in Santa Cruz and with one of my really good friends from the mission named Elder Koeven.  I'm literally living right on the edge of the island and I can not waaait for this transfer to just be amazing. I am soo stoked! It was really sad to leave Oviedo and I am going to miss a lot of the great people there but I am really excited for these next two transfers.

This week was super good and an awesome part about it was that I got to do intercambios with Elder McWhorter! It was great to be with him again and basically a Dominican family fed us a ton of food randomly. It was great and we had a blast together. 

Elder Esquen and I worked suuuper hard this last week and we actually had a really good week. We killed it honestly and had some really key lessons with some great people.

Our twin investigators Amparo and Begoña are doing great and we had a suuper good lesson with them and they both ended up going to church on Sunday.

Vasilio is doing good and just trying to quit smoking basically. He was really sad to see me leave and I honestly felt really sad to have to leave him. We had a great time together.

Saying goodbye to everyone on Sunday was hard but good. We passed by three families with the other elders to say bye and everyone was just sooo loving and soo nice. I honestly love the members in Oviedo and I will never forget them.

Life is good on the island so far. It basically looks like the hills of Guatemala or something epic like that. Hopefully I will have more photos next week. Love you all!!

Elder Franklyn