Isabel is doing better

Hi everybody! How are you all? I´m doing just great. I have a neat story to tell. Last Tuesday we passed by a member and it turned out that she wasn´t home. My companion asked where I thought we should go and I said Isabel. Its almost impossible to catch her at home with time to talk with us but for some reason she popped into my head. My companion said alright and we took off for her house. Luckily she was home doing some things on the computer and she had a couple minutes for us. We asked her how she was doing and she said so so. We could tell something was wrong. Later she told us that she lives with constant sadness and that she even got to the point where she wondered if God existed. She said she sees so many bad things in the world and in her life and that there is so much sadness that she gets depressed. We had a prayer and answered some questions she had for us and then something came to my mind. That morning I had read John chapter 16. Right now I´m reading the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants in my personal study but I had seen something in a members home that said "And even though you are sad, your sadness shall be turned into joy," so I decided to read the whole chapter that morning. I told Isabel that I wanted to share some scriptures with her that I read that morning. I told her that I believed I read them because God knew I was going to see her that day. I read her John 16:20, 22, and 33 and she began to cry. We felt the Spirit so strong and it made me so happy. Afterwards, she gave the closing prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for putting the true church in her life. That experience made my day. My week actually! I´m so thankful that Heavenly Father gave me that experience to strengthen my testimony and to help me feel that I really can be a tool in his hands. It has made me want to work even harder and to make my life even cleaner so I can always have the Spirit so that God can trust me at all times. I´m so thankful for my Savior and I know He lives. I know that He has overcome the world. We all know that we will have afflictions, but why should we be sad? As members of the church we should be the happiest people on earth because we know where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going after this life. We know that Jesus Christ is our loving Savior that has sacrificed Himself so we can overcome physical and spiritual death. We know our families can be together forever. We are so blessed and Satan doesn´t want us to focus on that. But I´m going to try and focus on it more. I love you all so much and I´m thankful that each one of you is a part of my life. I hope you have a great week! Talk to you next week. Bye now.

Love, Elder Langston

I got kissed 11/22/10

Hi family and friends! How are you doing? I hope you are doing just great. About the title of the email...don´t worry too much haha. This week in Cádiz we had a little celebration for 40 years that the church has been in Cádiz. The mayor (a woman) came and spoke congratulating the members and the officials of the church for completing forty years in Cádiz and thanking the church for all the good they do in the community. The stake president also spoke and a brief little presentation of the church was given explaining our beliefs and what we do as a church. Of course, in the presentation they talked about missionaries. After it was all done and the stake president was giving the mayor a tour of the church, he walked up and introduced the mayor to me. He said, "This is Elder Langston, one of our missionaries that is serving here in the stake of Cádiz". For those of you who don´t know, when people in Spain greet eachother they touch cheeks and make kiss noises. As missionaries we aren´t allowed to do it of course. Mostly so the young women don´t take advantage of it. Anyway, you may have guess already but the mayor walked right up to me and gave me the traditional two smackaroos on the cheek. She didn´t know and I didn´t have time to react. It hasn´t happened to me in the mission yet I don´t think because I´ve always been able to explain first. But this lady was fast! And it just happens to be in front of the stake president and about 50 members all watching. Needless to say I was a little red in the face. My companion didn´t want to be rude so he let her do it to him too. You wouldn´t believe how much guff we got from the young women and some sisters in the ward. Nothing serious but they loved giving us a hard time about it. The stake president just smiled and said "I won´t tell President." Haha he was laughing about it all. Just my luck. So thats my funny story for the week. This week we had some success getting into homes to teach lessons. We had 17 this week but a lot of them were with members. We need to find more investigators! We may have found one this week. I believe it was last week that a sister from Jaen gave us the address of one of her friends here in San Fernando because she wanted us to go and talk about her son that is having problems and to see if we could some how slip the gospel in there. Her son is a member and lives in a town close by and is really depressed about life. We went to visit the lady and when we told her who sent us she let us right in. She is an older lady (about 70) and is very religious. She is evangelical but from what she told us she isn´t too sure about her religion. She said in her prayers that she tells God she is where she is right now, but tomorrow she doesn´t know. We want to help her gain a testimony that she won´t doubt. We´ll see where it goes. Isabel is still hard to get ahold of. We have only talked to her on the phone and she isn´t the same. We really need to see her! Anyway, family and friends thank you so much for everything. I love you tons and I know the church is true. If I had more time I would tell more experiences. Have a great week! Bye bye

Lots learned

My family and friends. How are you?! I´m doing great here in southern Spain. The weather is cool but only enough to just wear a jacket. They say it won´t get much colder either. Well like my subject says, I learned a ton this week! Thanks for the prayers haha. For some reason everyday seemed to have a huge lesson in store for me. Two times in a row members looked me in the eyes and said some profound statement that made me think "oh. wow." For example, we shared the third lesson with a couple of members and we asked for feedback so we could improve. He gave us a few suggestions and then he talked about his conversion story which really helped. But what really impacted me came after the prayer. He looked directly into my eyes for some reason and said, "you can accomplish whatever God wants you to accomplish in this life if you just pay the price". It hit me like a bomb. The whole way home I just kept thinking about what I wanted and it hit me. Right now in the mission I want success. I want to know that I have at least helped make a difference. So what do I have to do? Pay the price. There are so many success stories from San Fernando from past years and I want to relive it all. For example, there is a family here that has had hundreds of lessons taught at their table to investigators. And these investigators happen to be now more than half of the members in San Fernando. They told us that there were people waiting in their home for their turn to hear the gospel. They were teaching in the kitchen, in the living room, and in their bedroom all at the same time. When they told us that I told them "We need to do that again." There is a ton of potential, now we just need to pay the price. I feel like we have all the tools we need right now and we have a lot of support. We talked to the son of one the counselors in the stake presidency. His name is Jose Miguel Morales and he was actually the assistant to president hinckley when I left. He is doing a lot of work for his dad right now because it is actually his sister that has cancer so his dad is busy. He told us it isn´t a coincidence that we are all here together again. We are here to help change things for the better. It made me feel really good. I feel like I have a purpose for being here. I can see how God has shaped my mission to land me where I am right now. I don´t know if I talked about this last week but if I did it just shows how excited I am about all this. Yesterday we had zone conference in Sevilla which made me even more excited. I learned a ton there too. President Clegg talked a lot about what we need to do to be more spiritual. In other words, everything we need to do to draw closer to God. Thats my goal. I want to finish these last few months on fire and just progressing a ton. Hopefully I can do so. I know the church is true. I know it with all my soul. I´ve thought about it lately and I don´t know what I did to deserve being born into the church but I am so thankful for it. We are truly blessed. Well family and friends I love you all. Thanks for everything you do for me. And congratulations to Newani and her new hubby on getting hitched. I love you guys tons and I´ll talk to you all next week. Bye!

Crazy Week

Hi everybody! How are we doing? My week was absolutely nuts. As you already know I spent last week traveling back and forth from San Fernando to the mission home trying to figure out when my companion was going to get back from the Canary Islands. Luckily he got everything done and we got back into San Fernando on Friday night late. I was only able to work in my area a total of about 3 days with Elder Goodman the office elder and my companion so we didn´t get a whole lot done. We also received bad news from Isabel. She called me up on my way back to San Fernando and told me she just wasn´t sure about everything right now. She said she wants some time to think and read and figure out if she really wants to keep going with this. It was kind of a scare for us because earlier she was ready to just jump in the font if she could! Now Satan is working on her and we have to help her to feel the Spirit again. I hope it passes quickly. She was doing so good and then all of a sudden everything just fell apart. We´re going to have to figure out what is going on. Something else kind of sad happened too. A girl in one of our wards here had a tumor found in her leg and according to the doctors 98% of the time this type of tumor is cancerous. She is only 18 years old and is the daughter of a counselor in the stake presidency. Her brother actually served with me in Barcelona. We went and visited her on Saturday night and to our surprise she is doing fine. She acted really happy and was actually joking about the whole situation. She is going to have surgery today to have the tumor removed. Everybody is fasting and praying for her. On a lighter note, I´m loving the work here! The members are hilarious and are becoming some of my best friends. On lady loves to tease me and make me eat at her house. When I finish the first plate she just looks at me in a threatening way until I scoop another load onto my plate. Then she is all smiles haha. She tells me her goal is to make me a little fat before I leave. I like how we have the same goal. I can´t believe I have been here a whole transfer already. We got transfer calls Saturday night and there was only one change in the whole zone. I think I´ll be staying here a long time. At least I hope so because there is a lot of work to do and I like it here. Well family and friends, I love you tons and thanks for everything you do for me. Congratualations on getting hitched Kylee haha. Man thats weird. It seems like just yesterday we were having sleep overs and I had to call home because I was scared of robbers haha. Thats a little embarrassing. Well have a good week! I´ll talk to you all soon. bye

Hey Everybody 11-3-10

Hi guys! How are we all doing? I´ve had a pretty good week! We didn´t have a very full week like the last one but it was still good. I am just really enjoying the mission right now. I hear a lot of elders start to slack off towards the end of the mission but I think the reverse effect is happening with me. I´m really frustrated with myself for not talking with as many people as I could have earlier in the mission so now I´m talking to EVERYBODY. Talking to people isn´t scary anymore. I love it. Isabel is doing great. She came to church and loved it. We actually had a really spiritual meeting. Almost all of the talks were on enduring. They kept talking about never giving up and remembering your testimony of the Savior. I loved it so much. Anyway, just to end this I thought I would share something cool. Yesterday I drove to San Fernando from Málaga because an office elder has to stay with me while my companion is in the Canaries doing his residency. On the way we passed the rock of Gibraltar and I saw Africa! It was pretty crazy haha. Well I´m sorry the email is short this week but I don´t have time. I love you all tons and know you are in my prayers. I love your letters and emails. The church is true. Don´t forget it! I love you tons bye!