Morning Breaks in Andorra

Hola  Familias y Amigos,

Autumn in the Pynranees is a photographers mecca.  We often walk early in the morning before the mist burns off for the day.  Soooo....beautiful.  I could hardly keep my eyes on the road yesterday driving back from Barcelona after attending a stake bishops training meeting. Falls bright colors dot the canyon mountains. Sometimes I spy  a remote ancient stone chapel perched on top of a mountain. I wonder how and why such a structure could even be built there in the first place. I was walking with Juan yesterday taking his cows to the nearby pasture and he began to describe how he loves the snow capped mountains, the fresh air, and would not trade it for the city life. I agreed with him, as we moved the electric fence giving his cows more pasture for their evening graze. Some day we’ll get the subject back to God feelings about Him.

Morning Mist

Sunrise over the Farmhouse

So this week we passed out flyers in Puigcerda for our presentation of “Meet The Mormons”  This town is in our branch about 30 miles away on the French border and is like virgin territory for the church.   We picked November 5 to aire it in the local town hall and museum.  There will be many people in town this week in that it is the national horse show, the biggest in all of Europe for horses for meat. Yes for meat. I don’t think we will stay for the barbeque afterwards.

Hermana Fowers has been a bit layed up this week with the sudden onset of gout, of all things.  It pretty much kept her off her feet for a couple of days.  The medicine she took to help the gout made her feel even sicker, but she is on the mend now and ready to go back to work.

Posters  Inviting All to Meet the Mormons

This week I interviewed several for new callings in the branch.  We are trying hard to keep track of the lost sheep. There are so many who are very capable, but have never had the opportunity to serve.  Our two elders have uncovered several new investigators, Brazilians and Paraguayans. Our Elders, Graham and Cullimore work hard everyday. 

Andorra Branch Elders

  Last week we mentioned Shane from Ireland.  This week we had him over to the farmhouse for dinner and a lesson in English with the Elders.  As Elder Culimore testified about the restoration and Joseph Smith, Shane was overcome and felt the Spirit.  He later concluded all on his own that if this we were true that he should be baptized. Sister Fowers, in her native tongue, also strongly testified finally having the ability to do so for the first time since we arrived Spain.  The lesson with Shane is like so many of the mission experiences; words on a page  do not do justice to the feelings we feel when someone finally agrees and knows that they have found the truth.  Finding what they have been searching for sometime brings amazement.  Shane could not vocalize how he felt but he knew he was being taught the truth for the first time.  And this is from a young man who studied theology at the University in Ireland.

We ended the week Saturday night at a birthday party for 23-yea-old Cheita, our new Primary President.  There were about 25 of us gathered in the small apartment.  Sister Fowers held the babies.  We did not start the huge meal until 10:00.  I am glad we had an extra hour this morning to get ready for church.

Serge and Valeria with Adopted Abuela

Cheita's Birthday Celebration!

Hermana Fowers was teaching the youth in seminary today about obtaining a testimony of Jesus Christ.  She was trying to explain that testimony is felt with the heart rather than understood with the mind.  That is exactly true of our experience as missionaries.  Words simply do not quantify our day to day interactions. You would really need to be here to comprehend the urgent desire we feel to rescue and the joyful heart-swell when just "one" finds their way back to Jesus Christ.  Beyond words!

Mucho Amor y Bendiciones,

Elder and Hermana Fowers