Happy Thanksgiving!
What a crazy week! I don't even know where to start. I don't know when we have had a busier week, even during transfers. Of course, for us, all roads led to Thanksgiving. We had a General Authority in town (Elder McConkie) for a mission tour. That complicated everything. Last year, we had Elder Garff and Elder Peery as our APs both of whom were amazing cooks. They decided to cook a Thanksgiving meal for the Barcelona Zones. They did an amazing job and pulled it off. This year, the APs also wanted to put on a Thanksgiving dinner for the 4 Barcelona Zones, with the added stress of having it be in a Zone Conference, with a General Authority. They got the ball rolling, but then said, "oh, by the way we want the senior missionaries to cook all of the turkeys!" First was the challenge of actually finding turkeys in Spain. They do not celebrate Thanksgiving here, and you can't just go to the local grocery store to purchase those wonderful butterball turkeys. They do not exist! Finally, the assistants called Elder Garff and Elder Peery to see where they found them last year. It was a butcher and they were able to order 10 turkeys. When they picked them up on Tuesday, there were actually 12 turkeys and so it ended up that even though Brenda and my original assignment was to cook 2 turkeys, we ended up being responsible for 4 of them! We had heard about a process called "Spatchcocking" a turkey. We hit a few Youtube videos to see how it worked and decided to try it out. When the turkeys arrived, they were not the frozen birds with the handy cooking popup to tell you when it's done we have always been used to. They also didn't have the neck and the giblets in the cavities either. In fact, they still had a few feathers attached. Spatchcocking is a way to make the turkey look like it got run over by a steamroller. You cut the backbone out, flip the bird over, and pretend to do CPR on it. That flattens it out so you can put it in a tray, spice it up with some olive oil, salt and anything else that you want, and throw it in the oven at 400 degrees. It took just over an hour and 15 minutes, and it was done. Very juicy, and evenly cooked. We were pretty excited with that first success. After we let it cool, we carved it up and put it all in the fridge. I spatchcocked bird #2 before going home that night with the intention of throwing it into the oven the next morning. We figured that we would be able to keep going, and do all 3 of the remaining birds one at a time on Wednesday. Great plan, but life is what happens while we are making other plans!
Wednesday morning, we knew we were going to be joining the zone conference in Valencia via zoom for an hour at the request of Elder McConkie. We got to the office early, put bird #2 in the oven, and joined the zoom meeting. So far, so good. While we were in our meeting, we had a visitor. There is an elderly Filipino named Archie who loves the missionaries. He often comes to the office, just to hang out, and will go around and take out the trash, and just be there. Well, Wednesday, he decided that he was going to cook a meal for the missionaries. While we were in the zoom call, Archie took over the kitchen, and turned it into a disaster. Every working surface was taken up, and when I went in to remove bird #2 I was barely able to find a place for it to cool down. We had nowhere to start prepping the other two turkeys that were in the refrigerator in the President's home upstairs. Now, in a little bit of a panic we went upstairs to see if we could maybe use the oven in the President's kitchen. What we found was an amazing tender mercy. Carolina, who is the cook that works for the Heckmanns, had noticed the birds the day before as she was preparing to do all of the stuffing. She had come in at about 6:30 and cooked both of those turkeys! All that was left for me to do was to carve birds 2,3, and 4, and we were done!
That brought us to Thursday. Brenda and I went over the the parking garage where they keep the MAV (Mission Assault Vehicle) because the President has been using the Mini-MAV while his car is in the shop. We drove to the office, and got all the food loaded and picked up the Larrosas, and drove to the Stake Center. We were very fortunate to have a few of the other senior couples there because we ended up feeding about 160 people. We thought that we would be able to warm up the turkey and stuffing in the two ovens there, and make the mashed potatoes (potato flakes). However, we were not able to fit all of the turkey in the ovens. We decided that it was going to be cold turkey, warm stuffing, and hot gravy to kind of heat everything up. One of the couples lives in Zarragoza which has a Costco, so they bought pumpkin pies and delicious Costco rolls. We also had green salad. We used every table that we could find in the stake center, including all of the classroom tables, and it was a madhouse. Fortunately, things came together, and we got everyone fed. Then was the work of cleaning everything up, doing the dishes taking the leftovers back to the mission home, and taking the Larrosa's back home. By the end of the day, we were exhausted.
With all of that, we were able to listen to some of Elder McConkie's talk which was wonderful. He doesn't speak Spanish, so it was particularly sweet for Brenda who has had to try to understand things using Google Translate for every meeting she has been in since arriving in Spain. On Friday, they had an MLC (Mission Leader Council), again with Elder McConkie, and he came down to check out the office. Apparently we passed, because he didn't stay long before he was off to another place in Spain where he was going to call a new Stake Presidency. President Heckmann decided to take us all out for Sushi that day to say thanks for all of the hard work, and to say goodbye to a sister who is having to go home on a medical transfer to be a service missionary.
On Saturday, we rode the Metro to the other side of Barcelona to check out the giving machines. They are here this year, and it was fun. I saw that the Area President Elder Alliaud went there today together with Sor Lucia the Catholic Nun who has worked so closely with the Church and was instrumental in removing one of the big logs in the logjam that is keeping the Temple from being built. I hope that the people in Spain catch the Spirit of those giving machines, because it really is a special thing to buy something for someone in need.
With all of the craziness this week, we were able to learn something wonderful from Elder McConkie as he taught the missionaries. He quoted Doctrine and Covenants 8:2 where revelation is defined as coming into our "mind" and into our "heart". He talked at length about the "Language of Revelation", and said that learning that language is just like trying to learn any other language. Once we have experienced revelation like knowing that the Book of Mormon is true, or having a spiritual experience where we have learned something that we know is true, we can use that as a measuring stick, so to speak, for how revelation works. He said that we all have different ways of feeling the Spirit. It speaks to each of us in different ways. For example, one person may feel a "burning bosom", while anther may feel a sense of joy, or confidence, or peace that the thought that they are thinking is true. That is why the missionaries will stop a lesson when the Spirit enters the room, and ask the person to define what they are feeling at that moment. It was really enlightening. As we learn the language of revelation, and we start really acting on those revelations and promptings, we get more and more "fluent" in that language, and just like the missionaries can learn to speak a new language fluently, we can be more in tune with the Lord. It is a wonderful concept that I hope to continue to learn and grow into.
Tomorrow starts a new month, and time continues to fly by. It is wonderful being able to serve the Lord!
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