New Couple to Menorca

 This has been one wild week. It started early Monday morning. We knew that we would need to go and pick up the Rolon couple who came to us from Argentina at the airport. Our plan was to head up to the office a little early get a couple of things done, and then take the president's car to pick up the Rolons. Right before we needed to leave, we got a phone call from on of the other couples. There was a technician that came to analyze their water heater problem, and we needed to go over there, and pay him with the mission credit card. We had expected that phone call late in the afternoon, as we have never seen a technician show up first thing in the morning before. It turned out to be exactly what needed to happen though, because we were able to get him paid, get to the office, get the President's car, drive to the airport, and be waiting at the greeting area in plenty of time. In fact, the customs people must have been hung over or something because they took FOREVER to get them through. Needless to say, we got them back to the mission home without any problems. The elders were able to get the process for citizenship started, and work through their phones, and they were able to go upstairs and crash in the mission home. 

On Tuesday we always have the mission zoom call and a ton of other meetings. We have been really scrambling to get pisos for some of the couples that are coming to us in September (uh...that would be the month that starts TOMORROW). We had one all lined up in Tarragona and the owner decided at the last minute to rent to a family instead. Along with that stress we had our normal office work to dig through. That night, we took the Rolon's to the port. They have been assigned to an island called Menorca. It is in the middle of tourist season, and so flights over to the islands are crazy expensive, and with having to pay for large bags, it ended up being cheaper to put them on a boat. It would have been a comfortable ride as they would have their own stateroom to crash in overnight. It was kind of rough fighting traffic and figuring out where to drop them off so that they could catch the boat. I almost made the mistake of pulling into the area where the cars were being loaded on the boat (it is a ferry). That would have been an interesting story to tell the President. "Sorry about your car being over on Menorca now!"

The fun kept going on Wednesday. We got a call pretty early in the morning from the missionaries over on Menorca who were supposed to meet the Rolons to give them the keys to their piso. The problem was, they had got a phone call saying that the Rolons, were on the wrong side of the island! Apparently the taxi driver either was very confused, or just wanted to soak the foreigners, decided to take them to the wrong side of the island and drop them off in some random neighborhood! Eventually, they got another taxi (we're talking hundreds of Euros here) to take them to the right place. Quite the "Welcome to Spain" adventure for them, no?

Thursday Brenda and I rode the Metro for about an hour to get to Badalona to see a piso that is normally housing sisters and is now temporarily empty as a possible temporary parking place for one of the senior couples. It turns out to be a nice place, but needed a little cleaning. We'll have to see if President Heckmann wants to use it for a couple, or pile a bunch of missionaries back into it as we are also going to be getting a possible 28 Jr missionaries in September. We got back to the office just in time for "game day". Game day is what the office elders call Thursday afternoon at 3:00 which is the ONLY time during the week where we can try to log into a government website to get residency appointments. We have been getting skunked for several weeks, and the backlog is starting to get alarming. This week though, the Lord helped us out and we were able to get 7 appointments, which is a pretty good number. 

On Friday, we had a miracle where we were able to get a piso in Alzira for some junior missionaries. They have been living with one of the senior couples for a couple of weeks as the negotiations dragged on. We were grateful to get the piso, but not too happy about the circumstances surrounding it. They charged us a bogus fee, and then demanded that we pay for an entire 12 months of rent up front! Kind of a poison pill to swallow, but we were over a barrel.

The weekend has been pretty restful as we had a normal P-day and a nice "day of rest" kind of Sunday. The batteries need to be recharged because this coming week will be amazing. We will have to pack a week's worth of work into two days as we are going to be going to Rome for 4 days with Tammy and Gerald! They fly into Barcelona on Wednesday, and we then get on our flight together to Rome. We are super excited for the opportunity to go to the Temple there. It will be wonderful. The rest of the stuff in and around Rome will be awesome too, but the Temple is what we are looking forward to the most. We will put them on a cruise ship in Rome on Saturday morning, and then get to the airport for our flight home on Saturday evening. 

The work is hard, the stress is high, but we love it here. However, we are seeing the Lord's hand in His work every day. It really is humbling to be a part of it all. We love you all, and hope that you have an amazing week.

Sorry, no Pics this week.