Musser Mission Blog

  This has been a pretty wild week. We didn't have the Romney's as a safety net, and we both wish we would have. It started off pretty well with a comfortable Sunday. Brenda fed some sister missionaries. It was neat to feel their spirit and to see their enthusiasm for the work. When we opened the door the next morning to go to work, we found that they had "heart attacked" our door. Very sweet. Monday went south from there. Everything that comes to me seems to be something new, and I have to sit and figure out how to approach it. With Elder Romney there, he'd just say "this is how you attack this problem", and I'd just do what I needed to do. Without him, I waste a lot of time figuring things out, and consequently, there seems to be more to do at the end of the day than there was at the start. Pretty much all week we were the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave. Brenda seems to be doing better than I am, or at least she's not whining a...

 It's hard to believe that this is our 5th Sunday here! Time seems to fly by which is surprising to me. I was certain that there would be a lot of home-sickness that would make the time crawl by. Not so. Yes, we miss our family terribly, but we know that we signed up to serve the Lord, and that's what we're determined to do. We had a few new experiences this week to keep things interesting. I guess the biggest one was that this week was zone conferences. Tuesday and Wednesday were the conferences to cover the four zones in Barcelona. Thursday the Heckmanns and the assistants went to Valencia, and then on Friday, they went to the islands. Our job during conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday was to support all of the logistics of the conferences to include food preparation. We got to sneak into the conferences themselves a few times when we were able to get everything else done. In one of these, the leaders wanted to introduce us to the missionaries. It touched our hearts when...

  This week has been wonderful. Brenda's Sister Tammy and her husband Gerald came to visit as part of their European retirement trip. We picked them up at the Airport on Sunday night and put them on their cruise ship Saturday morning. In between, we tried to pack as much in as we possibly could while still trying to keep up in the office. Fortunately, the Romney's were willing to fill in for a day, and we were able to break away early on a couple of other days so we got to see a lot of Barcelona. Tammy and Gerald walked up to the office a few times and we were able to eat lunch a couple of times at a wonderful little Japanese restaurant that serves all-you-can eat sushi. (I'm going to have to be VERY careful to keep my visits here in moderation or they'll be wanting me to be a Sumo Wrestler) We also introduced them to milanesas at a little restaurant downtown which was wonderful. It was also fun to eat at a little outdoor restaurant that's a couple of blocks away fr...

  This has been an amazing week. We got to experience our first "transfer week". We saw missionaries who have completed their missions go home, and brand new missionaries arrive to take their places. We got to experience everything from a CO detector scare (fortunately it was just a failed detector) to a set of sisters who got themselves locked out of their apartment for the second time in a week (lock-smiths are REALLY expensive here). Also, broken toilets, broken AC units, broken stoves, lost credit cards, and even a bad mattress. Through it all, we've been learning and slowly started figuring out how to handle this stuff. One of the missionaries who finished his mission was one of the Assistants to the President, Elder LaDuc. What a great young man! It was fun to watch a new Assistant to the President come into the office. They even have some fun traditions when they make a change. The assistants a few months back realized that they had both purchased the exact same wr...

  I can't believe that August has already flown by. This last week has been a real adventure. It marks our first full week here in Spain, and we both really feel like "Greenies". The Romneys have been very patient and sweet as they've been trying to train us. It seems like there's a million and one things to remember to do, each one of which will end in catastrophe if it isn't done correctly. It's got our heads swimming a little bit, but we're confident that we will eventually figure things out. Hermana Musser and I are going to be sharing an office and so I'm listening to her being trained behind me as I'm being trained, and I don't think it's fair as I haven't heard nearly as many whimpers from her side of the office as have come out of mine! Outside of our office work, we really do live in a nice situation. Our apartment is nice although there are a few little quirks that remind us that we're not in the U.S. anymore.  For ins...