Elder Adamson's Letter 10/27/2014

Hello everyone! We had a great finding week this week and we got the goal!!  Our goal was to find 888 new investigators and we found a total of 897.  Elder Lelegren and I were able to find 6 of those.  Here´s the week.

Last Monday, we went to Cádiz for P day and we visited the cathedral there.  It was pretty cool.  Not quite as cool as the one in Sevilla.  I think once you´ve seen one cathedral you´ve kind of seen them all, but it was still cool. We also got to go out to a the Castle of San Sabastian which was also pretty cool.  Cádiz is super awesome.

On Tuesday we found our first new investigator of the week.  His name is César and it´s been a while since missionaries have taught him.  We had a good lesson 0 with him and we´ll be going back to see him tonight.  He told us he believes the Book of Mormon is the word of God so there´s a good start.

On Wednesday, we passed by a few people we wanted to start teaching this week including a family that lives below one of our members.  The parents are named Geli and Jesús.  We have knocked on their door for a LOONG time without being about to get in, but this time they let us in and we had a super good lesson with them.  They are really receptive (mostly Jesús) and it was a huge miracle for us.  We´re hoping to be able to teach the whole family this week.  They have two daughters as well.

Thursday was a really good day as well.  We were able to catch David and Angela (new investigators. from last week) at home in the afternoon and had a short little lesson talking about the chapter we left them to read and it was really short and sweet.  They´re doing well and doing a good job at keeping commitments.  After them we had a cita with a Lady that Elder Lelegren contacted on the street a few days before named Alicia.  Turns out she´s a coworker of one of the members in our ward and is pretty familiar with the church.  She was receiving visits from a sister missionary back in 1995 and made really good friends with her but was never baptized.  We´re going to start trying to involve her with the ward and see how things go.  She´s really nice and accepted the commitments we left with no problems at all.  We´re excited to keep working with her.

Saturday was AWESOME.  By that day, we were really scraping the bottom of the bowl to find new investigators and we weren´t really sure what to do, but we had made some good plans for the day.  After we had correlation with Joaquin, we stopped to talk to a guy on the street and he asked us what our message was, so we took ten minutes to go sit down with him and tell him what our message was and we got a new appointment with him for next week.  After that, there was a former investigator that I was pretty sure I had passed by before, but we decided to go try it anyway.  We ended up going and finding a really nice lady named Fátima.  It´s been a LONG time since the missionaries have talked to her but she let us right in and she knows lots of members in the ward.  She told us that every night, she does a catholic prayer, and then a "mormon prayer".  I´m excited about all these new people.  The Lord has really blessed us this week.  

On Sunday, we brought Angela to church with us and it was great.  There were a few members that recognized her because they remember seeing each other a long time ago in Cádiz.  I think she really enjoyed the meetings and it´s always a good sign when an investigator comes to church. :)

The Lord has really provided the way for us this week.  Only about 2 of the people we found this week were on the list of people we were expecting to find and the others just came.

A few times this week, I couldn't help but think about how blessed I really am.  I know the true gospel, I have a great loving family, I´m able to feel of God´s love often as I read the scriptures and pray,  I know that we will continue on after death.  It´s all thanks to Christ.  I cannot deny that I know that He lives.  I have felt it so many times and I know that He lived and died for me.  All of the blessings that I could ever receive wouldn't mean anything if it weren´t for the miracle of the Atonement.  Our Redeemer broke the chains of death and hell for us, so that we might be eternally happy.  I know that He lives and loves each and every one of us more than we can understand.

Love you and miss you!

Have a great week.

Con Cariño, (With Love)

Elder Adamson

Elder Adamson's Letter 10/20/2014

Hello everyone!  Things are going great here in San Fernando.  Things are going well and we´re getting ready to find lots of children of God this week!

This week we had a good district meeting about preparing people for baptism, and afterwards we had an intercambio with the Cádiz Elders.  Elder Jack came with me.  He´s new just like Elder Lelegren and we had a good time together.  He reminds me so much of JJ Berrett.  He looks like he could be his brother.  We were able to contact a few referrals from a member named Chari, one of which is a family from Barcelona, so we´re pretty excited about that.  The other referral we talked to was named Maricarmen.  She was really nice but pretty closed minded.  She told us that she didn´t really want to learn more about God because she doesn´t believe in Him even though we did our best to tell her how she can know that he exists.  Elder Jack and I just gave our testimonies at that point, because she just wouldn´t open up even though we did our best to invite the Spirit.  The hardest part of missionary work is seeing people who aren´t willing to listen to the most valuable thing you have to offer, but as true disciples of Christ we must raise a warning voice and invite people to Christ, but we cannot force our message down their throats.  The humble seeker of truth will find it.  

That night we also got to see Kevin and Vanessa.  We went in thinking we were going to teach tithing and fasting, but right as we were starting I went to pull out the tithing pamphlets but I felt like we should share a different lesson, so we started talking about reading the scriptures, praying, and coming to church, because they are really going to need to know how to keep feeling the Spirit until they get baptized.  The lesson went well and they are still doing good on praying and reading on their own time.

We also got to meet with Guillermo again this week and he´s doing really well.  I got word from the Cádiz Elders that he want to church in Cádiz with his family so that is a huge step forward for him.  He hasn´t been to church for a long time and it was a miracle that we even found him.

Saturday was a great day.  In the morning, all of our plans were failing on us, but we were hurrying from place to place trying to find new people.  On our way out to a cita, a man named Omar stopped us and asked us where the capilla was and we got all of his information and set an appointment for this Wednesday.  MILAGRITO.  (MIRACLE)  Later that afternoon we got in with a guy named Walter.  He´s 19 years old and from Bolivia but he´s grown up here in Spain.  We had a really good lesson with him and a cita to come back.  We talked to him in the street on Elder Lelegren´s first day and haven´t been able to see him until that day.

Right now I´m reading in the Book of Mormon in the discourses of King Benjamin and I´m pulling out a lot of things that I haven´t noticed before. In Mosiah 2:34 it says:

"I say unto you, that there are not any among you, except it be your little children that have not been taught concerning these things, but what knoweth that ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are..."

Later in chapter 4 verse 21 Kind Benjamin says something similar:

"And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another."

We owe everything we have and are to Him who has given us the opportunity to have eternal life.  He asks us to sacrifice those things that will keep us out of His presence and distract us from our divine purpose so that we can be with Him again. He has given us everything we have in the first place, but He gives us the chance to give it back to Him and make a sacrifice that is necessary for our growth.  All He has done for us is out of His pure love.  The sacrifice He asks of us really isn´t much of a sacrifice, because the blessings we will receive for it are eternal.

Hope your birthday was great mom!

Love you all and have a great week.  ( I know I need to take some more pictures... coming soon.)

Elder Adamson

Elder Adamson's Letter 10/13/2014

What´s up??  This week has been great.  I don´t have a ton of things to report on, though.  Here´s the week.

On Friday we had Zone Meeting in Cádiz and on the way to the train station it started pouring rain so Elder Lelegren and I got soaked, but it was fun.  Zone meeting was great.  Elder Allsop and Smith are doing a great job of leading our Zone.

This week has been a good amount of walking but the Lord is definitely blessing us.  We had an intercambio this week with the Zone Leaders and Elder Smith came here to San Fernando with me and it was a great experience.  Elder Smith has been out for about 3 transfers longer than I have and he´s a really great and hard working Elder.  While he was here with me he made a really big impact on me.  He is a prime example of seeing people 2 times in white.  Whenever we´d talk to someone in the street or at their door, on our way out he would make a comment like"Wow, that is a golden family.  They would be great leaders in the church."          He´s got a really good vision and it´s kind of rubbed off on me the last few days.  When we´re in lessons I can just see people a little bit differently and see the potential that they have.  A perk of being a missionary is being able to see people from the Savior´s point of view.  Once you can see people how He sees them, our purpose in doing the work of Salvation becomes a lot more important. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.  This has been the most valuable learning experience   I´ve ever had, and it just keeps getting better.

On our intercambio we got to see Kevin and Vanessa again for the first time in 2 weeks.  We had a super spiritual lesson about the Temple and family history.  We got to talk about marriage with them and while they were in Madrid they checked out what they needed to do to get married and it turns out that Kevin has a previous relationship in Colombia that would have to be undone before they could get married which means     he´d have to go back to Colombia to undo it.  He said that it would take probably about a year for them to get the money to go back, so things are going to have to be put on hold for a while with them, but we´re going to do our best to keep them involved with the ward for the next year so that when the time comes they can get married and be baptized.  They are so golden and it´s a shame they can´t get things taken care of now.  For now they just need to keep reading, praying and coming to church to keep their fire burning.

This next week in the mission we are going to be having another FINDING WEEK!  This time we are going to find 888+ new investigators which is 9+ for every companionship.  The most I´ve ever found in a week is 7 so         we´re going to have to work hard and trust in the Lord, but we´re ready to do it!  This week has been great and it´s starting to rain quite a bit, but I like it. We´ve been doing some singing in the rain. It´s a lot better being soaked with rain than with sweat. ;)

We have divine potential. Our time here is short and Heavenly Father has given it to us so that we have have everything He has.  If we could only see ourselves from the perspective of Christ and Heavenly Father, we would change everything and do our very best.  We would never hide from them and we would always recognize how important they are for us.  As we learn more about our potential, we will see the plan of salvation as a sign of  God´s infinite love for us.

Love, Elder Adamson

A kind member of the ward that Elder Adamson is serving in sent us these pictures.  Elder Adamson and Elder Lelgren were his guests for lunch several times. Elder Adamson thinks he is a great guy.  He served his mission to Spain and is a convert to the church.  We are always grateful for those who take such good care of the missionaries when they are so far away from home. 

Elder Adamson's Letter 10/6/2014

¡Hola!

This week has been amazing.  We've been able to hear a lot from the leaders of our mission and of the church this week and we´re really happy about it.  Here are the highlights. 

On Wednesday we woke up early to go catch a train for Sevilla.  We had an amazing Zone conference and we talked a lot about promising blessings to people and President Deere gave an amazing lesson on the Atonement from the Book of Mormon.  We talked a lot about how we are lost and fallen people because of the fall of Adam, but we have hope in Christ.  It was an amazing conference. I´ll talk a little bit more about it later in my letter.

On Thursday we had a special experience and  we got to give a priesthood blessing to a girl that has a mental disorder and was having an attack.  It was all of the sudden and while we were giving the blessing I could really feel the Spirit acting through me.  Sometimes I don´t realize that I hold the priesthood and I forget the huge privilege I have.

Friday was a great day.  We were able to find a new investigator named Jose Juan and he looks pretty good.  His dad talked to us in the street once and gave us his address but we´ve never been able to catch him at home, but his son just turned into a new investigator, so that's great news.

 Later, we went to eat with Jose Gomez and had a good time there.  He´s the one that sent all the pictures. He´s a great guy. 

We also got to meet with a member named Victor and his nonmember wife.  She´s super nice and we´re going to try to get the Relief Society involved with her for some good fellowship.

And of course we LOVED conference this week.  It just gets better as I get older.  I really needed it this time and it answered a few questions I wrote down and some I didn´t know I had.  I´ve seen all but the last hour of the Sunday afternoon session.  So far my favorite talk has been Elder Christoffersen´s talk.  I really needed that.  We need to GO TO WORK so the Lord has something to help us with.  I could talk about a lot more stuff too, but you saw conference, too. ha ha

As far as Kevin and Vanessa go, we haven´t seen them yet, but we have an appointment set up for this weekend, to see how everything went for them and we´re hoping and praying they´re still on fire like they were when they left.

I loved President Deere´s lesson this week. It really helped me understand better. Sometimes we may say to ourselves "maybe I´m not Celestial material" and that´s a really scary thought. We are fallen and lost people, but we have hope in our Savior. When we conquer the natural man and put ourselves in harmony with His will, our failures to live the celestial law can be erased. Christ helps us to overcome the natural man and then take us to a higher plane and makes us saints. He redeems us and makes us into something that we are not capable of being without His divine help.

That´s all for this week!  Love you and have a great week!

¡Hasta la proxima!  (Until next time!)