May 2, 2012

"My cool looking phone!!"

Elders Forrest and Bauer (Alex) at the university in Alcalá de Henares (taken in the Plaza de San Diego)

Plaza de Cervantes, Alcalá de Henares

Missionaries visiting the home of Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares on P-Day

Back row (left to right):  Elders Rodriguez, Vogel, and Soliz

Front row (left to right): Elders Forrest, Bauer (Alex), and Foster

Family,

Can I believe that it´s been a year already? Not really at all!!!! I´ve had fast and slow days, fun and not so fun times, but overall, everything went by so fast!!! I really don´t know where the time has gone!! Crazy how that works right? Well, crazy stressful stuff has happened this week that has just drained my energy, and on the mission, there is no time to really get it back, especially as a secretary that doesn´t get Medio-Dia [lunch break] every day. So here goes my week in no real particular order.

So all this past week, I´ve had to buy tickets and plan things out for missionaries needing to pick up their residency cards. So I believe it was Friday when they came in to get their cards from the islands – two from the islands, and one from the north, in Oviedo. We picked them up and went to get their cards in Avenida de los Poblados [street name in Madrid] at the Oficina de Extranjeria [Foreign Office] and it all went well. They got their cards and everything went well. We then dropped of Elder Miner with the Barrio 9 Elders [Missionaries serving the Ninth Ward] so that they could take him to catch his train in the morning to go back to the north. Elders Pluim and Bagley, from the islands, were staying with us so that we could take them to the airport the next day since we live super close to the airport. So the next day, on Saturday, we got over there to the airport and dropped them off about an hour and 15 minutes before their flight departed thinking all would be well. Well...everything didn´t go well. They missed their flight because they got there "too late" to be able to get on their flight. So we had to go and pick them up again to take them so that they could stay with us for another two days until Monday to get a flight back to the Canaries. So our ward on Sunday was super shocked to see eight missionaries there as well as the Ovards [an older couple - missionaries], so ten missionaries there in the ward; so it was pretty fun.

Monday we got them to the airport two hours early so that there was no excuse that they couldn´t get on their flight. We even walked in with them just in case. So everything went well with them so that they could get on and get back to their island. I also had to change a ticket because I forgot that there was a holiday on Tuesday and that the Oficina de Extranjeria [Foreign Office] wouldn´t be opened until Thursday so yeah. Tuesday we had to go back to the airport to do something with the flight of Elder Ortiz so that he could go and pick up the residency card. We had to present the credit card to the people working there so that they would let Elder Ortiz on the plane on Thursday when he had to come over to do that.

Today it was P-Day, and we had to go...guess where...to the airport, AGAIN!!! I forgot to confirm the flight for someone that had to go home and do residency, plus he missed his flight.  But it was fine, we got him another flight for later and all is well. Then I got a call telling me that a missionary that went home Monday to do residency, for some reason, didn´t get all of his residency done at home, which is in the Barcelona mission so, I´m starting to get a headache about all of that just thinking about it. It´s okay though, I´m trying to do all of the things I have to do here as best as I can. I even got some advice from another missionary that was here in the office a while ago about things that would help me out. It was pretty good. We also went to Alcalá de Henares and that was pretty fun!! We saw all sorts of stuff as well as the house of Cervantes, the guy who wrote Don Quixote, so yeah! Pretty fun!!!

Take care and have a good day! Love you all!!

Elder Bauer