Week 9: Pianoooo

So I guess I forgot to click send last week after I typed my email... So here is last week's!

Another great week in Torrejón!  We're teaching a guy named Felix, and he's the coolest dude ever! He's from New York, so, thankfully, he speaks some English! We've taught him all the lessons already and he wants to be baptized! The guy is such a stud. He's always asking questions and wants to learn everything! He's trying to get work off on Sunday so he can come to church more. 

The ward here has 140 active members, and only one of them knows how to play the piano. And she lives about an hour from the church, so she isn't able to come to sacrament sometimes. So they've asked me to be the pianist. I get to practice a lot which is awesome! We went to a baptism of a girl in the ward this morning, and they asked the missionaries to come up with a musical number. So I got to play the piano for the Hermanas. We did a song called Tú eres una hija de Dios, so that was a cool opportunity! I'm sure I'll get to do this a lot in Torrejón. They apparently almost always sing in sacrament without a piano, so this is exciting stuff!

This week we had exchanges with the other elders in our district, so I went with Elder Assaunt out to a city outside of Torrejón called Coslada. Coslada is about the same size as Torrejón, but only has one member in the whole city. They just opened up this area in mission, so we spent the entire day contacting in the streets. We were out walking for several hours with no luck at all. We decided to stop for a second, go find somewhere quiet, and say a prayer. We went about the rest of the evening talking to everyone we saw until it was time to go home. We got on the Renfe to head back to Torrejón, where we found one guy sitting alone. We went and sat next to him and introduced ourselves as missionaries, and he had all these questions about who we were, what we do, etc. And within that 30 minute train ride, we taught him the whole first lesson, placed a Book of Mormon, and set a second appointment. The power of prayer is real! This was such an awesome experience and I know that the Lord hears us when we cry unto Him. That night, as we reflected on our day, I was reminded the importance of enduring to the end. This morning during my personal study, I studied the principal of faith, and I again thought about this experience. It would have been easy to give up, or go back to Torrejón, but we had faith that the Lord would show us a miracle. In Ether 12:6, we learn that we will receive no witness until after the trial of our faith. Never give up! No matter how hard it is, or how badly you want to stop.

Ok funny story of the week. A lot of the time when we approach people on the streets, people respond "tengo prisa" and then they walk off. We probably get that half of the time. "Tengo" means "I have" and "prisa" means "hurry" so it translates to "I'm in a hurry" more or less. Well, Elder Assaunt convinced me that prisa is a disease that's going around Madrid. So for a while, I was really concerned... My companion finally broke the news to me this week what the real meaning is. Haha, what's up with all these sick people around Spain? They've all got prisa!

Anyway, the mission field is amazing! I love it here so much! I'm so happy to be here in Torrejón! Hope you all have an awesome week! The church is true, the book is blue!

Elder Hendrix

Oh, one more thing... Everyone here knows who Jimmy Hendrix is. Whenever I introduce myself here, 9/10 people ask me if I'm related to him. Nobody ever asked that at home.