Officially Less Than A Year To Go!
It's hard to believe that we officially now have less than 1 year to go on our mission! The old adage "Time flies when you're having fun" really does apply. It seems like the days are long, but the weeks are short, and the months just disappear!
This past week brought us some more adventures. We are learning that as much as we love these sweet missionaries, they're still kids that need to learn some "adulting". At first when we would get a call about an issue we would try to figure out how we could take care of it for the missionaries, which is right and good most of the time. However, we have found that it is also important to help them to help themselves. Case in point; we got a call a couple of weeks ago from some sisters. "We have cockroaches!" We told them to go and buy some bug-spray and roach traps, clean everything, and make sure that there are no dirty dishes left in the sink. We got another call the next week. "The roaches are getting worse". We asked them if they did any of the stuff we told them to do, "well, no we've been busy". Next week, "can we get an exterminator?" We ordered some roach killing products, and went over to their place. First thing I noticed when I walked in was a sink full of dirty dishes. We'll see if they will start taking care of things. It can get frustrating.
It has been brutally hot and humid until yesterday. We got some torrential rain to cool things off, but with what happened in Catarroja last year, everyone is pretty skittish when the rains come. We got several emergency notifications over our phones. There was a little flooding north of town, but the only thing we had to deal with was that the wind was blowing the rain against the glass doors on our balcony hard enough that it started leaking to the inside. We had to get out there with towels and a mop to keep it from starting to seep into the apartment itself!
On a more wonderful note, we passed another milestone on Tuesday. I have been married to an Angel for 43 years now! How cool is that! The office elders went and bought us a couple of donuts and I got my sweetheart some beautiful flowers. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant that is on top of the mall that used to be the main bull-fighting ring in Barcelona. The food was good, and the view was nice. Of course, the company was the best part! I am the luckiest guy in the world.
Last night after the big rainstorm we went to an activity at the chapel. They called it the "Spiritual Banquet". They had some talks from missionaries about each of the standard works, gave the investigators there their own copy of the Book of Mormon, and then had a Peruvian chicken dinner. It was nice.
We were saddened this week upon learning of the passing of my first cousin Les Smith. He found out that he had stage 4 lung cancer, and within just a couple of weeks, he was gone. It was a tender mercy for me that this week we have been studying section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It's comforting to recognize the love of our Heavenly Father and the Savior, and the plan that they have put in place to provide us the wonderful hope that we can be together forever with our loved ones after this life. Heavenly Father loves us more than we can ever comprehend. That is why we send out all of these missionaries to the 4 corners of the Earth to share the good news with His children. We just want to be able to do our part. We only have just under a year left to serve here in Spain. We just need to take it one day at a time, and enjoy the ride.
We hope that you all have a wonderful week.
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