February Already?!?!?

 


January has come and gone already! Wasn't it just Christmas? We were talking this afternoon, and it's amazing to us that time is really being weird. Sometimes it feels like an endless stream of days that last forever, and then we blink and a month has disappeared. I can't believe that on the 12th of this month we will have been on our mission for 6 months. That's crazy. The work continues though and it's awesome to watch it unfold.

This week we set up a new apartment in a place called Blanes. It is a little over an hour away. It's a new apartment and it was unfurnished. So, Sister Musser and I took the mission van to the Ikea store, and bought "2 of everything". We went back to the office and enlisted the assistants and then drove up the coast to Blanes. It is a beautiful drive as you can see the water much of the time. Once we got there, we unloaded the van and schlepped our "2 of everything" up the stairs and then set about to do a bunch of "adult legos" as Elder Spilsbury calls it. By the time we got home, I felt every single one of my 65 years. This was on Thursday, and Friday morning was brutal getting out of bed. What made it worse was coming into the office to hear that the Assistants got up and ran 3 miles that morning. I take great comfort in the idea that they will be old someday!

On Monday we had a couple of medical appointments and I will never complain about the medical care we get back home again. We're used to going for an office visit and having to pay a small co-pay at the worst. Here our insurance will only reimburse us after we pay the whole thing up front. So having an eye appointment costing north of $700 is a real shock. Overall it was over $1000 and they ordered blood-work that they estimated would be almost $1000 by itself. The good news is that we should be able to get a bunch of travel points on our credit card to use after we get home. Fortunately President Heckmann's son is coming to visit in a few weeks, and can draw our blood for testing up in Germany where they have a deal with the lab to get it done for next to nothing. 

Yesterday was P-day and we had the office elders over to play cards, and eat treats. Afterward, we were able to call family via WhatsApp. When I was a young missionary, communication with home consisted of written letters that would take a minimum of 2 weeks each way. So, if you had a question, you didn't get the answer for a month. Now, we can talk to our loved ones face to face as if we were in the same room. What a blessing! It has been a real lift for me, and I am thankful for it.

This week I have been pondering Heavenly Father's magnificent plan for His children. How wonderful it is to be able to have hope in the eternal nature of the family. Those things that matter most to us can be eternal if we are true and faithful to our covenants with our Heavenly Father. It is amazing to consider the fact that when we step through that veil, we can look forward to being met by our loved ones. My sweet sister Cindy shared a thought with me yesterday that when we are on this side of the veil witnessing the passing of a loved one saying "there she goes" there are loved ones on the other side of the veil saying "here she comes!" It kind of helps me to put it into perspective that way. How grateful we should all be for our loving Savior who makes this all possible. It's wonderful.

We love you all billions! Have a great week.

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