faith in the atonement

Hey Friends and Family!

Wow, I'm already 3 months in. Crazy! I´m worried its going by too fast, and before I know it I´ll have to be transferred or something. But, thats why you work hard every day :) 

 

So, funny story. On Saturday night they had the daylight saving time so we were going to get an extra hour to sleep. First of all, we were all STOKED to get another hour of sleep. I remember asking Jess if it felt like you were just sleep deprived for the whole 2 years and after he said yes. I didn´t really believe it...until now. Every night I fall onto my metal springy mattress exhausted. So anyway, we wanted to have a little party thing so we put all of our mattressses in the ´living room´ and all 4 of us slept out there for Saturday night and Sunday night haha. It was very fun, I´ve got some great pictures. Chocolate and sleepovers make everything better :)

 

I stopped a guy in the street earlier this week, just a super happy looking fellow which isn´t that common in these streets. He had a fanny pack (everyone here wears fanny packs haha) that had those Jamaican colors on it and dread locks! So we were talking, he gave us his number and I was feeling pretty good about it. Well, a couple days later I called him and he was going off about something and at first I couldn´t understand him. But then I heard him say (in Spanish of course) look, will you please just call me another day? Today I am a bit crazy in the head. Hahahaha. So its a very good possibility that he is a pot head. But we´ll see if we can change him. 

 

We have been meeting with a inactive man named Jose Carlos. He´s this little short man, super nice, and has a really high voice ha. Anyway, we´ve been working with him to try to get him to come back to church and it was tough at first just with his job and vollunteer work, but yesterday he finally came!! And he was telling us man it's been such a long time! I´m starting to understand the Atonement a little better, and with that am realizing how important it is to keep coming back to church, to keep coming and renewing your convenants. Christ paid the ultimate price for each one of us, you and me. One Elder shared with us a quote from someone about the difference between Satan and Jesus, how Satan wanted us all to have that free ticket and not have to choose right from wrong. But he wanted the glory. And the interesting part I thought was when he said he thought the reason being was because Satan was unwilling to suffer. He was unwilling to pay that price for each of us. And then we have Jesus Christ, our big bro, who was willing to do it without murmuring at all and suffered for each and every one of God´s children. And then on top of that gave all of the glory to God. Brother Hegamann gave a lesson in seminary once where he had Andy Nielsen go up front and would do 15 push ups for every student in the class to have a brownie. There were some kids who said no when he offered them the brownie, and Bro. Heg said ´Andy, will you do 10 pushups so that this person can have a brownie that he/she doesn´t want?" Ugh whenever I think of that lesson I get a knot in my throat as I remember the times when I might have said no, I don´t want it, in life. And yet...Jesus still suffered for you. He Loves us so much. My heart breaks every time I talk to people here and think of the people everywhere who choose, with a gift given to them from our God, to believe that He doesn´t exist. 

Ok, I want to share a miracle we had this week. Well. Yesterday. So, Javier lives with 3 roommates--all body builders haha. Anyway, one of them is an inactive member! His name is Silverio. He is always super nice to us and fun, but never wants to hear anything about the gospel. But Elder Wilson and I were walking in the street and I saw him! We ran up to him and said hi. He looked different, very sad. He told us his sister, who lives in Wyoming with her husband and kids, got in a car wreck and right now she is in the SLC hospital and her son is the the Primary Children's or something like that. I think he said that the kid got ejected from the car as it flipped. (Have you heard or seen anything about it in the news?) but he said he finally wants to come back to church! We talked a little more, and then on Sunday I was waiting outside to greet people and right before I was about to go inside becuase the first hymn had started, He pulled up! He sat by us, crying during most of the meeting, and afterwards we were able to have a little chat with him. It was cool to see, how in our lives we have those mount everests that we have to climb, that just plop down right in the middle of our path without warning. And we can choose to either hike up it alone carrying our every growing pack by ourselves, or we can turn to the lord and he can help take some of the weight off your shoulders. In that sense, the choice seems pretty obvious. 

 

This week honestly was great, Elder Wilson and I met some awesome people and are trying really hard to get more and more investigators. Idk if I told you guys this before or not, but we´re right in the center of a college town--Universitad de la Laguna. So as intimidating as it is,I´ve been trying to get better at talking to kids my age and sharing the gospel with them. We have right now...I think like 5 or so investigators and all of them are between 20 and 25 years old. It's awesome, one guy--se llama Julio--is a super cool Bolivian who, since the first lesson, trusts us a lot more and more. I think that is so crucial in this work. 

 

...Oh no, another guy with bad  BO just walked past and is sitting by us...awww shoot. Gosh, the elevator in our piso building stunk SO BAD of smoke, it was horrible. We all were holding our breath the whole way down haha. 

 

Ok, well that's good for now. 

Thanks for the prayers and support, keep the letters coming! haha 

Love you all,

Elder Franson

missing american hot chocolate

Hola Family and Friends,

This week has been great, like every other week in the mission haha. I got my new companion last Monday- Elder Wilson. I´ll send a couple pictures home this week. So he is only one transfer ahead of me, just barely got out of his training (Oh I forgot to answer that question from you mom, there is a 12 week program for each new missionary with a booklet. Each week you have to read certain stuff together from Preach My Gospel or watch an episode or 2 from the district or whatever). So it´s been great because we both still have that drive and motivation. The hard thing about it has been having 2 different trainers. Elder Pugh was my first and I got used to how we did things, how he trained and taught. We had our ´groove´. And now Elder Wilson does it so differently. Just with a lot of little things. It's been a little tough with that, but I was working really hard to work together and to have a ´Christ like love´. And it´s helped! The best person that we can turn to for our problems is the Lord, because he´ll always help us become stronger and better. Ether 12:27. 

 

So, this week nothing super cool or interesting happened. Oh, yesterday we got fed 3 times in like 6 hours.... it was so crazy. A lentil soup from an Argentinian family--story about that family in a second--which was sooo good. The funny thing with her lentil soups (we´ve had a couple from her) is that he loves to put slices of hot dogs in them haha. I wonder how dad would like that. The next meal, immediately following this one, was from another member who just looooooves the missionaries... and she just looooves tuna.... and I do not looooove tuna. Haha this time actually she cooked us some rice and mini chicken drum sticks (Another thing different here than America, the drumsticks are super small. Haven´t seen a normal sized one yet.). She put a tomato paste over the rice which I thought was interesting. I didn´t like it too much but oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do right? THEN, after we waddled out to our car with food babies--pretty sure I could have had a triplets--we separated from the other elders and hit the streets because all of our lessons failed us. I don´t know how I did it honestly. But we walked for a while talking to basically everyone we passed haha. I was amazed, because absolutely no one listened to us or would even slow down. I started getting a little discouraged, there was so much rejection. But something my companion told me was that after those tough times, always, there is a miracle to follow. Satan tries to get us down, but if we pull through and continue to work hard there will be a miracle after. So sure enough, we found a guy, Bolivian named Julio, who let us teach him right there on a bench about the Book of Mormon. It was really cool to see that. So, we got a new investigator! 

 

Ok, back to the meals. Mari told us to come over and she was going to show us how to make Bizcochón. So we get there, but she said we didn´t have time that night to make it, but she already had some made for us to just eat haha. I swear that lady constantly has 2 or 3 loaves of bizcochon ready at all times for us haha. We ate some of that and then her hot chocolate (that is where the picture came  from that you probably saw on Facebook of me drinking 4 glasses hahaha. I was just trying to make a funny picture, I don´t think I could drink any more of that heavenly drink than one glass. It is so different, very very thick. I still miss the hot chocolate we had at home, but this stuff is still pretty good. 

 

We´ve had over the last couple of weeks a couple people make us some crepes, one lady made it with ice cream in side and nutella haha so good. 

 

Ok so back to that Argentinian family. Their name is Cozzolino, and her daughter just barely got back from her mission in Barcelona on Thursday. I remember Jess telling me something about how weird it´ll be if I ever see a missionary´s homecoming while I´m out here, and it was super weird. But it didn´t make me sad or homesick at all like I thought it might. She was an amazing missionary, and has been begging to come with us to do some more work haha. Seeing her motivation and love for the work has motivated me to be better and work harder. She´s so cool. And then this next week is another homecoming for an elder serving in the Arizona Tempe mission! 

 

We have that investigator, Hong, a Chinese lady who loves Jesus Christ and really liked the chruch. She came once with Elder Pugh and me but hadn´t come again. And then yesterday we were sitting down in sacrement meeting and all of a sudden I saw Hong walk in with a friend! So they came and sat by us. She is super busy and we can never get a lesson with her, but at least she´s coming to chruch right? 

 

Ok thats it for now, holy thats a long email. Thanks for everything you guys, you are all the best. Arely tells me every time I see her how popular I am on Facebook and that everytime she posts a picture of me she gets notifications on it all day and night long hahaha. Thank you for that. 

I love you all, 

Elder Franson

false summit

Dear Family and Friends,

So I didn´t get a chance last week to tell you about our trip to El Teide, so I´ll talk a little about it today. Tenerife, my island, is the only one with a volcano out of all 7 islands. And interestingly enough it is the highest point of all of Spain. So we got up a little earlier, 6 or 630ish and headed out. The drive went through a thick foresty area that brought back memories of idaho--super pretty. There is a little resort spot down at the base with a little restaurant and gift shop. Then you get on the little ski lift thing, only it was enclosed, and you ride up the volcano! They don´t take you all the way to the top, I guess you have to have special permission to do that, but we went to the ´false summit´. I got some sweet pictures. It was super pretty, I could see all of Tenerife, and then the island of Gran Canaria and also Las Palmas.

 

So, today we picked up Elder Wilson from the airport--my new companion! He´s super short, of course, and from Alpine. Another funny thing, is that he is only 1 transfer ahead of me! He just finished his training, and then gets assigned to come out and finish training me in the Canary Islands haha. I'm a little nervous, just thinking about the stress that will be on our shoulders, but I´m so excited as well. Last night I wrote in my journal how I felt like the president is trusting us with this, as well as the Lord, and I want to work my hardest to prove to them that I can do it. It might start out rough, probably just lots of walking, but I love walking and can´t wait! 

 

So when we were in the trio, we got a reference from a member in Santa Cruz for a lady who lives over in La guancha (about 45 minute drive). So we went and met her at her house. She had so many questions, and at one point started crying just because shes been looking for the right answers and the truth and has talked to JW´s, evangelists and everybody else but it wasn´t there. We taught her the restoration and then made plans to get her to church--and she came!! With her son too! We taught her again Sunday night and when we first walked in to her house she had conference playing! How is this happening?! I feel like this is too good to be true. The sad thing is is that I wont be able to teach her again, the other elders have her--they have the car and me and Elder Wilson are always on foot ha. Its fine though,  I´m trying to get an attitude of your success is my success. That's something I struggled with a lot before my mission and I want to get a lot better at. 

We lost contact with Paco, who would have stayed as mine and Elder Wilson´s investigator, but he won´t answer and I´ve been desperately praying for help. I don't know what happened, maybe something with his family. I know that he wanted to get a divorce because his wife was not a good person. So I don't know, I´m praying for the best. 

 

We have an older couple who are members who actually were able to fly to Salt Lake and go to conference! They spent 10 days there with the missionary who baptized them and went to 4 or 5 temples. For people living here, that was such a huge blessing for them. Not many people here have the money to do that. 

We were in a lesson with a man, Hector, who has been going to church for 10-12 years. His wife is a strong member but he is just being a pansy. No I think its actually just his mom and dad are super strong Catholics and don´t want him to change. Its super sad because he won´t be able to baptize his son unless he gets baptized and gets the  priesthood soon. Anyway, we had a lesson and the spirit was strong, both of the other Elders shared experiences and started crying. Then it was my turn. I started talking about my family and how much you mean to me, and then I got a dang bloody nose! Ugh perfect timing. I only had one in the MTC, and in just the last week I´ve probably had 6 or 7. What can you do...

 

Anyway, that's good for now. Thank you for all of your letters and emails. I really appreciate it. I love you all

Elder Franson

spanish blessings and general conference

Hola mi familia y amigos!

So, I am in a trio right now with Elder Eskelson and Elder Christensen (who was in the MTC with me, same district and room). It's alright but I prefer just the normal 2 companionships. They had a different area than me and Elder Pugh and had much more investigators and members in it, so when we combined, we teach the 2 investigators I had and all the rest that they have. Our days can get pretty packed, but there's always the usual of people dropping us--which sucks but it's part of the work I guess. We went to one lady´s house earlier this week and she had asked for a blessing of health. I expected Elder Eskelson to take over for the blessing since Christensen and I haven´t been out for a while, I was hoping to be able to do the anointing (I told you I did the annointing for a lady last Sunday, right?) but anyway, we got ready and he looked to me and said, You´ve got the blessing Elder Franson! ... I had no idea what to do. Already I had only given one blessing--and that was in English. This would have to be in Spanish! So I said a silent prayer to myself, asked for help and the ability to communicate as much as needed to be the instrument in His hands for this lady. They wrote down her name on a piece of paper and held it up (it was super long haha) and then I gave the blessing. I´m pretty sure my hands were shaking the entire time and I might have freaked her out a little bit, but the Lord definitely answered my prayer in that moment. I gave a blessing to her and it was in Spanish. It´s hard to a explain, I just felt comforted and I was able to say what I needed. So that was one of the highlights of this week. 

Remember Javier? I think I talk about him a lot. Well anyway, we met with him as a trio and gave him a little lesson. But before we had started the actual lesson, I noticed that he was just much more open and friendly than he was to Elder Pugh and me--he was cracking jokes, laughing, he just seemed more like himself. He mentioned something about how Elder Pugh always talked about his mission and there wasn't really any fun in the lessons. As I looked back, I realized we would have a lot of fun in the streets and just talking, but when we started talking with someone on the streets or one of our investigators he just went into this mode where it was just work work work. Idk, its kinda hard to explain. But I finally knew why he never wanted to switch his religion while we were teaching him--we just never got a good relationship with him, we never opened ourselves up to him, and likewise he never opened his true self up to us. I was, wow I´m sorry, the guy sitting next to me in this internet cafe has horrible BO and its stinking up the whole room.. Gosh my eyes are starting to water. Looks like I´m gonna test my breath holding skills.. Ok back to Javier. I was feeling kinda down, just not too happy, thinking that I had wasted those hours with him trying to teach him about the importance of baptism when if we can just become someones friend (but at the same time, keep it clear we are here to bring souls to Christ and are doing His work) then it will bring about a whole different story. I don´t know, Dad and Jess do you remember any experiences with this? Elder Eskelsen told me not to feel down, but to realize that your whole mission is a growing and learning experience. Which is true, no one is a perfect missionary. 

Lots of you asked about conference--we got to watch it live with you guys! The canaries are only 7 hours ahead not 8, so we watched it from 5 p.m. to 7, then 9 to 11. Priesthood was replayed for us on Sunday morning though. It was AWESOME! I think one of my favorite talks was Ballard's, another was Richard G. Scott's. But man they were all so good. I definitely took conference for granted, and the easiness to watch and hear it. All we did was turn on the radio and/or the computer and sat in the living room as a family taking notes. But over here, either they watch it at home over the internet (but the connection for a lot of people is really bad I think) so they have to go to Santa Cruz (that's where we went, it's just the city right below La laguna) where they play it in the chapel. We fortunately enough got to hear it in English in a different room with super comfy couches and chairs. I want to share an experience with conference I had. A couple days before, while I was still thinking about the Javier thing, I came up with a question that I wrote down in my journal. I wanted to know how I could be a better missionary, how I could do my best and not waste the Lord´s time. I wanted to know something I could do that would be more successful. And as I watched conference, I heard over and over again the topic of members and missionaries working together! I thought to myself that yeah 80,000 or so missionaries is amazing and it's going to help, but what the Lord wants is 15 million missionaries! He wants all of us sharing with our friends or whoever. I challenge you, my family, to invite the missionaries over to our house for dinner and invite a nonmember friend or less active friend of either you two or Cady or Porter, or a family. You can eat together, let the missionaries get better acquainted with these friends and after that, the missionaries can have sort of a family home evening. That is what we are doing here, trying to get the members to invite one of their friends and then we have a FHE with all of them. Will you do it? The challenge goes to every family though, not just mine. Everyone who reads this letter should do it.  Oh boy those missionaries are going to be happy and fat :D haha

Oh. One more thing about conference--we watched the last session in Spanish because Isabel came (!) so we wanted to go sit with her. I said a prayer to be able to understand better and get something out of it. I didn´t understand all of it, of course, but I surprised myself at how much I was able to understand and get out of it. There are lots of cool things that can happen from a little prayer to our Father in Heaven. 

During conference I realized how amazing those men are, regarding their family life. It made me make a goal right there to be like Richard G. Scott, who so dearly loves his wife and can always feel her presence. I want to be that kind of husband and father. Thank you Mom and Dad for being perfect examples of that to me, you are incredible parents. 

Love you all, Take care! 

Love Elder Franson

PS Don´t forget about the FHE thing! I will check up next week

new comp (mid-transfer)

Sounds like life is great! It feels kinda like life just stopped over there when i left, but hearing about those stories made it come back to life :) 

So for this week, nope not much success. Oh but one big thing! Elder Pugh on Wednesday I think got a call from president Jackson and he told him that they were transferring him back to the peninsula! He I guess is going into the office, but it was mid transfer which was weird. Anyway, we drove him up to the airport this morning and now he´s gone. Pretty sad. We had to go around at church saying goodbye to some of the members and I started to feel sad and now I don't want to leave! It´s so much harder than I thought it would be. We have some of the best members here, and I´m so grateful for them. 

So now I am companions with an elder who was with me in the MTC, but usually in Santa Cruz (long story but his comp is the zone leader and has to fly to Madrid every month for the zl conf). So since he doesn´t know this area at all, I´ve gotta plan for lessons and where to go and what to do. I felt like Kayla for a bit because I started stressing myself out more and more hahaha. No but it is cool, I feel like it is a great growing opportunity for me and I´m really excited. After his comp comes back, tomorrow night, I´ll be in a trio with the other elders in our piso. 

So, good news for everybody- we went to a chino (Chinese store with everything imaginable for super cheap) and I found flip flops that fit me! Ok they are a little small but that's to be expected. 

Some random things that happened this week were...I was walking down the street and I heard dad's ringtone! That old fashioned phone ring thing haha. I looked back expecting to see him. Another thing like that, I´m not sure if I wrote it to you or not, but Elder Pugh while on the phone snapped a couple times (I was reading the bom) and i looked right up expecting to see mom telling me to go do something like take care of my laundry or something hahaha. I love you mom :) 

I have a goal to read the Spanish Book of Mormon and finish it by Christmas, I´m super excited! Although it just takes forever to read in Spanish, but I want to do it. 

One of the members, Mari, who cooks for us 2 times a week and is amazing, cooks us bizcochon a lot. it is basically just like banana bread or something like that but a little different and with chocolate inside! So good. 

At another house, she cooked us some hot chocolate...hmm mmmm is anyone else thinkin what I´m thinking?? My favorite. Super super good, other than the fact that it was already pretty hot outside haha. 

Javier, the big hunk, is being ridiculous lately. He loves the spirit and he prays every night and morning as well as reads the bom everyday. But he just doesn´t want to get baptized because his mom doesn´t want him to change his religion (Catholic). its really sad. He has never really felt the spirit before, so when he feels it when he prays he thinks it's great and will just settle with that, but I´ve been trying to tell him there is so much more! I don´t know, I´m going to keep working on him and we´ll see what happens. 

Paco, our great investigator, actually our only investigator, came to church yesterday! I was so happy, and he loved it! I love seeing the happiness that people have when they finally find this gospel, even though it hasn´t happened to very many people yet haha. 

We don´t knock doors usually, we mainly just walk and talk to everybody we can haha. Sounds boring but sometimes it can be fun getting to know the people here. Also whenever we encounter smokers, I have a little personal contest going to see if I can make it down the whole street holding me breath. I haven´t passed out yet so I think we´re doing good. 

I know this email is a bit shorter, sorry :( but I´m going to try to write back to the other emails I got and to Cady and Porter and Dad. Thanks for everything Mom :) you truly are the greatest mom ever. How did us kids get so lucky?!

I love you so so so much Mom, and everyone else haha. Thank you for the emails, 

Love
Elder Franson