Two Months In!


 I can't believe that we are already two months into our mission! We still feel like we're greener than green. This has been a week of long days. On Tuesday and Wednesday, two of our office missionaries had birthdays. Mom made a giant cookie for one (his request) and a plate of goodies for the other one. The missionaries in the office are starting to feel like our kids to us. We love them, and are really proud of the wonderful work they do, and the great young men they are. We had our first "piso inspection" this week. It was in the apartment of 6 sisters. It was an interesting experience and it's going to be fun to get out and get to know more of the missionaries here. They're awesome. We had another Friday night institute / YSA crazy night. The institute classes start at 8:30 and then they feed them all dinner at 9:30 as the kids all hang out together. We got to bed after midnight and were glad to be able to sleep in yesterday. 

Saturday was kind of a wild day. We got up, got a good start on our laundry, and decided to go and pick up a couple of things at a store called Carrefour. It's kind of like a Super-Walmart. I had been talking with Hermana Heckmann about a problem that the Carrefour website is having with the mission cards. She wanted to buy all of the food for Transfers/zone conferences and have it delivered. While Brenda and I were at the store, I got another call from her wanting to discuss what our options are for her to buy stuff with her personal card, and then somehow get reimbursed for it. I told her of the difficulty involved there, and said that I'd look into options on Monday. After I hung up, it occured to me that we were standing in Carrefour at that moment and called her back and asked for a list. That was probably a mistake. A few hour later with two shopping carts full of food we left the store, and headed for the Mission Home. President Heckmann was supposed to meet us there, but he was delayed. He was downtown counselling a young man and was on his bike trying to get back to the Mission home to let us in. We found the key to the mission home in the office, and let ourselves in mostly because there was frozen stuff that needed to make it into the freezer. By the time we got home it was around 5 and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. We decided to eat at a Kebab (Remember those Jared?). It was a first for us, and it was delicious. 

It turns out that Yesterday was some sort of Spanish holiday, and there were concerts and things planned. We didn't think much of it until we started to hear a bunch of drums. We decided to go down and see what was going on. When we got to the little plaza near our house, we saw that they had set up a big stage. We waited around for a while and every so often heard the drums. We finally decided to ask when the concert was going to start and were told that it was going to be around 10 (too late for old people like us). We then went and found where the drums were coming from, and there was kind of a high energy drum-line. People were dancing and cheering, and having a great time. They were just roving around from place to place and having impromptu parties. We just decided that this was going to be a "don't plan on going to sleep very soon" type of night. I caught a couple of snippets of video to give you a taste of it and will attach those.

Today, thankfully, we again were able to sleep in a little, and go to Church. It was fast and testimony meeting, and it was great. Mom cooked "Brenda-Yaki" Chicken and so I'm about to fade away into a food coma! Great stuff!

This coming Wednesday is our second "transfer week". We're getting 15 new missionaries (I thought it was going to be 17 like the number of temples, but I was wrong.). It is going to be a crazy week, but the excitement as trainers meet their new companions and step into that critical leadership role is invigorating. I'm sure there will be a few late nights in store as we dive into this week, but that's our lot in life for the next 21 months. We love serving the Lord, and it's wonderful to be involved in a work where you know that you are doing what He we wants us to be doing at this point in our lives. We hope that your General Conference experience was as wonderful as ours was. We love and miss you all.

Click for Pics


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crazy Transfer Week!

Image
  What a wild week! There were very long days, and a ton of excitement. We received 21 new missionaries! Along with all of that we saw two of our office elders moved into other assignments. We have a brand new Assistant to the President, Elder Bernabeu, and a new technology secretary, Elder Olmsted. They were thrown right into the fire with this huge transfer. We also said goodbye to 5 missionaries who finished their missions.  Wednesday was the real crazy day for us. Not only was it transfer day, we also were saying goodbye to Brenda's sister Carla and her friend Misti. The plan was for President Heckmann to take one missionary to the airport and pick up two who arrived super early. He was then going to take them back to the office, I was going to trade cars with him so that I had a bigger car to help pick up a group of 15. However, what happened was that as President was hurrying to get to the airport someone cut him off. This caused him to swerve into the curb which blew tw...
Read more

Russell M. Nelson 1924 - 2025

Image
  It almost seems wrong to talk about the happenings here in Spain when I have lost someone who has impacted my life in a very personal way. However, this is supposed to be a blog about out missionary experience, so here goes.  This week has been pretty exciting. Gerald and Tammy were here again, and we put them to work. Monday, they came into the office to help us. We were grateful to have them finally get to meet President and Sister Heckmann, and then, of course, go with us to eat Sushi! We ended up staying kind of late getting everything ready to go to the zone conferences which is always a chore. Tuesday and Wednesday were zone conferences here in Barcelona and they graciously jumped right in to help us make them successful. They claim to have enjoyed themselves, and we are very grateful for their selfless service. On Tuesday after the Zone Conferences, we went down to the Rambla where there was a surprise parade that went on. It was really fun to watch complete with fire...
Read more

Catching Up

Image
 When thinking about this week the phrase "no good vacation goes unpunished" comes to mind. We had an amazing experience in Rome and surprise, surprise no one did our jobs for us while we were gone! How rude! Add to that the fact that Brenda's sister Carla and her friend Misti came to visit and we were busy! Monday morning we picked up Carla and Misti from the airport and dropped them off at the piso. We then went to the office to try to dig through all of the stuff that had stacked itself up in our absence. After Carla and Misti got settled, they walked to the office to see where we worked. I'm afraid that we haven't been as good of hosts as we would have liked, as they had to just hang out and wait for us to get done. At least they were able to catch cat naps on the couches while they waited. We tried to get done at a good hour so we could take them down the Rambla to get a taste of Spain, and get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, we weren't able to break away u...
Read more