Musser Mission Blog

Once again, Catalonia celebrated a holiday that I have not been able to figure out. Apparently Saint George killed a dragon, the dragon's blood caused roses to grow, and books are involved. It's kind of like a valentines thing, where you are supposed to buy your sweetheart a rose and gift a book. On the that day we walked to work and passed probably a dozen, if not more, stands along the way selling roses and books. The mission has taken full advantage of this weird holiday and the missionaries and members gift copies of the Book of Mormon. The mission ordered pallets full of books to hand out, and the missionaries spent that whole day with members going around and gifting books to people. This morning in Elders Quorum we had a friend show up that was the recipient of one of those books, so it certainly wasn't a waste.  Things were a little quiet around the office because President and Sister Heckmann were in Holland for a mission president's seminar. It's times lik...

  We keep thinking that "this is the week that we will catch up!" When we do that, Heavenly Father seems to say "nice plan, but keep dreaming!" Monday seemed to give us a glimmer of hope as we were able to get a few key issues taken care of with getting the missionaries paid, etc. Tuesday was  our normal meeting day compounded with the "salientes" or missionaries who were going home. One of them was one of the Assistants to the President, Elder Guevara, who we really grew to love. He was in his exit interview with the President when we finally had to go home for the night so we missed getting to say goodbye which was sad.  Wednesday was a real adventure. First off, we heard that the flight for the missionaries from the U.S. was delayed 5 hours. This was both good and bad. Good, because it gave us time to get everything prepared logistically. Bad because we were not able to do a lot of things that we normally do to welcome them. It was really a tight turn a...

 This week was bitter-sweet. We got to have a little more time with Sarah and her family. On Monday we went to Park Guell and then to the office. Then it was lunch at our favorite sushi place, then to the Gothic quarter for some churros and chocolate.  Lots of fun but all good things have to come to an end as we had to put them on an airplane on Tuesday. It was sad to say goodbye to them. We had to take the MAV because we were also going to pick up a new missionary at the same time. We got delayed a couple of minutes because of the logistics of trading the Mini-MAV for the MAV. We also had to take her new companion with us to the airport. By the time we got there the new sister was already there. We left her with her new companion while we took Sarah and family up to the departure area. We wiped a few tears away, and then drove the sisters to the office. Just a few hours later we got a call from Sarah saying that they had missed their connecting flight in Madrid. "Cue Panic Mo...

 We had another whirlwind week. First, we had our last few days with the Mussers. We took them up to Montserrat which was really neat for them. We took them into the basilica which we had never done before, and toured through to see the "Black Madonna" and then through the museum. It was pretty interesting. They have a room that is called the room of prayer. At first I was hesitant to go in there for fear that I would be interrupting someone who was genuinely worshipping, but we went ahead and very quietly went in. I realized that just because it was a holy place for them doesn't mean that I could not pray myself. I felt better about being there after that. It was a neat time. It was hard to put them on the Airplane, but we had to Wednesday morning. After that and through Friday, it was an all out sprint to get things ready for the next wave of wonderfulness as Sarah and her sweet family arrived Friday night.  On Wednesday we had the missionary Easter Concert in Barcelona...