Gave myself a haircut this morning... June 9, 2015

I was super excited to get your letters this past week. I love the pictures that you sent me Star! Chance Happy Birthday I saw pictures of you from the triathlon and was blown away by how skinny you look! Way to go! When I get home we should train for the Iron Man together. Ellie looks big as always! I want to see videos of her crawling if you have them. Sky I hear you have a birthday coming up too! ¡Feliz Cumpleaños! How are all the little boys doing now that schools out. Jaden and B don't drive Jen too crazy! I want her and Bob to still be sane when I get home!

Last Monday was a fun p-Day. My comp and I just decided to take a little bit of a lazy day and hang out around our area. We went to mall that had a McDonald's so that we could use the wifi to write emails. I gave into temptation and decided to buy a chicken sandwich. You know how hot dogs taste really good after you've been on a 10 mile scout camp hike - that's basically how it tasted - delicious. After that we went and tried on clothes at some of the shops there. 

Here in Spain there is something called Rebaja's twice a year. It's basically like a Black Friday sale that goes on for about a Month and all the stores sell their clothes for dirt cheap.  We were just doing some presale browsing to see if there was anything worth saving up for.  During the night we walked around a lot cause all but one of our citas failed us. The one that we did have was with our friend Ana Florin. She is officially our Abuela here in La Linea and likes to give us food. Because my comp wants to lose weight though, he pours food from his plate to my plate when she's not looking! He made me slurp a cup of jello off his plate so he wouldn't have to eat it. My mouth was overflowing and I could feel jello in my nose! Haha I don't think I'll be going hungry here.

Tuesday was a pretty long day. We walked a ton! Morning and night. We met a couple new friends though that were interests in our message and we had an awesome discussion with a friend of ours named Christina. She is a student that lives with Ana Florin that had questions about the church and we've been helping her find the answers. What's amazing is that everything that she asks is found in the Book of Mormon. God know his children and has provided the answers that we need through the prophets in there. It is the keystone of our religion and its promise is real!  I also learned a few cool things about the gospel library app today and how useful it is! In addition to highlighting scriptures you can make notes it the margins, create your own links and footnotes and a butt ton more. It's super cool!

Wednesday my comp had a fever and so for the morning I was trapped In the piso. I realized that one can only study the gospel for so long at a time but I enjoyed it. I was reading in Doctrine and Covenants 123 which has a lot of really good council from a revelation that the Prophet Joseph Smith received while he was imprisoned in liberty jail. I especially liked verse 17 where it says:

17 Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.

Sometimes we just have to do all that we can do and have faith that God will take care of the rest. We don't need to worry about what we can't control. What's important is that we do it cheerfully. When Christ spoke to his Disciples he told them to be of good cheer and enjoy the peace that he provides and put our trust in him. Even though we have trials we can count on him to help us through them because he has bourn them. (John 16:33)

Thursday was a Gibraltar day and so we went and got dinner with Danny and Estrellita that evening and visited a couple of our friends over there. Weren't able to stay the whole time there because we had to go over and stay with the other Elders in Algeciras so that we could catch a bus early Friday morning to go to a zone meeting in Cadiz. It was a pretty good meeting, a senior couple made us food so we were very happy! We also found out that our new mission President is going to get here on the 30th of this month. I'm excited to meet him. Friday night we also got to visit this little town outside of our area that was super pretty and it felt just like I was back home. We got a little lost that day and ended up next to a river in a super pretty grove of trees. I'll send pictures.

Saturday our district went to Gibraltar for the morning and did a blitz. We all went out and tried to meet as many people as we could. The People were super super nice to me and my exchange companion elder Adams. They all asked us how long we'd been here, how we liked it and wished us good luck. After knocking so many doors I felt like I was in California again! And I also got to celebrate Chance's birthday too. Because it was also the birthday of a member here! They had a barbecue and cheesecake. It was fun probably not as fun as what you guys did though. 

Yesterday was full of little miracles, two of our friends named Dolores y Mimon came to church with us! They're an older couple that are from France. They enjoyed the fast and testimony meeting and Dolores stood up and bore her testimony about how every one needs to help the Missionaries! Haha we love them a lot! After church was really cool too because we got a call from a friend named Lubo that we had talked to in the streets a while back. He told us that he wanted to meet and hear our message. We asked him if he would be baptized once he knew that the message of the Restoration of the Gospel was true and he told us he would.

Well that was pretty much my week. I love you all tons and thank you for the letters and letting me know what's going on in your lives. Good luck this next week with everything that you're all doing. You'll be in my prayers.

Con mucho amor,

Elder Holman

Sent from my iPad