Week 81: Stegosaurus Soares

We had zone conference this week! I loved it! Elder Ulisses Soares from the Seventy came to the islands to have a meeting with our zone. He's the coolest guy! His native language is Portuguese, but man his English is almost perfect. We talked a lot about goal setting and how we can improve in order to reach the goals we set. We had a discussion about why goals are even important. A thought that I had was that goals help us recognize the progress and changes we are making. If we are constantly reflecting and seeing where we are with our goals, we will be able to recognize that we really are working. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we've come a long way, but when we look back at the things we have already done, we'll be able to see that we really are putting in effort. Elder Soares talked about how sometimes as missionaries we get down on ourselves and think we're not doing enough. But that's why goals are important! If we make reasonable goals that will help us stretch, and we constantly review our goals, then we will recognize our progress. And even if it's little progress, it's still progress! We just gotta keep on having faith that we can reach them! Elder Soares is awesome. The meeting was very personal. There were only about 30 of us missionaries and everyone was able to participate. I'm grateful for Elder Soares' instruction and counsel and I'm excited to apply it! I was asked to provide a musical number too which was cool. I sang Brillan Rayos de Clemencia. It went pretty well!

Anyway, as I mentioned last week, the whole zone conference thing was in Gran Canaria. So the whole zone had to travel over there. However, I had to travel 2 days before everyone because I have to do exchanges with the missionaries there once a transfer. So I got to spend a day with an old companion of mine, Elder Trassierra. It was really weird working with him again. We were companions in Galicia about a year ago. We didn't get along very well, but it seems that we have both changed quite a bit since then. During our exchange, we talked a lot and reflected on our companionship and the things we had learned from each other. We actually had a pretty fun day together! We taught several lessons and talked to a ton of people in the street. It was a good day!

Elder Hendrix attended Maria's concert.

The work is going very well here in Tenerife! We have several investigators that are doing great! One is Maria. I believe I've talked a little bit about her before. She's from Barcelona and we've been teaching her for about 6 months now. She's the nicest woman. We've had some awesome lessons with her. The only problem though is the principle of faith. She says she needs more information and needs to study more in order to know if this is what she needs. Its weird, because she has said she knows that everything is true. She believes the church has been restored, she believes that Jose Smith was a prophet, and she knows the book of Mormon is true. So in our last lesson, we asked her what is preventing her from being a member of the church. She said nothing! She said she knows it's true, but she keeps on having little doubts come up. We're working on helping her focus more on her faith rather than her doubts. She's so close! Adversary just works hard to knock her down. But I know she'll be baptized soon! She's the sweetest woman. She's part of a local choir here in Los Cristianos and had a concert on Saturday night, and she invited us, so we asked President if we could go and support her, and he said yes! So we went to see her, and we brought Mayalene and Miguel with us. Those two are doing great as well. They're continuing to read and pray together. We had a lesson with them this week and did a lot of follow up to see how they're doing with everything. We asked how they're feeling about baptism and if they've talked about it. They said themselves that they're so close! They want to do it. They feel good about it! They're going to pray together about setting a baptismal date. They just want to continue investigating and getting to know the church a little more. They're so prepared! They've been coming to church and ward activities and they've really been enjoying getting to know the members! We're doing a noche de hogar with the Villalobos this week and they asked us to bring Mayalene and Miguel, so we're really excited for that! Mayalene and Miguel always tell us how welcome they feel here and how much they love the support they receive. I love that couple! We're gonna go on some sick double dates when I come back to Tenerife down the road. 

Speaking of the Villalobos, Hermano Villalobos gave us a call the other day and asked us to come over and help him lift something heavy up to his piso which is on the third floor. So we gladly showed up and he was there waiting outside of a moving truck. He opened up the door and there was a piano inside. He said it was for his daughter. I asked him if it was her birthday or something, and his answer was "no, she's just a good daughter." Hermano Villalobos is awesome. Anyway, we had a fun time getting that thing up three flights of stairs... But hey we did it! So that was a fun little service we got to do. A member in the ward named Anna heard about it, so she came up to us at church last Sunday and said it was her turn. So we went to her home a few days ago and helped her clean her house. Service is fun! And it makes the members happy. And when members are happy, the missionaries are fed. When missionaries are fed, they work harder. What am I trying to say? If there was a Chikfila here on Tenerife, the missionaries would work extra hard and the members would be extra happy. 

The weather here continues to please me. The back door has been open for about 3 months now... And it will stay open. Because the ocean breeze is perfect. And the gospel is perfect. And teaching the gospel by the ocean is also perfect. And I live on an island. And that is perfect.

Well that's about all I got for this week! I thank you all for the love and support you give! Hope you all have an awesome week!

Elder Hendrix