Elder Moreno

Homies!! 🙂

Another week down, and I can't believe how fast this one went. It was eventful too so hopefully this email doesn't bore you all to death :) s/o to those who actually read this still. You guys are awesome. 

This was a week full of lasts... and it was pretty sad :( I had my last interview with president pack, last Zone Conference, and gave my last testimony! I guess everyone gets to that time in their missions though when things just start to wind down. I LOVED ZONE CONFERENCE! It was one of the best ones I think I've ever had during my time here. President pack is such a machine J he invited us to go into the homes of members and teach them the restoration in 4 minutes, but teach it like we were sharing a story instead of teaching a lesson. He promised us that the members would jump on board and have more ganas to share it with their friends. Let's just say that when we finished sharing it the first time, the spirit was SOOOOOO strong. All the members were dead silent in the house and thanked us so much for bringing a good spirit into their homes. They even started blurting out names of friends that they wanted to hear the lesson! It was such a miracle! President is an inspired dude. I love him so much. In my interview, we talked about lots of stuff for the future like temple, scripture study, and even dating and marriage haha. Definitely don't feel prepared for that but it was good. So now I just gotta sprint to the finish line!! 

The past weekend here in León was ZOINKERS! There's this party called San Juan or something like that and it's where people just go absolutely insane. Literally the biggest party of the whole year and it happened this weekend. There were beer booths, flea markets, bull fights, concerts and giant stages, bonfires, tons of drunk people, and lots of other stuff. León is such a party city hahaha so it didn't really help with the work aspect but it was definitely cool to see a city literally come to life. Elder Palacios and I were joking that Babylonia was being brought back hahaha :) I love the Spanish culture but am sure glad to not be a part of it! We saw so many bar fights and people throwing up from so much alcohol and it just makes me happy to have the standards that we have as Latter Day Saints. It really made me think of what it means to be in the world but not of the world as the scriptures say. 

I did intercambios with Elder Moreno who is like one of my best buddies in the mission and he is going home with me on the same day so we got a celebratory MTN DEW from the American store and drank to our last zone conference, interviews, and testimonies. It was totally awesome hahaha. He's a good chaval :) 

Saturday night we got a call from one of our Dominican buddies named Pepe wanting to know if we wanted to play basketball with him. The party was just getting started so we decided to avoid the drunks and ball out. Nobody showed up for a while but PEPE BROUGHT HIS 2 BASEBALL GLOVES AND A SOFTBALL AND WE PLAYED CATCH 😩😍 he was a super good pitcher in the Dominican Republic but hurt his shoulder so now he can't throw anymore but we played catch for like 45 minutes. It was heavenly hahaha. Then we taught him the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon and he is actually really interested in finding a church with good principles and standards! So that was fun to teach a court side lesson in street clothes :) after a while of chatting with him, like 10 more Dominicans rolled up and we played pick up ball with them and I absolutely destroyed them with my dope nasty jumper so they were hyped that a white boy could play 😎 we got all their numbers and one of them is even a pastor for a Christian church! They wanna ball and talk more about Jesus another day so I'm definitely down for that :) hopefully something comes out of it! 

This week I reflected a lot on the sweet and simple things of this church. I am so grateful for the restoration of the gospel in these latter days and the commandments that protect us and bless us. Everyone we talk to always has such a negative opinion on the "Mormon rules" but I know that when we follow the counsel that we have been given, we will be protected and blessed. I'm thankful for the prophet Joseph Smith and his willingness to act on spiritual promptings. I'm thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ for being the perfect example to me and to all of us. I would be so lost without all these beautiful principles and doctrines in my life, and I absolutely love being able to share them with the people in Spain every day! Thanks for the support and prayers, they never go unnoticed! Hasta la próxima muchachos J