Our Craziest Week Yet!
This has certainly been the craziest week we have had in the mission field. It started early on Monday morning when we got a call telling us that the mission office had been robbed. President Heckmann had to leave early to get to the airport, and ran down to the office to get something and saw that someone had broken in and robbed us. He told me to get in as quickly as I could, and call the Police and the Facilities Management people. The thief broke the lock on the front door and forced his way in. The office had been ransacked, and they found our little safe, and found the key to it hidden in a drawer. They got away with between 200 and 300 Euros. They went through the rest of the office as well. It was obvious that they were looking just for cash because they left a drawer full of brand new cell phones. They also left behind some pretty expensive office equipment for which we are grateful. The police came in, looked around and told us that they were going to send a team in to dust for fingerprints so we were forbidden from touching anything in our office before they got there. The FM guy came and replaced the door lock so that we could secure the office again. Of course, this was the highlight of discussion until about 12:30 when the lights went out; not just in our office, not just in our building, not just in Barcelona, but in all of Spain, all of Portugal, and part of France!
We spent the rest of the day in the office even though we could do nothing so that we would be available for missionaries who showed up in a panic as to what they could do. The metro system wasn't running, the internet went down, cell service was close to non-existent except for an occasional text message that would sneak through. In many parts of Spain the power was off through the night. We were fortunate because by the time we walked home that night around 6:30 we found that the power had been turned on in our piso so we didn't have to climb 6 flights of stairs to get home (tender mercy). We didn't dare drive the car home because there were many roads that were completely clogged as the city trams stopped running where they were which would often be blocking an intersection. We also knew that the parking garage entrance arm wouldn't be working, so there would have been nowhere to park once we got home.
Overall, things weren't as bad as they could have been. The missionaries were safe, although one pair of sisters had gone up to a monastery in the mountains on P-day, and had to hike a very long way to get back down the mountain, catch emergency busses to get them back to Barcelona, and then hike for another hour to get to the piso of one of our senior couples. That is really the extent. The good news for our office missionaries was that since everyone in Barcelona was out on the street, they were able to do a lot of street contacting.
On Tuesday afternoon, the police finally came back to dust for prints. They didn't find anything, but we were at least able to go back to work! We had a lot of catching up to do. So that was the major challenging stuff.
On Friday, we flew to Madrid so that we could help bring some new cars back to the mission. The mission had to turn the President's car in and get that replacement plus 4 other cars. It worked out because there was a young single adult temple trip with busses leaving Barcelona on Friday night, so we were able to enlist a pair of missionaries that were on that trip to drive one of the cars back. The office elders drove the president's old car, the vehicle coordinator was on a flight and we were on another flight. We planned it so that we could do a session at the temple and then drive home on Saturday. Our flight was scheduled to go out at 1:30, the Jacox's flight was scheduled to go out at 3:30. When the gate boarding display said that it was time to start boarding, I looked out the window and saw no airplane. That is kind of an important detail I would think. Needless to say the airplane finally showed up an hour and a half late. Our flight was all right even though there was a little turbulence. However, the Jacox's flight was also delayed, and their flight was so bad that the pilot ended up aborting the landing at Madrid, and turned around and went back to Valencia and landed there. That is about a 4 hour drive from Madrid. They said that the turbulence was so bad that people thought they were going to die, and people were screaming and crying and it was a mess. The airline decided to deplane them, and send them to Madrid on busses. The busses didn't leave Valencia until about 11:00 that night, and by the time they were dropped off at the Madrid airport, and caught a cab to their hotel, they got there at about 4:00 AM.
Brenda and I picked them up the next morning and brought them to the temple where the cars were. They ended up driving right away because they wanted to get to a baptism back home. (they said that they hoped that the president's ban on missionaries drinking energy drinks wasn't going to apply to them) Fortunately, they made it home alright.
We got to drive the president's new car back, and that was pretty sweet. It has every electronic "bell and whistle" you can imagine. We got to stop at Zarragoza at the Costco there (can you say Costco hot dogs!), and got home just fine.
Today was Mother's day here in Spain, so I got a week's heads up for the U.S. Mother's day next week. Hopefully I can use the advance notice so that it's more than an e-card to my sweetheart! It was fun to see the primary kids come into Gospel Doctrine to sing to the sisters today. The little ones are just as cute singing in Spanish as they are singing in English.
At any rate, even though this has been a crazy week, we have seen the Lord's blessings and know that He is in charge. We were very grateful to be able to do a session in the Temple, and the Spirit in Fast and Testimony meeting today seemed especially strong. I am very grateful for the Plan of Salvation, and the fact that we can hope for the blessing of being able to return to Heavenly Father in eternal families. There is nothing that I can think of that could ever even remotely come close to that. Our Savior loves us, and it is a wonderful thing. Hope you can feel it too.
Love you all endlessly.
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