June 6, 2012

Alex with his defective luggage - broken during transfer

Palacio Real - Aranjuez

The other two elder sharing the apartment and working in Parla: 

From left to right:  Elders Alvarez and Simmons

The missionaries bowling on P-day (which was also D-day):

Back row (left to right): Elders Bauer, Gonzalez, Bermudez, Stephens, Soriano.

Front row (left to right): Elder Veintimilla, Sisters Farias, Miron

Hello Family!

So this past week has been pretty cool!! I´m glad that you guys are having a good time and that all is going well over yonder in the other side of the world!! Here as I said has been pretty good!! So here´s my week in a pretty small nutshell.

So Thursday Elder Soriano pointed out that we´ve been falting quite a few contacts (where you talk to people and give a testimony, teach a principle, and invite them to do something or with a card) and so we´ve decided to try to find more time for those contacts. We had like 30 or something and only Thursday to Sunday to get it up a bit more. So, off we went to work. We´ve been working like crazy here in Parla, or as President Watkins calls it, Perla (pearl), and we´ve been seeing quite a few people come up!! Thursday we also had our weekly planning session and we set some pretty good goals for this week. So by the end of our week, we got 84 contacts, one with a baptismal date, and one new investigator!! How cool is that!! The one with a date has been taught a lot and lives in a town called Aranjuez in the state of Castilla la Mancha.  We have to take a bus to a town close called Pinto, and then a Renfe [regional train] to there. When we visited her, we had to walk a lot and we passed a Palace which was pretty cool!! I turned to Elder Soriano and asked jokingly, "So she lives there," pointing to the palace. It´s called Palacio Real. So when we met with her for the first time, I knew that she was ready so we put her on date for the end of this month.

Saturday was a rather interesting day. We met with some Evangelists, and boy, are they hard as rocks as far as feeling the Spirit? I shared my testimony, and I really can say that the Spirit was there, but of course, they doubted everything that I said, so I read them some scriptures from 2 Nephi 33 and decided to end it there. I can honestly say that I wasn´t too happy after that meeting with them, but it´s all fine. Sunday I met the branch and had to stand up in front of everyone during sacrament meeting to introduce myself to them and show them that I was excited to work with them. Later that day we met with a guy called Javier which we contacted on the street the day before and he called us!! So we had a little lesson with him to get to know him and such.

Monday we had another good day. We met with a former investigator and she seems to have interest in our message!! So another new investigator this week!! We then did a ton of contacts, and at the end of the day, I bought us some cakes at a chino [convenience store] so that we could celebrate! Pretty cool! Tuesday was district meeting and that takes place in Leganes. We have four elders and four sisters in our district. We take the Renfe for 2 stops, then the metro for about 6 or 7 stops, and walk to the church building, and it´s actually a separate building, but pretty small. Leganes is a pretty cool place, I like it! Today for P-Day we went to "Ice Skate" but it was closed. I came in appropriate clothing too, a sweater – I fried. We ate lunch at Dominos and went bowling.  Elder Stephens taught the gospel as he bowled!!! So in Preach My Gospel, it describes every point of time where the prophets were rechazado [rejected] as an apostasy. So he would get some points, then zero, then a few, then zero, and then a few, and then zero for like 4 or 5 turns, until he got points! Then he got a strike, so the fullness of the gospel came at that time. Haha, it was funny...well for a missionary it´s funny, so don´t judge me! Haha!! Then we came home and now I´m emailing!

How´s all of the peeps over there? Peeps as in all of the people. I hope everyone is doing just dandy!! Take care and I´ll talk to you soon!! Love you all!!

Elder Bauer