Week 11: Equadorian Mix Tapes

This week has been quite eventful!

Last Monday and Tuesday I had an exchange with Elder Aussant in my district. He's a stud! He's from Canada and speaks French, Englis,and now Spanish. Before coming to Spain, he had to wait on his visa, so he served in the Montreal Canada mission for a few transfers where he was companions with Elder Guttierez from the Gilbert Ranch Ward in my stake! Small world haha. We had dinner with a family Tuesday. They cooked paella and it was amazing!! Before my mission, everyone told me they're so excited for me to have paella. I was definitely not disappointed!

So Elder Aussant and his companion, Elder Phillips, live here in Torrejón, but they work in a city called Coslada like 15 minutes away on the Renfe. They're the first missionaries to work in this area, so they don't have any investigators yet. Anyway, Elder Aussant got really sick one day this week, which just so happened to be the one day they had an appointment with a street contact they met, so there was no way they would let this fail. So they asked Elder Gustafson and I to go for them. We met this guy, Steven, outside the Renfe stop in Coslada, and taught him the restoration. And it went sooo good! He had a bunch of questions and just wanted to learn!! He prayed for the first time in his life with us. I felt an incredibly strong prompting to invite him to be baptized by someone holding priesthood authority, and I could not let this prompting go. So for the very first time in my life, and in very broken Spanish, I extended a baptismal invitation. And he accepted!!! AND he came to church yesterday!! Aw. I'm so excited for the Elders to teach him!! They have an appointment with him this week and I'm so excited to hear how it goes! They finally have an investigator! Weeks of straight contacting pays off!
Great things are happening! This story has two morals... 1) never give up, no matter how many rejections you get. And 2) never buy discounted lasagnes cause they might make Elder Aussant sick.

Remember that baptism I talked about last week? With that mom and her son with the broken leg? They got baptized on Saturday!!! It was so cool! I love seeing baptism!! They both shared their testimonies after and the spirit was so there!! They've been ready for so long and it was so exciting to finally see them enter the gate! I'm so happy for them! The missionaries were asked to do a musical number, so we did the primary song A Child's Prayer, and I played the piano. They were confirmed yesterday in sacrament meeting. They looked so happy!!!

Elders Hendrix and Phillips at Daniel's baptism.

The ward had an activity on Saturday night called Noche de Naciones (night of nations). There are people in the ward from all different countries, so they had each country do a dance or song or something from that culture. Like the Ecuadorians played their national anthem thing on flutes. And the Nigerians did this crazy tribal dance thing. There were like 8 or 9 countries. Spain, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, U.S., Nigeria, Ghana, Columbia... The United States was just the missionaries. We started our part with the Star Spangled Banner, which I got to sing! I sang the whole first half by myself acapella, and then Elders Phillips and Gustafson came in with harmonies in the rockets red glare part. It sounded alright! And then we went straight into cotton eye joe and did the line dance. We figured it would be a good idea to make it somewhat missionary related haha, so we acted out contacting to the frozen song Let it Go. Elder Phillips and Aussant were the missionaries, and they were walking around looking for people to teach, and kept getting rejected, and then they stopped another guy (me), and he accepted a Book of Mormon and gave them his number. And this happened right at the Let it Go
part of the song, so then they started celebrating. And then we all jumped in and started dancing. And that's how it ended... It was pretty cheesy haha but people laughed and they liked it! It was so much fun! After all the skit/dance/song things whatever you call them, we had a ton of food. Each country had to bring food from their
country. So I got to try food from all different places! It was amazing! It was such a fun night!! And we had a few of our investigators there, so it was a cool opportunity to introduce them to some members in the ward. They had such a good time!!

At the ward party, Noche de Naciones,
the missionaries represented the U.S.

Noche de Naciones, where 9 countries were represented by ward members.

I got my first hair cut in the mission field this morning. Hair stylists here are crazy. Everything has to be absolutely perfect. It usually takes me like 10-15 minutes to get my haircut, but this guy spent a solid 45 minutes doing this. Hair is so important to people here haha. Apparently it's impossible to find a bad hair stylist. It's weird.

Elder Gustafson is super awesome. We get along so well! I feel like we've known each other forever. We've made a deal together... I do all the dishes and he irons my shirts. It's great! I haven't ironed a single shirt on my mission! He's such a good trainer. I sometimes feel discouraged about the language, or when I don't understand anything, but he is very uplifting and it makes a huge difference! I've learned that service is so important in a companionship. It really strengthens the relationship and brings the spirit. Charity for your companion has
a huge effect on the work. Just like Brother Mask always says in mission prep, when in doubt, pray for charity! Truth!

I miss all of you so much! Send me emails! And pictures! Have a great week!

Elder Hendrix