Well, I don´t really know what to think after receiving that email from dad. First off, I am so glad and happy that dad has work. As he said it is very important in this economy. I am also glad to here that mom and cami are happy. It sure is going to be hard, more for you than for me, but I can see this as being a great thing for our family. I am very glad to hear that all is well with the river trip. I, as you know am a huge fan of the family/friend river trip, and if I wasn´t a missionary, I wouldn´t be in other place but there. SO FUN!!! So today I finally finished the letters that I have been preparing for Cami and Taryn the past month. Way pathetic that it takes me so many preparation days to finish a letter to someone. But I am happy to say that I have addressed them, sealed them shut and put a stamp on them. They will be put in the mail this evening. Yippee! So Cami can look forward to that.
So, I am way excited that we are going to go through this little adventure as a family. I am really interested and excited to hear all about it. Where are we going to live, more details on when you start, dad, and when we are going to leave, etc. I want to know all of the logistics. Just so you know, I am all for it and you can count me in. This is going to be a big opportunity for our family to grow closer and stronger. I can only look at the way the Hill family acclamated when they moved into our ward. That will be us!
So this week has been great. So many great things have happened. A successful baptism AND confirmation, a mission council with the 14 zone leaders of the new Spain Madrid mission, the assistants, and President Watkins, as well as interviews with the president and many other little funny things that happen along the way. Not to mention the daily miracles that we see every day as missionaries. They are so small some times that we don´t even note them, or consider them not big enough to write in a journal, but they happen. I try to do my best and thank Heavenly Father in prayer when we have the blessing to see those beautiful, tender mercies. They are daily occurences and sometimes you just have to open your spiritual eyes to find them.
So starting with the baptismal service of Kathia del Carmen Urquiaga Torreblanca. Well, maybe it would be better that I tell you the whole story about Kathia. It was only about 1 month and a half ago when I was on my first exchange in Barrio 5 with a companion that had never served in the city. Not to mention that I had only been there for 3 weeks, and had hardly any idea of where I was and where I needed to go. With hundreds and hundreds of buildings in Madrid and many looking the same, it is very easy to get lost and very hard to find your way. So we arrived at the last appointment of the night, my companion and I, and taught this young family, a single mother with two children, a 10 year old boy and a 6 year old girl. We and the member that accompanied us ate with them and then shared a message. Towards the end of the message a girl walked through the door and the mom presented her as her 24 year old daughter. She sat in for the rest of the lesson and to make a long story short, the mom after the prayer asked us if we could give her daughter Kathia a blessing. We said sure and asked the reason why, if she was sick, etc. She told us bluntly, no she just has a lot of problems. o en español, es que ella tiene muchos problemas hermano. So without asking more, we went ahead with the blessing, afterwhich we asked her a little more about herself, as it was the first time I had seen her. I asked if she had heard missionaries before and she said yes, and then we invited her to come to church with us that Sunday. She agreed as she had never been. We decided to pick them up that Sunday at 11:30, and then left the house. Well, the week went by and Sunday came and we arrived late to the house, due to metro difficulties. While we walked to their house or apartment, we found them walking towards the metro, and not just the family but Kathia as well. So she came, she liked the church, and we set up a time to visit her. After that Sunday we have been meeting with her and her family 2 times a week and she has come to church every week only missing once. During this past month and a half she has really changed. You can just see it in her face that she is happier and at peace with herself. She has a strong testimony, but it continues to amaze me how the Holy Ghost works. It amazes me that after 6 weeks, she accepted the invitation to be baptized, to make that huge change in her life, and her reason, is because she wants a remission of sins and because she has seen how drawing closer to God, by reading the scriptures and praying has really helped her feel happier. The Gospel is true and it is a miracle. It is a happy pill, or as the guy says in New York Doll, it was like being on drugs but there were no drugs involved, or something like that. You can just see the light in her face and she is so much more content and confident and patient. The changes are obvious and it makes us even more motivated to find more of God´s children that are ready to do the same thing.
So the baptismal service was great, except for the fact that we started 30 minutes late waiting for the speakers. There was a good amount of members that came to support her, about 25. So we are happy about that. Elder Moreno asked me if I wanted to play the violin for the special musical number before the baptism and I did so, with Hermana Watkins accompanying me. We played ¨I Know that My Redeemer Lives.¨ It went well, considering the fact that I haven´t played the violin for about 9 months and that the violin that I used was one that the mission had found in a missionary piso in the Canary Islands. So it was great.
The mission council was really neat because we had the 4 Madrid zones with the assistants and President Watkins meeting in the MTC on temple square video conferencing with the 3 other zones in their respective chapels. So we were connected and talking with the zone of Leon, Santiago, and the zone of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Know the zone covers two time zones and there are 110 missionaries. We are excited to see what happens with transfers this Monday the 26th of July. Elder Moreno only has two transfers left, and as if he follows suit, he should be leaving his leadership position pretty soon, and there is some necessary rezoning for a couple of the zones as the mission has changed. So we will see if I get a new companion this next week. I am not wanting to get rid of Elder Moreno, but I just think that that is what is going to happen. So....Stay tuned.
I am sorry that I wasn´t able to send a picture to you last week. I will see if it works today.
Today we visited El Escorial, a really big palace with a ton a old kings buried in the basement. It was beautiful.
Oh and I think that in the future, dad, that they are going to change the transfers from being six weeks to eight. We will see what President Watkins decides.
We got news that in September Bishop Edgely and Elder Teixiera are going to visit our mission, well only the missionaries that are in Madrid. Also, in November Elder Causse is going to visit us again, that time it will be a mission tour, so he will be visiting all of the missionaries. With the size of the mission, zone conferences will be reduced to every 3 months, with optional zone conference in between. Interviews with the President Watkins will also be every 3 months. This will be really hard for some missionaries that are really secluded because they might be 3 months without seeing very many missionaries. There are missionaries for example on the canary islands, that are there, 2 missionaries on some of the little ones. So that is hard being so isolated. It is fun however seeing the mission get bigger and meeting more missionaries. I called the other Elder Driggs in the mission and he is from Syracruse Utah. He knows Preston Tucker. So that was interesting.
I love you all and am praying for you very much. Please be safe up there in Wyoming please, and I hope that you have the best week of your lives, enjoying time together as a family. What a blessing.
I love you all.
Elder Driggs
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