August Newletter Post

Each month I produce a newsletter for Rob and his friends. This is his post for August.

This has been a good month. I can´t say that I have any bad days because in the end, there is always something I can learn from them. The mission so far, is an awesome experience, and I am still in the MTC(the CCM here in Spain). I realize everyday that 10 percent of life is what happens to me and 90 percent of life is how I react to it. I have the complete ability to have a good day no matter what happens to me. No matter how my companion acts or how horrible my Spanish is, I have the gift of agency, and that agency is not conditional upon the agency of anyone else. It is our Heavenly Father´s gift to us, and that is really the only thing that is ours that we can give back to Him. Our happiness is conditional on how we use our agency, whether we follow Jesus Christ or Satan. There is no middle ground. We are constantly in motion, either we are drawing nearer or farther from God. When we align our agency with our Father in Heaven´s, He blesses us and gives us the strength and desire to serve Him more. This is a simple concept in principle, but very hard in daily application.

The CCM here in Spain is amazing for the most part. We basically have a Provo MTC but ten times better. For P-day we can go to Sol, the main Madrid dowtown where the royal palace is and a bunch of shopping malls are. For gym we go about a half a mile to a local cement soccer field that is in a pit with ampitheater seating, and we play soccer, a lot of times with some locals. It is really fun! We also have really nice showers with the detachable heads and are bathrooms are only shared by 6 or so other people.(there are two showers per bathroom). Our rooms have windows that overlook the temple, which is about 50 feet from the CCM, and its really picturesque. We definitely feel its presence in our lives here. For service we either garden or clean the temple grounds and our head gardener is a Spaniard that hardly speaks english, so that makes things difficult. I wish everyone could have the experience I am having here. There are only about 20 missionaries here and its really personal. We eat lunch everyday with the MTC president a couple tables a way. I can´t wait to get into the field in a couple of weeks and hopefully my spanish will be good enough to communicate with them my innermost feelings about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I love.