We're Here!

 This has been an amazing week. Most of the week was spent finishing up our time at the MTC doing the training for our mission office work. Again, it was a lot like trying to drink from a fire-hose. It was wonderful to spend more time around those amazing young missionaries. The excitement is palpable, and these are wonderful young people. I stood by the sidewalk as they were leaving the devotional on Tuesday, and was impressed with the sea of missionaries walking past me. The thought came to mind that the world wants us to believe that this generation is nothing but a bunch of helpless whiners; that they're all somehow flawed, or messed up in some way, and that they couldn't possibly do anything hard. What I saw was a bunch of wonderful, confident, beautiful youth who are determined to take the message of the Gospel to the world. We made some good friends at the MTC and I hope that we can keep up with them. 

One of the last events in our training was hearing a couple speak who has been on two missions as an Office Couple. The last one was in Africa where they were the only couple in the office, and had to do ALL of the jobs there. They said that the Mission President offered to bring in a few elders to take on a couple of the responsibilities. However, they said that those missionaries are teaching 4 and 5 discussions a day. They're out doing the work and the couple said that they couldn't bear the thought of taking those missionaries away from the vital work they're doing, and that they'd work through it. Which they did. They said that as they were doing 12 to 14 hour days there reached a point where he was about ready to throw in the towel. What got him through was putting together some affirmations. I took a picture of that list (attached). It's pretty powerful, and I may put something like that together for myself to keep me focussed on who's work this is, and who will be at my side to get me through it. 

All too soon, it all came to an end, and we went home on Thursday afternoon. We had a chance to have dinner with our family on Thursday, sleep in our own bed, and then have Sarah take us to the Airport early on Friday to catch our flight. We went to Atlanta where we had a couple of hours layover, and then got onto a HUGE airplane and flew through the night to get to Barcelona. I was hoping to be able to get some sleep on the flight, but that was not to be. It's amazing how ones feet, knees, and back can hurt that much simply from sitting still for almost 8 hours! My sweet Brenda was able to get some sleep, but certainly not enough. We were met at the airport by the Romney couple. They are the ones that we're replacing in the office. They are  wonderful and took us to our apartment and then took time to get us all settled. They took us shopping at the grocery store (there is a little store literally 7 floors under our apartment). They are going to be spending about a month training us before President Heckmann moves them out into an MLS assignment to finish their mission. We were pretty bleary-eyed yesterday but were determined to stay up so that we could go to bed at the right time to help get us through the jet-lag. Needless to say going to bed was a welcome event!

Today, we went to church for the first time here. It became very obvious to me that the Spanish department in my brain is VERY rusty. These people seem to speak a million miles an hour, and so I'm definitely going to have to practice, A LOT! Poor Sister Musser had an even tougher time because along with the jet-lag going on, she wasn't able to understand much of anything. However, I'm very proud of her. She's excited to get to know these people, and is determined to do what she can to learn to communicate with them. 

There were a couple of tender mercies today. First, we met a senior couple who is from Uruguay. I talked with them a little bit, and they're from the last area that I served in. (Maldonado) It was fun talking with them for a few minutes. The second tender mercy was that we just happened to attend church on the same day that they had a baptism after our regular church meetings. It was a fun reminder of why we're doing this thing. He was a guy that is in is late 20's/ early 30's. After the baptism, they asked him to share his feelings, and he just teared up and said "there are no words". It was special. 

Tomorrow, we start the work in earnest. Wish us luck! 

Click for Pics!