September 2, 2009

Hello again,

First off, I want you to be pronouncing my area correctly, so if you recall from my first quick lesson, since there is a ¨z¨ at the end, you pronounce it, Aranjueth, and as you know the j has a slight guttural sound, like you´re coughing up mucous. Just FYI...

This first week has been really fun and very, very tiring. I haven´t walked this much forever.

I think that I have heard twice now that this summer has been the hottest summer, here in Spain, in twenty years. I am not sure if it is true or not, but I do agree that it is hot. When I was in the CCM (Spanish MTC), when we would go and play soccer during Actividad Física (Physical Activity), it would be about 45 degrees Celsius. Which is about 110, 115 Farenheit. So it is hot, and it is even harder because I haven´t had a bus pass, because it is better if you get it at the beginning of the month so you have the whole month to use it, and so we have had to walk from our house to the train station. It is a long way and with that dry heat, it cooks you. But I love it! I am always sweating and luckily we both wear deodorant and we don´t stink. Thank goodness for that.

Our address, I think is Calle Abdon Bordoy, Number, 57, I think. I am not sure though. It is right towards the end of that street on the South Side. I think the street runs North to South. My companion says that it isn´t the best to send letters to our house, which I still don´t understand why, but to send them back to the mission home. We meet the zone leaders once a week in Al Casar to pick up the mail, on Tuesdays I think. So that way you can send letters to the mission home my whole mission, and not have to worry about making it to my area before I transfer etc. That way it is safer to get it to me, and doesn´t have me looking in the mail box every day. I think that is best. But here is my address so you can look on google earth. I live in that house on the east side of the street and we are very close to a park that is more south than us that has basketball hoops and a playground.

The church is on Calle Ancha, number 1. It is very small. 4 classrooms and a chapel. The classrooms have about 10- 15 seats and the chapel probably 40 – 50. This is vacation month so this week at church there weren´t a lot of people there. On time there were about 15 people and even the first counselor of the presidency was 15 minutes late. He was the one conducting and presiding, since the president is out of town, so we waited for him. Most people, well maybe not most, but a lot of people live about an hour away and it takes them forever to get to the church, especially with bus and train schedules, and it is hard to be on time. We ended up with a good size crowd of about 35 but we only had 22 of them for the sacrament.

My companion and I blessed the sacrament and the ward mission leader/second counselor of the branch presidency passed it to the tiny congregation of strong Spanish members. We have a few really active women who have either left husbands for the Church or who go every week without them. There are a lot of sacrifices being made in this tiny little branch. But it is funny, and very unique that our church is universal, and even in this small pueblo of about 30,000 people, I don´t know really, that the church is exactly the same. Sacrament meeting first, in which they had me introduce myself, and then Sunday school or primary for the children, and then since it was the fifth Sunday, we had priesthood and relief society combined. The teachers were prepared and very good, even though I didn´t understand very much. I played the closing hymn of the last meeting, because the other pianist was conducting the meeting.

A lot of the members have multiple callings to help this branch function and it is really neat, how unified it is. After church, some of the member had made sandwiches, and we ate and had some drinks of sprite for a little while after. It was a nice unified way to have everyone get together with members like themselves after church and renewing our covenants with our Heavenly Father that day. So that was church, and they have a nice ping pong table in the chapel, I guess that it is popular among the youth, and I don´t blame them.

All this week we have been busy everyday going in between the neighboring pueblos, Valdemoro and Ciempozuelos, on the short distance train, called the Renfe, and have been trying to contact people and teach lessons. Valdemoro is a lot bigger than the other two pueblos and there are a lot of inactive members, that we want to get in touch with and help.

By the way, I realized that mail does take a while to get over here, and so it is fine if you want to just email, it is probably more convenient for you and I get the updates quicker. So do what you want but know that I don´t care anymore, either way. Thank you for writing though, email or mail…I love it!

Yesterday, Elder Carr and I, taught 2 really good lessons on the Restoration. The first to a family from the Dominican Republic, 2 parents and a 18 month year old son. The wife desperately wants her husband to be more religious and come to church, and she wants to be baptized but says that she won´t until her husband makes efforts to attend. She realizes the huge blessings that come to her family from prayer and going to her church, and has said that she would join any church as long as her husband would join too. She wants to be to be unified with her husband and son with God. It is an interesting situation, but the lesson went well and we watched the Restoration DVD.

After words we talked and, luckily it was the first time we could actually teach him, because most of the time he is working, and I am sure he felt the spirit. We had a family prayer afterwords and his wife, Isa, said it and it was so heart felt, a little teary, but you could tell that she had a testimony of the church and just wanted her husband to have the same, so that her family could be blessed.