Dos Hermanas... Week 1

(about 11:00am Spain time, 3:00am here)

Hey,

Well, things are always changing in the mission. My first week in this new area has been very different from my other areas. Like I said last week, we have a ward. It's not like I expected though. This area has been changing a lot recently. Until a few months ago it was 2 good sized wards. They just combined them into one and closed one of the buildings. I guess some people weren't excited about the changes, yesterday we only had 35ish people in church. We have a bunch of work to do getting the members back. The other big change is the area boundaries. The space that I will be working with Elder Birnbaumer had 6 elders last transfer. Now it's just the two of us. We have spent a lot of time this week combining all of the info we have from both areas.

The city is beautiful though. It feels like a big beach town. It's super hot again, and insanely humid. I think I'm gonna go 2 years without winter. That's pretty crazy to think about. This week I will try to take lots of pictures so you guys can see how cool it is here. This is more like what I had pictured Spain looking like. 

I met a bunch of the members this week. I have a goal to have an appointment with all of them by next week. I think they can help us a ton here. The ward is doing a "missionary Sunday" every month. Until now the only difference is that the Elders speak in sacrement meeting, but I talked to the ward mission leader and we're gonna make this thing bomb. We're trying to organize a few ways members can help us with it, and then he asked me to speak in sacrement meeting on Sunday so I can introduce myself and then present the activities. I'm super excited.

Our district is cool. It's kinda weird cause it's so small. I have had big districts for the last year. The hermanas are in Alcalá de Guadaíra, another pueblo outside of Sevilla. Today we are with them and the district from Sevilla for pday. We're going to see the cathedral and other stuff around there. I had less time in Cuenca than I expected and I missed out on seeing some stuff. I'm not making the same mistake again. We're gonna go see it all as soon as possible. I'll upload pictures of today in the drive. I don't have very many from this week though. 

Elder Johnson

later ... (about 6:30pm Spain time, 10:30am here)

The day was not planned very well, so we didn't really do much. Im gonna plan the next one so we dont miss out again. Today we only went to plaza España. It was super cool though.