This week was definitely a week for trying new things. I mean, everyday has been something new until now, but this week was a little more extreme. I've realized that every time I get comfortable with something, something big happens to take me out of my comfort zone again. I think thats why everyone grows up and learns so much so fast on a mission though. So this week we went on intercambios (I think thats exchanges in english but I'm not really sure). I was with elder rosales. I was a little unsure of what to expect at first. Elder Rosales doesn't really speak English and I was in a new city meeting all new people again, so that was a little scary. But it actually worked out really well. The Spanish wasn't an issue, I'll tell you more about that in a minute, and I actually met some really cool investigators. This week I also got to give my first and second blessing for the sick. That was really interesting. I've never done it in english but I've done it twice in spanish. I think those were the two things that surprised me the most this week, but I definitely have more firsts.
So Saturday night we had the elders from salamanca sleep in our piso and then Sunday morning we got up early and drove to Leon for district conference. It was about a 2.5 hour drive and it was really pretty. Its funny, I came all this way to Spain and it's basically just Utah. It's weird how similar it is, but I like it. We saw lots of mountains, farms, and vineyards on the way up. So when we got to the conference I saw some of the guys from the ccm. It was nice to see some familiar faces. Then we had a really cool meeting in a hotel conference room (never a chapel). President Pack and elder Ruiz de Mendoza spoke. I think Ruiz de Mendoza is a 70. We had 2 of our investigator families go, so that was really cool. That's a big commitment to take a bus all the way up there. So that was cool. Every Sunday is different here.
I downloaded Facebook this week. It's going to be interesting. Since it's a Facebook rule that you can only have one account, we will just use our old ones. They're giving us this week to "clean" them, but since I don't have anything I'm good. I just need to remember my login. We don't have to unfriendly people from home though, so you guys can see the stuff I post,the only thing is that its in spanish. We also saw the phones yesterday. That's going to be so crazy. My district leader said they aren't going to lock anything down, we have full access on the phones and Facebook and then if you mess up you just lose your privalages.
The talks both went pretty well last week. Preparing them was hard, but actually giving them wasnt bad. It took me a few hours to write them, but then I was only speaking in front of like 10 people each time. So that wasn't bad. It's definitely not my favorite thing to do, but I'm sure I'll get better at it. So you mentioned that Dustin had a similar experience teaching people from all over the world. It's a little crazy right now. We don't have any Spaniards, but we have friends from Colombia, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, portugal, Dominican Republic, Bulgaria, and Romania. We try lots of good food though. We only cooked one meal this week, the rest of the time people fed us. The only downside to that is that I haven't made bfast casserole yet. It got warm here again. It's been around 85 the last few days. And don't worry, our piso is loaded with blankets. El Corte Inglés, the big store here, is having a big sale so we're gonna go see if they have some decent sweaters and coats for a decent price. I'll let you know how it goes.
I'm looking forward to zone conference to see the birthday package. Although I think elder jager might be even more excited than me though. He loves the way American families spoil their kids. I kinda do too. He hasn't gotten anything from his family and he's been here for almost a year. Crazy.
That's awesome that you guys are reading the Book of Mormon together. I don't think I realized how important it is until I got out here. So I'm sure Erin will be impressed with this. When I was in the ccm, I read the entire BOM in 25 days. You do the math, that's a lot of reading everyday. But we had a lot of free time there and it's a pretty good book. Right now I'm reading it in Spanish every night. Hopefully that will help with the language too. I also started reading doctrine and covenants this week. Idk why I didn't do that before. There is so much cool stuff in there and pretty much all of it is about missionary work.
So I should be on around 8 again today to chat if you guys want to.
See ya later,
Josh
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| This is the view from one of our investigators pisos. |
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