March 25, 2019
My first 3 weeks in Madrid have been crazy! It definitely has been a culture shock going from a tiny island all alone to one of the biggest cities in Europe. So far I love it; always something to do! My new companion is Elder Christensen, and he studied engineering before the mission.
For those wondering about why I would mention a snake in my subject line, you might be disappointed to hear that it's not a "Python" the animal, but Python the programming language... Yes, my companion and I are programming as missionaries. Definitely not the first thing I saw myself doing on my mission, but we're writing a program to make missionary work way better in Spain (and hopefully all of Europe), and I'm also running stats on Facebook efficiency in R (a different programming language). So we've been dedicating time every day for the past couple of weeks, mostly because neither of us really know how to use Python. We quickly discovered that the public library computers were not going to let us do what we wanted to do, so we commandeered a laptop that our mission President was letting his Assistants use... srry not srry.
Even with all the time spent on this other project, we've still found tons of people to teach. The little time that we can spend looking for people has been really successful, so we've definitely seen some crazy miracles. It really has helped me experience something that we teach all the time: God's grace will transform our small efforts into amazing results. Even if you feel you have almost nothing to offer, God will accept your offering and pour out His blessings upon you. I love how this idea is stated in "Believing Christ" by Stephen Robinson:
"What matters is that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can receive, despite our unworthiness, what we desire, what we long for—but only if it is what we realy long for. So what do you want? What do you really want? In Matthew 5:6 the Lord says: 'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.' We regularly misinterpret this scripture to mean something like "Blessed are the righteous." But that is not what it means at all. When are we hungry? When do we thirst? After Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings? No, we are hungry when we haven't eaten; we are thirsty when we haven't drunk, when we don't have the object of our desire. This beatitude refers to people like you and me who want to do what is right, who long for, who hunger and thirst after righteousness— Blessed are they who desire with all their hearts to be righteous as Christ is righteous, to be perfect as he is perfect, who long for it and seek it, and who would give anything for it, though they do not have it. What is their reward? They shall, through the atonement of Christ, receive it according to their fondest desires!"
Elder Coleman
