Rollercoaster

Luke 6

32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? For sinners also love those that love them.

35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

Sheesh, that hits. Lowkey a week with some ups and downs for sure. Some cool things were that we had a lit activity for our ward, a talent show, and like 50 members pulled up! I sang my song, Rhodes, I lowkey forgot like half of the words lol, kinda a good sign that I haven't been thinking about that stuff too much. 

Elder Romrell (my old comp) left to do bigger and better things so I got a new companion, Elder Thacker. He is from Heber, Utah, and is really nice, has good Spanish, and is a good teacher. WE are gonna have a blast. I got a haircut today, one of those classic Mexican homie cuts. Some triste things. One of the Recent Converts is having some troubles right now, just the way she goes, so if you wanna pray for my boy that would be awesome. 

Shoutout to Cooper for getting his mission call soon, my guesses would be Copenhagen or Nashville. I am proud of you bro! I hope you read this lol.

Here are some pictures of things in Madrid. Have a good week a todos.

Pday Hike

Recording studio with my new friend

Love, Elder Ditto

España lowkey in it's prime rn

Que va chavales. Just wanted to start off by talking about how cool España is right now jaja. 

Won EuroCopa vs Inglaterra! 

Carlos won Wimbledon! 

San Fermin (running of the bulls) is happening rn, and tour de France started in San Sebastian area mas o menos. 

It's a super guay time to be in Spain frfr. God is good

Three things I am working on right now as a missionary:

1. Showing love and enthusiasm for the gospel through my body language, might sound crazy but it's true.

2. Loving and helping members share the Good Noticias, 

We have been doing some fire lessons with this outline: Teach a principle (ex. temple and families can be together forever), ask, who do you want to see in the temple with you (or just any inspired Q), give ideas of how and when they can share about the principle (temples), PRACTICE one time with them (so fun and funny), invite them to do it for reals that week.

3. Having and keeping faith. I feel like towards the middle part of the mission it can be easy to forget to strengthen your faith, whereas in the beginning, you are basically running solo on faith (don de lenguas, teaching, learning, everything) so I am trying to build and study faith.

Jhimmy got baptized and confirmed on Saturday. He is a rapper (Big Eddy is his rapper name) and he does Wing Chun (martial arts). He has changed a lot over his life and has received 100% forgiveness for all his past sins. Big Eddy x YC colab? no se, ya veremos.

Our amigo, Jason is more prepared for baptism than me, but he isn't married to his girlfriend yet because they don't have a document. If you could pray for Jason twould be greatly appreciated. I feel like God is in the process of mixing up a nice miracle in their family right now and it is crazy being (kinda) involved in it.  

Sometimes I think about this missionary work 19, 20, 21 year 21-year-olds are in and think about how insane it really is. And then I remember that it's God's work and he really just have to trust Him and work hard. This week I am going to try to trust Him more and be more obedient. 

Love, 

Elder Ditto

Triple Threat

Happy 4th of July folks! Looks like everyone had fun, we did too. Cooked up some burgers in the church parking lot after an exchange.

We had 3 exchanges last week! So many, and kind of hard to work effectively in our area, just cuz I wasn't with my comp too much. It's hard to stay focused and plan everything out but I did enjoy the exchanges a lot. 

Here are some things I learned:

1st Elder Christiansen: he is very willing to receive advice and he is a humble guy, also that comp studies are important. I'm gonna have to try to do comp studies with my future wife.

2nd  Elder Bernard: show your personality! Spanish is tough for him and he is working on it a lot, even though he can't fully express himself in Spanish words, everyone we talked to that day knew exactly what type of guy he is...funny and happy. I am trying to show my love in my body language.

3rd Elder Buchanan: go with the flow. We cut a menos activo member's hair, it was fun. They work right in the center of Madrid, SO MANY PEOPLE!

Muchas cosas. This morning we had some time to watch a "The District" video about finding thru members of the church. It was so fire. Those misioneros in the videos are goats. I love meeting, serving, teaching, and working together with the members in Spain, they are so faithful and courageous. If you are a member of the church and are reading this, Send me ideas for how I can love the members more. Good stuff! God has a great work and I want to be a part of it 

Love, 

Elder Ditto

Dios te Bendiga

This is gonna be a good email for all you folks reading this, mom lol. 

A year in the mission gives someone much experience and knowledge. Which is lit, but it can also be hard to be humble and change your ways. But more importantly, remembering who is really the most experienced, and the jefe (boss) who is Heavenly Father. Even though I feel at times like I know how to do things as a missionary, I need to remember that this is God's work! It's interesante. I read this scripture two days ago and it's a little extreme for my case but it is fire:

Helaman 4:13,15 "And because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands."

"And it came to pass that they did repent, and inasmuch as they did repent they did begin to prosper."

Aight so I really tried to apply this truth this week and it def helped me be happier and see more milagros (miracles). The Book of Mormon is true once again!

1

Cool Events:

The Posterity

1. Zone Conference *combined Madrid East and West Zones. Èlder Nelsons' entire "posterity" was there, it was lit to see my boys Miranda and Hill.

2. Intercambio w/ Èlder Nielsen in torrejòn. We scheduled a "miracle lesson" after English class (we just had faith that someone from English clase was gonna want to escuchar un mensaje sobre Jesucristo) no new ppl came to English class  rip. Then right before we skedaddled a dood named Frank pulled up randomly and we taught him  Dios te bendiga

Fire burgers!

3. After that day (intercambio day) we went to this fiiire hambuger place called El Gallego. It was riquiiisimo fr.

4. Elder Romrell and I prayed to find a Peruvian Family. God answered our prayers of course as we were able to meet up with Patywack Carlitos and fam again and Carlos pulled up to church  I love church.

I finished the New Testament!!

5. I finished Saints v.1 and the New Testament. I am grateful for all the Saints back in the day. 

It looks like the shenanigans in the US are cool, have a good week, and read the scriptures pls 

Love, 

Elder Ditto

Walking about, seeking whom he may devour

From what i can remember:

- Sábado

The ward did a fire primary activity. "Missionary for a day" Elder Romrell and I helped with the "MTC" portion. It was cool for me to think that I am an example for the youf.

- Domingo

We had many great lessons on Sunday. Includong a lady from Gabón, Africa (shout out to Elder Rencher for going back out on the mission) and I studied about temptations. Here's a fire scripture, 1 Peter 5:8 "be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" -kanye. I think my memory has gotten better, I recently have been memorizing and remembering things easily lol.

- hoy: today we played sports for combined Zone Pday, it was so fun. The mission rented out a turf soccer feild in the center of Madrid from noon-4. It was a scorching hot day, my bod is sun burnt fr but I loved playing fútbol with the misionaries. I still love fútbol fr. Got to see Élderes Miranda, Hill, Nelson. 3 of my ñast comps

Love, 

Elder Ditto

Haircut

Hi friends, I'm here with my partner Elder Roddy at a hair salon near our house, I'm very excited about this haircut, I've been doing my own haircuts for about 6 months. I can do it well, but when I do it only for so long I need a factory reset.  

 

We received news of transfers this week, I am going to stay in Torrejón de Ardoz and Elder Roddy is going to the Canary  Islands and Elder Romrell will be my companion, litty.  

 

He made two exchanges this week. In first with Elder Ostler in downtown Madrid, I learned many good things. I really enjoyed this exchange. And then an exchange with Elder Madsen in Torrejón, we had some good lessons and I learned a lot from him. 

 

 I hope everyone has a great week. I wrote this email in Spanish and then Google Translate translated it.

Shoutout Cooper for grating and Kade Griffiths for returning from the mission.

Love, Elder Ditto

I Just Hit ONE Year!!!

We had a fire Zone pday in Torrejon. 

Zone P-day!!!

Crockpot rice was a fail

Elder Roddy and I took the pleasure of cooking meat, rice, and beans for 24 missionaries. The meat was easy, the beans were easy, the rice though...that was not easy. We tried at first cooking the rice in the crockpot, but that didn't work like that, so this morning we quickly whipped up some mid-rice.  Good news...my mom sent me Taco Seasoning so the tacos were still gas. We played soccer, and volleyball, and did a water balloon fight and water gun fight mas o menos. Super lit, it was really hot outside so it felt good and everyone had a good time. 

A chaval named Johnny Appleseed (code name) got baptized on Saturday, and a recent convert named Philip baptized him. Elder Rod Wave and I planned the whole baptism out 5 days before it happened. However, there were still at least two things that didn't go as planned (we forgot to assign a music director and one of the people who was gonna give a talk couldn't come, and the baptismal clothing was too small for both of them) so I guess three things didn't go as planned. 

So with 10 minutes' notice, I tried to think of a good talk about the Holy Ghost for Johnny Appleseed.  I ended up talking about Ratatouille - how Remi controlled Linguini (what a classic analogy) and I was told this at one point, but I forgot until after the baptism when Johnny told me that his favorite movie is Ratatouille. The Holy Ghost clutched up! After the baptism the ward finally pulled up, to watch the Champion's League final. lol there were MANY more people at the Champions League vs the baptism. HALA MADRID vamos chavalinos, madrid is the best.

Other highlights:

- I hit a year

- did 2 exchanges

- I love teaching about the gospel

- Time to grind, smartly

Love, 

Elder Ditto