Wednesday, February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012

Elder Wride's Birthday Celebration

Alex's Birthday Breakfast

Car Keys I

Car Keys II

Hello family,

Well, this week has been pretty interesting for me. I´ve had stress and stuff from many things that have happened in the office this past week. And right now it´s stressful again because one missionary from the Canary Islands has finished his mission and has to come to Madrid, but for some reason the Santander Credit Card won´t work for us. I´ll explain my week now.

Friday, was a crazy day for me. So earlier I bought a ticket for one of the missionaries in the mission to go home so that he could renew his residency card. I then got a call from his mother and she told me that the Ayuntamiento [city hall] changed the date of the appointment for when he could go over there. So she asked me to change the ticket for a different date. So I changed the date for a different one a bit more ahead by calling the airline and asking them to change it, but kept the same schedule. Then I called the Spain Barcelona Mission to give them all of the details. I then called the mother back and told her the dates and stuff about the ticket and when he should pick up her son. She said that everything was fine and I didn´t worry about it anymore. Later that day she called again and told me that the ticket won´t work because it´s a holiday for the day that I bought the ticket and the Ayuntamiento [city hall] would be closed that day. So she asked me if I could change the ticket again for one day later. Changing plane tickets costs about 35€ so I didn´t want to spend another 35€ to change it again. So I asked Elder Forrest what I should do, and he told me to call the mission president. I called President Watkins and asked him what I should do. He told me to call her back and tell her to call Oscar Clemente and coordinate things with him and then send me an email about the details. So I called her back and told her, and she started yelling at me over the phone and at this point, I´m not super happy either. I stayed calm until she hung up. Then I sat there until I got word of what to do.

Oscar called me not long afterwards and told me what I needed to do and I didn´t understand most of what he said, but I knew that the ticket had to be changed because Oscar was worried. So I told him to call President Watkins to see what he said and then to call me back. I hung up and a while later I got the call that I can go ahead and change the ticket. When I tried to call the people again to change the ticket, I couldn´t get through. I tried a few more times - same thing. So I called the Spain Barcelona Mission for help and asked them what to do. I got some info on what to do and a different number so I tried the different number. Someone answered and tells me that I have to call another number to deal with that stuff, so I did that. I called and the person that answered told me that I have to call a different number for that, so I wrote down the number and it was similar to the one that I called first, just one number was different. So I tried that one, and the same thing happened with the first one, I can´t get through. So I called the Spain Barcelona Mission again and told them that I can´t get through. Well, long story short, I gave them the card info and they did it for me and it cost about 65€ instead of 35€. Well, that was that.

As far as investigators are concerned we´re doing pretty well. We have a lady called Vanessa that´s half Peruvian and half Japanese. We taught her a bit about how reading, praying, and going to church fortifies your testimony and stuff. We also had another Vanessa from Columbia, but we decided to drop her since she couldn´t progress. We then have a recent convert called Shirley about 8 years old and she wasn´t home, so we taught her family about faith and used the tea packet on fire as well. Super cool lesson!!! The tea packet flew at the last second and yeah, awesome lesson. Another investigator that we had is being deported so unfortunately we lost him. He was progressing so much until an incident that had his girlfriend call the police and he´s gone. So, that´s the point we´re at. We did tons of contacts too. 130 contacts in one week. People are lucky if they get 100, but 130. That should tell you how many lessons we had – nearly none.  We only had seven lessons total last week. It was horrid.

Oh, and I´m also learning how to drive stick shift!! It´s pretty fun, but hard. Elder Forrest took me to a dirt parking lot to practice and it was super fun. He told me all that I need to know and he said that I was soooo much better than he was when he started driving. He let me, the first day drive back to the piso [apartment], which was fun. I only killed the car once in 30 minutes of driving. It´s pretty fun now. I´m driving to the office and today I´m going to drive to the mission home for a P-Day activity.

Thank you for the package, Grandparents thank you for the money, and thank you Giselle for the picture. You´re getting good at doing those! Just add more to it, don´t be afraid to add more! =) Thanks for everything family and I´ll talk to you soon. Love you, BYE!!!!

~Elder Bauer~

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