November 7, 2012

Well at least he has been praying!

Alex eating a Porra con Chocolate!! It was good, but fattening!

Elders Alvarez and Cunningham in front of the meetinghouse in Parla

Hello Family!!!

This week has been pretty good/stressful for me. Not much has happened, but it was still pretty fun and recently stressful!! I´ve seen all over the place about the stuff with Hurricane Sandy and it didn´t look good at all. I hope that all goes well with it and that the cleaning of the mess and of the flooding. On to my week!!

Thursday was pretty good for me!! Weekly planning of course and then we went to Yolanda´s house!! She's less active with her family, also less active, but we´re working with them little by little. We did the packet of tea lesson about faith and lighting it on fire!! I´m a pyro so what can I say, I like fire, hehe. Nothing else happened so yeah. Friday was a really fun day!!!! I did exchanges with Elder Perkins in Barrio 3 [Madrid 3rd Ward] and it was fun!!!! I was in Madrid City for the first time ever working there!!! Okay, so not the FIRST time, since back about a year ago when Elder Gallego went home, I worked in Barrio 6 [Madrid 6th Ward] for about 4 - 5 days so yeah. So anyway we did quite a bit of contacting and I learned how to contact effectively in a public transportation vehicle so yeah!! I´m excited to try it out some time!!! We then ate with a part member family and their food was really good!!! YUMMY!!! We then had a lesson with them and went back to the piso [apartment] to rest. Then we had English Classes from 6:30 - 7:30 and then from 7:30 - 8:30 Noche de Hogar [home evening] and it was pretty fun!!! We contacted on the way to the church which was pretty cool!! OH and Elder Perkins and Rodriguez-Silva are both beasts at contacting and lessons!!! Wow, I need to learn a lot still!!

Saturday we had correlation with Gerardo Gordon, and it was pretty disappointing really. He doesn´t worry about the investigators at all so it was pretty sad since we have some pretty good people and he just passes them like nothing. Oh well. We then had Melisa at about 1:00 and it was the same lesson as with Yolanda which was pretty good!! She´s not looking forward to me leaving since I´m the first missionary along with Elder Soriano that she got to know here in Spain. It´s okay though, I know my companion is staying so yeah. We then ate with Ronald and Mira and that food was really good!!! After that not much happened.

Sunday we had church and then we went to Venesia´s house to eat!! She invited one of her aunts over to eat and she is really interested in the church and in what we are doing as missionaries!! She´s really interested in missionaries in particular because Venesia is planning to serve a mission and it´s pretty cool!! She´s put in her papers and is ready to go pretty much!!! We then later had a family home evening with Andy´s family and it was pretty fun!! We did the faith lesson and then had a flour lesson combined!! It was pretty cool!! So you pack flour into a cup and then you turn it upside down on a plate and it´s like a sand castle. You then put a coin and the first person to make the coin fall, has to fish it out with their mouth. It was really funny to see Aarón, Andy´s older kid, with flour on his face! We then played Uno and I didn´t lose!! Haha!! We then went home.

Monday was a pretty cool, but crazy day for us!! We had lunch at 1:30 with Erick y Yulliana and it was really good!! Cielo, their older girl that is about 7 years old, just loves me, and I don´t know why! Every time she sees me, she drops everything and gives me a hug. I think it´s pretty funny, but cute. She´s not happy about the possibility of me leaving, but it´s like a 90% chance that I will leave. We then went over to Valdemoro so that Elder Alvarez could get to know Amador, the Branch Mission Leader of Aranjuez and so that I could say goodbye to him. It was pretty cool and fun to go back into that home, but I´m going to miss Amador.

Alex with Amador

Tuesday ended up being a stressful day for me. So, the Hermanas [Sisters] of Leganes 1 [Leganes 1st Ward] have to have 2 baptismal interviews done before this Saturday, and they set up the interview times without me knowing. So I had two interviews right after District Meeting and I had to be in Parla at 5 since I had a cita [appointment] with Erick y Yulliana. I told them that I could only do one and the other one would have to wait for another day. They were okay with that so that´s what I did. district meeting was pretty much a testimony meeting for the ones leaving and it was really cool!! I could feel the spirit strongly there. I then did the interview!! It was a guy called Andres, from Guayaquil, Ecuador and he was ready!! He´s planning to go to England for work, and asked me if the church was there, and so I´m sure that he´s solid and strong for life. Later on, I got a call from the  Leganes 1 [Leganes 1st Ward]  sisters and I told them that Thursday at about 4:00 or 4:30 I could do the interview, but that I wasn´t sure. So they went ahead and put it at 4:30 and it turns out that it didn´t work out for us, so I tried changing the time, but they told me, no. So in the end after a lot of stress, I worked it out with my companion, but I felt like I was back in the office, hahaha.

Today was P-Day and we went to the mission home!! It was pretty cool since I once again got to walk through the streets of San Sebastían de los Reyes!! I loved it and got super office trunky (or in other words, I really started to miss being in the office, more for the area than for the office stress). It was a good activity and President and Sister Jackson were there!! I just think that is soo cool how President and Sister Jackson are at the activities!! I like that. That´s all. How´s everything going over yonder in Texas? Anything new or just the same old same old? Take care and I´ll talk to you soon!! Love you all!!!

Elder Bauer