Familia!!‏

Woo..

There´s a lot, I feel like I¨ve really been neglecting to share about the Spanish and better yet Murcian culture, so I thought I´d offer a few descriptions. Murcia, is a relatively big city, H Ross and I cover the central and souther portion and the other Elders Get the Northern half and pueblos, and we also have like 4 or 5 pueblos ourselves.. Which are just smaller little towns, in the mountains or just further out of town? Today, H Ross and I visited the biggest city Cathedral and the Casino, which I don´t really understnad what it is, kind of like a super fancy, couple 100 year old country club.. Super pretty though, someday I´ll send pictures.. But the Cathedral is absolutely gorgeous! Kind of nice to get a chance to do some of those things, they were actually in the middle of misa (mass) when we were in there.

Um, so we´ve had a lot of Huelgas (strikes) recently, for who knows what.. There was actually a huge one last week, it almost felt like Newsies. It was like a parade in the street with tons of people marching along, so obviously the bus system was not intact and we just had to do a lot more walking in between appointments, so that eats up our time, but other than that, it wasn´t scary or anything. We just did our best to avoid the crowds.

This past week we got to see a lot of the Semana Santa which is basically shut everything down to have 4 ¨processions¨ a day, which are, again, a lot like a parade, but all of the people dress up and they carry statues of their Saints or Jesus carrying the cross, it´s really interesting, I don´t know if I really like the Spirit of it. I´ll be honest, it just feels sort of wicked. But that´s how they celebrate Easter here, for a whole week, and you know they say that Catholics just got to Mass twice a year, Easter and Christmas, welp, it´s more like, not, most of the people just hang around for the big Procession Sunday, and call it good. Anyways, those processions have been interesting, we only saw a minute of one. It kind of struck me as ironic, really religion is more of a tradition that a way of life, because 90% of the catholics we talk to in the streets are not practicing, but it when it comes time to do these big festivals and things, they are ¨religiously¨ participating and they take it SO seriously.

Other fun facts, Murcia is famous for her lemons and oranges I´ve never tasted such delicious oranges in my life as here? So you find that everything comes in lemon flavor, kinda fun. It´s pretty green, there´s little stretch we pass on the way to our capilla (church) that we call the jungle! It´s super pretty, but once again, we live in a big city, so it´s mostly just buildings and things. Oh, I¨ve gotten lots of questions about the food.. It´s different, nothing to crazy, they just have interesting combinations of food.. They love to just throw fried eggs onto things. I don´t know, I guess all the ¨ weird¨ food I´ve become accustomed to. Have to admit, H Ross and I got duped the other day, we ate brains without knowing it, and afterward when we looked up the name  in the dictionary we both wanted to vomit.. So, that´s different?

Okay, now for the real stuff, Oh man, ups an downsof missionary work, I thought I´d just share the highlights!!

I¨m most grateful that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers.. We´ve been working with Mari and Andrea, mother and daughter from Ecuador. They have a whole family, but the brothers and father aren´t interested in the gospel, that´ll change. But anyways, Mari, was a golden find, total miracle, how H Ross encountered her, the week before I got to Murcia. But anyways, we´ve been teaching them, and Andrea has just been really lukewarm about everything, however, she listens to all of the lessons, follows her mom to church and to our english classes.. But just hásn´t really opened her heart. Well, in the last few weeks or so, she´s been faced with this super big decision, she would never tell us what it was, but she and Mari kept asking us to pray for her. So we did, and let me tell you, we´ve prayed and prayed, and we´ve just been wanting for her so bad to take this to the Lord, seek his guidance right. Well, something in there clicked, obviously she showed a little bit of faith, because she got this miracle answer, at the eleventh hour in the crossroads of this huge decision, and the night she told us about it was actually just after English class. They just so happened to be the only ones that came (thank goodness, else we woudln´t have had the chance to talk). But she finally told us what it was she was deciding between, and she told us how God had answered her prayer, and that she is pregnant!!! So, I guess that kind of gives away her big decision, but she´s really open about it, or at least now she is.. Anways, the trick now is helping her realize how she needs to act on what she´s been given, we´ve invited her to baptism, a few times now, and she´s praying now to decide whether to be baptized this month with her MOm!! Anyways, really neat.

We also, set a baptismal date with an old investigator, James, and then he didn´t show up for church or answer our calls, gotta love that. I have SO much more I want to share, seriously though, everyday, when I put my heart into this work and we do our best, we see so many miracles. Numbers of miracles, there are NO coincidences in the work of the Lord, it´s all just a matter of HIs timing. It´s been a good week, tough for me, if I¨m being honest, but good, I know that Heavenly Father loves all of His children, and he answers all of our prayers, but there really is only one way to return to Him and that is through our Savior Jesus Christ. And the only way we can accept his sacrifice is through our faith, repentance and baptism with the authority of God. These simple truths are powerful and the most important!

Love, Hermana Nelson