last email from the mtc!

Well where do i start...Life here at the MTC is great, but it just feels a little like a prison haha. There are natives that got here last Wednesday and they´ve tightened the rules a bit because in the past some of them have organized to meet their family or girlfriends outside, so we can´t go outside unless its for the sport time and we´re going to play soccer or if we get special permission from the president.

I keep a list in my planner throughout the week so I don't forget the good stuff to tell you all, and it helps so much haha. So that is why my emails may seem super unorganized.

This will be my last email from the MTC, because i´m leaving on Tuesday morning! They will take us to the stake center, the other red brick building right next to the temple and MTC, and the mission president will come and tell us where we´re headed and who our trainer will be. I´m so excited, i can´t wait! I talked to Chelsea the other day and she said if she is made a trainer again then she will be at that meeting, but who knows. She has been trying to come by when we sing on the steps on Sunday and we can talk for a second. it was so cool, she is so happy and having a great time. We talked about the good old days when we played Settlers of Catan and the competitiveness between her and Steph hahaha.

Let's see, oh we had our first real rainstorm and thunderstorm yesterday! Oh how I love those days. There were some dark clouds and while we were playing soccer in the stadium thing we saw some lightning. So cool! I´ve missed that. Here in Madrid it is pretty dry and hot (we´ve been playing soccer in around 44 celcius weather, but the hottest was 48! And this is all at 5oclock at night!!!) The rain was amazing, I got some pictures of the dark clouds behind the temple--pretty amazing. Madrid is cooling off, it isn´t as hot has it used to be. But it's still hot haha.

We went to the big city mall last Thursday and had a great time. We (my district) all wanted to get nice indoor soccer shoes to play in because our Nike Frees were getting beat up, but as i was struggling to get the shoes on my skis, I nicely found out that Nike and Adidas don´t send shoes to Spain that are about size 11... I´m a size 13... super. Hahah no its fine, we all had a good laught about it. My Nike Frees are holding up besides the one square on the bottom that casually ripped off in one of our games. But it's all good ha.

The mall was HUGE! So many stores, I got lost multiple times. It was so crazy. There was an IKEA and a huge grocerey store a little smaller than the average Walmart I´m guessing, on both sides of the mall. There is a store called Primark which makes so many things for so cheap, like a really nice Dillards or JC Penny- and I got 3 skinny ties from it for about 6 euros. Pretty sweet!

We watched a devotional on Sunday from a recording of Holland´s talk from awhile ago. The title was "Don´t You Dare Go Home." It was incredible. He talked about some stuff and then stopped for a second and said 'I don´t know why I´ve been so strongly prompted to say this, perhaps there are some of you in the audience who have been having these thoughts. Don´t you dare go home. Don´t you dare leave this place, we´re on the Lords time and it is not about us...' So cool! I have never had a thought of going home early, but throughout his talk he did a really good job at just pounding it in our brains how important this opportunity is and to do our best and trust in the lord. I love that man.

I got a big letter from Adam and Melissa, so nice of them. They told me to spend 20 bucks and buy something nice from Spain but I have NO IDEA what to get. I need help!! haha

Well I don´t have much more, I love this work and am so happy to be here. I´m so sad to be missing stuff at home but I am putting my full trust in the Lord and I know everything will be fine and that even though I´ll be gone, both you and I will be blessed so much more if I stay. Hopefully that's not weird for me to say that.

I love you all, thanks for the emails and prayers.

I go out to the field in a 5 days!! I´ll be able to write on Tuesday I think and tell you where I´m going

Love Elder Franson

lots of blessings

Hows it going?! I´ll just start off the bat with some great stories haha.

We watched a dvd of Richard G. Scott last Thursday, and it was so amazing! He talked about prayer. In the middle of the talk he said he felt his wife there with him and was so greatful for heavenly father for letting her be there with him. I love that man!

This week was a very spiritual experience for me, on Sunday hermana Sitterud (MTC pres´s wife) fell and broke her arm. I was there with some other missionaries and I got to be there as Pres Sitterud blessed her (another missionary did the annointing). Then, on Monday, a sister in our district asked for a blessing, she wasn´t sick or anything, so 4 of us elders got to stand in as Elder Charrington gave her an incredible blessing of comfort and peace. I felt the spirit so strong there. Then after that!, another hermana in our district got all of a sudden so shaky and light headed and sick feeling so we got to give her a blessing too. I didn´t get to say it but I got to stand in on it. The power of the priesthood is amazing. I am so greatful that we have it here on the earth. To top it all off, yesterday in class we my teacher asked us what we would say to a person who told us they didn´t like or want to pray with their family. It was a weird question I thought at first, but we all answered and I started feeling the spirit a lot strong. After a little silence she told us, crying, that she feels that way with her family. Her dad is inactive and drinks a lot. It is very hard on her and she is having a difficult time. The missionaries go to her house every week and talk to them, but they figure the only problem they need to work on is the dad and they don´t talk to her personally (she's like 27 just so you know). I started crying! I realized how important every single person is, and that everybody has their own problems and difficulties in life. I realized that you´ve got to love everybody just like Jesus loved us. It is so important. From that experience I got a true desire to go out and serve the people here and love them. I am so greatful for my mission call here, and I know I was specifically called to Madrid Spain for a reason.

Ok, lets see... as you all know we go to the big park every Saturday (its called the Parque de Retiro I think, look it up on Google Earth!) and it is so great! Being able to talk to people and give them a little portion of the wonderful message we have is an amazing feeling. We got challanged by our teacher to challange somone to get baptized when i meet them in the park hahaha. I´m gonna do it! I want everybody to have this joy that I have. Our family is the best, and I wouldn´t trade it for anything, I want other families to feel like that as well!

Oh dad, thanks for the letter! I got it exactly a week after, but i also got another letter from girls camp that was send on the wednesday I think. So its all just different. They don´t do mail on Saturdays here though.
So my average day is wake up at 6 or 6:30, sometimes I do stairs in the morning. Breakfast at 7, class at 8 to 1, lunch from 1 to 2, class from 2 to 5, excercise from 5 to 6, dinner from 6:45 to 7:20ish, then class again from 7:30 to 9:30 haha. Not too exciting.

I saw Chelsea!!! It was so cool!! I loved it, she is doing great here and I can´t wait to see her again. She lives right next to Temple Square!

Ok I´m running out of time, but one last thing. We were teaching our fake investigator (our teacher) and then his friend came who is inactive but wantes to change and come back. So I got to teach a real investigator a real lesson and give them a tour of the temple!! So freaking cool! I felt the spirit so strong and it was so cool. I can´t wait to do that every day!

Ok I will get booted off this computer in 2 minutes and 32 seconds so I better sign off for now. But I will get back on later and finish replying. Thanks so much for the emails and the letters. Thanks dad for that great letter! I loved it.

I love you all, and am so grateful for everything you do for me. thanks for all the prayers. I love you all so much. I miss you guys, but I love it here so much and love serving these people. I find out my first transfer a week from this Sunday I think. I´ll let you all know!!

Love you all,

Love 
Elder Franson

placing his first book of mormon

Thanks so much for the updates and email about everything. I LOVE hearing from all of you. Again, I feel like I have THE best family in the world becuase i got a package on the second day and a bunch of emails from all of you! I love you all :) Congrats on the Book of Mormon!! I´m so happy! I´ve started it in Spanish, but we don´t have much time to read and study for ourselves, it´s all for the investigators or Spanish, so I´m only at 1 Nephi something. How many chickens do we have now? I love telling my district all about the animals, land, draft horses, farm, garden, cows, haystacks, and everything else. They like to hear about it.

I am keeping all the snacks I brought with me and the ones you sent for as long as possible haha. I have been slowing eating the goldfish and haven´t eaten any of the chocolate yet.

In the Salt Lake airport, a woman came up to us, a group of about 5 missionaries, and gave us all king size candybars for the flight. I love the feeling of being a missionary, and so many people in SLC loved asking where we´re gonig and all about us haha.

After we said goodbye in poky, by the way sorry for the short hugs and not really any words. For those of you who don´t know, when I cry I can´t move my mouth normally so I can´t talk right haha. Anyway, there was a man right in front of me in security who is from Rexburg and is Mormon. He talked to me for a bit and I talked back as best I could. In SLC we met up again and he offered to take me to breakfast. I was thinking McDonalds or something, but he just quietly lead me to the Delta Sky Club and let me hang out there! Free food, hot chocolate, soft couches, everything! Haha it was so nice of him. Then he took a picture of me and sent it to you. I thought you might appreciate that. He was a really nice man.

So, this week....Oh first, be sure to look up the blog thesullivansinspain.blogspot.com -- it is the first counselor of the MTC´s wife and she posts stuff. She put a video on of us singing on the temple steps (we sing there every Sunday) and I really want you guys to watch it. Singing is such a powerful way to bring the spirit in. I love it.

Ok, last saturday at the park, I PLACED MY FIRST BOOK OF MORMON!!! I felt so happy! We saw a man in the park and we went to talk to him. He is an inactive Catholic and trying to figure out what religion to do. So we talked to him for about 10 minutes and then gave him the BoM. so great. With out spirits so high, we talked to another man who dragged the convo on for about 20 minutes and we couldn't understand anything. Seriously, that shot down my esteem to smithereens. But it got better. I testified to him that I knew the BoM was true and I shared experiences with him that helped me know it was true. The spirit was so strong, it's hard to see people not accept your message.

Hey dad, could I get my line of authority? It doesn´t have the be the legit thing, but I just want to know the names. Thanks.

Also, I don´t care when, but I would like some pictures of our family. It is nice to be able to show other missionaries your family and stuff. You guys can choose, but I would like the one of all of us kids, and then maybe me with each of the kids and both mom and dad.

And one more thing. Could you make sure my card is international? I just don´t want to buy something without making sure it's fine.

We had lentils for dinner the other day!! Felt like home, except they weren´t as good as dad makes them. Hmmm haha.

Oh Dear Elder works! If you guys want to use that or something, just wanted to let you know.
Did you enter my painting int he fair? I´m anxious to hear about how it does.

Funny story for today haaha. We were in the temple, I just got back from it actually, and when they asked if anyone forgot the name that was given, about 10 elders stood up to have it repeated hahaha. The names here are all Spanish and crazy exotic! Super hard to remember them haha.

Anyways, keep the emails coming! I love hearing about all that's going on.

Good luck with everything! School, tryouts, fair, camp, hike, and everything else.

I love you all so dang much and pray for you everyday :)

Love,
Elder Franson

elder franson's first p-day

Ok first of all, sorry about last Thursday. I thought they would let me write and have an actual P-day but since we had just gotten there on Wednesday they didn't. So I´ve been going crazy this week wanting to tell you all about my adventures!! 

 

So the temple is every Thursday, our district goes at 10 so we just barely got back. I absolutely love that temple, definitely my new favorite. The inside is even more beautiful than the outside! The celestial room is incredible, I can´t even explain what it's like. Just so peaceful and so happy. I cannot wait until I can go again. 

 

Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun!! The pool sounds awesome, it can get pretty hot here and even when we´re in our sport clothes i sweat like crazy! 

 

For our sports, we have a couple options like basketball, volleyball, futbol, or just go on a run or something. But it's at 5pm so it's super hot! Anyways, we go to that cement soccer stadium that is just like a block away and play soccer. I LOVE it. Porter, you would have the time of your life! Imagine walking along the sidewalk and then it just drops down into a sweet soccer field! We usually have 3 teams of about 7ish and play 3 or 4 games. SO MUCH FUN! I will take as many pictures as i can (by the way, they won´t let me upload photos onto the MTC computers here so I'll have to wait until I get to the mission home :( also the keyboard is different and I have been making a lot of stupid errors, so Kayla -- feel free to fix some of these up before you put them on the blog. So lets see... Thank you SO much for the package. Holy smokes I love you guys so much! On thurday we went to go check for mail and I saw a packagae and did a double take because I was totally not expecting an awesome package from you!! Genius. You all know how to make me happy ;) I love the goldfish and chocolate, muy bien!

 

In my room there are 6 elders, basically just our district (we have 4 sisters). And on the first day, they called me to be the district leader!! I was super excited when I found out. basically all I do though is pick up the mail for our district, talk to President Sitterud (of the MTC) about how its going , and make sure they're all following the rules.There are some pretty cool elders with me. My companion, like I said before is Elder Cahoon, and he always is making references to "The Best Two Years," like 'Should I write that down?' haha. I'm having a great time here with them. We are pretty sure we're in the beginner Spanish Class, and for the first couple of days we felt like everybody else was in the advanced class. So a little inside joke with us is that we are the special education class haha. I have learned a lot and can understand a lot, but there are some in the class that are moving so much slower than I am. It can be frustrating at times. 

 

We have fake investigators that we teach everyday and I want to tell you a little about that. When I heard about MTCs doing that i always thought it was kind of stupid and wouldn't help me at all, but when we started teaching them in Spanish and sharing our testimony...I can't really say how it feels. I just know I  am teaching the right messgae and that I'm doing the right thing out here. We challenged ´Maria Isabel´ to read the Book of Mormon and she accepted, and that felt so good! I'm probably sounding like a dork haha, but it was a really cool experience. 

 

 You guys want to know about the food I know haha, well it wasn't as good as I was hoping, but it's not too bad. There has been a lot of sea food (the other day we had shark and squid!, sounds cool to say but didn´t taste the best haha), but I am always full after a meal. They have fruit, pudding, juice, yogurt, stuff for sandwiches, so if I don't like the main dish, I'll be fine. Sorry for all the commas, I have a pretty good feeling that Leah is cringing while reading this haha. 

 

There are 82 missionaries here I think...so it isn't too crowded. Our class and bedroom aren't crowded at all so it isn't that bad. 

 

Every Saturday we go to the park, Parque de Retiro I think it's called. We get in companionships and go talk to people! I was sort of nervous for the first time but I knew I wasnt alone as I found people to talk to. Many of the people here aren't as friendly as americans. They don't say hi back. But I found a guy who recognized us and told me that if I ever wanted to talk with him and go eat, to just call him and he'll take us out to eat somewhere. Pretty cool!! haha. I will be taking lots of pictures of inside the park, because it is gorgeous. Mom, remember on the mish pres wife's instagram where she posted the pic of the garden? I remember showing it to you, but that is part of the park that I went to! I walked past that place and recognized it. Very very beautiful. 

 

Sorry for the horrible spelling and everthing else.We are in a rush and I want to read all of your emails and reply. 

 

So adios for today! I love you all SO SO much!! I want you all to know that. I have the best family in the world, and no one can compete with that. 

 

Thanks for the letters and package (I've been wrtiting you all back whenever I get time today) and thanks for the emails and love and prayers.

 

I love you so much, thank you for everything. 

 

Love Elder Franson. 

 

P.S. Sorry for the short goodbyes at the airport, I started crying and didn't want to stay there and make it harder to leave. But thanks for taking me to the airport at such an early hour. Love you all!