Monday, September 9, 2013

Drum Roll!!

Are you just dying to know where I am? I was! It waas killing me. And there will be more typo´s because keyboards in Spain are differen.t <it takes some getting used to. 

GRANADA!
I am so blessed. <it´s the most beautiful place ever! <its pretty much the only part of southern Spain that gets snow and has mountains. <the <mission pres´s wife, sis. Deere, loves it because the country side looks like Utah. If you switched out the olive trees for sage bush then it would be exactly like Utah. 

<so back to the beginning of the week. We had an overnight flight from NYC to Paris before the one down to Málaga. It was kinda of cool actually. The plane was HUGE. And first class truly was first class.Everyone was fed dinne and I had raviolli filled with goats cheese. YUM! They served cold rice that had all sorts of different kinds of grainn, it was pretty good. E. Chapple was sitting next to me and didn´t like it much, but I thought it was kind of fun. 

We flew in to Málaga that next morning and were picked up by sister deere and one of hte elders from the office. they were so nice! I love everyone to death. <they took us to the chapple in Malaga and we met up with all the other newbies from the Madrit MTC. There were a lot of us, we were the biggest group of newbies they´d seen so far. <32 or something huge like that. With our group the mission has doubled since last year. <wow! There were so many of us that there weren´t enough beds in the mission hoe for us that night so all the elders were sent to a hostel for the night. The mission home has an amazing view. It´s not actually in Málaga, it´s in a little town nearby. It´s the most picturesque town on the coast. The house looks out from the top of a hill over the town to all the beautiful white houses and you can see the mederterranian from their backyard. Next time i´m down there I´ll try and get a picture. 

that second day i met my companion, Hermana brown. She´s from Utah and is absolutely perfect. she´s starting her 4th transfer and has spent most of her time in Granada. We get along so well, we´re already close. It probably helops that we´ve already had some crazy adventures.

That first day after being put together we go on a bus back to our area. Everyone rides the bus here for everything. We went to our piso to drop my things off and she wanted to show e the area book until our first apointment. <when we left and went to the bus stop <h. brown realized she didn´t have her wallet! we searched and searched but couldn´t find it. We had to cancel our apointment because we can´t go anywhere without the bus. Our area is really big, its about half the city. We have the downtown area and 3 sets of elders split the rest of it. So we find out where the main bus station is and go there, hoping someone has turned in her wallet. As we walk she´s calling hte office Elders and letting them know and we´re both praying that some kind soul turned in her wallet. It wasn´t just money, her card that shows she´s here leagally was in there too. We get to the office and they say one of hte busses reported a silver wallet. They give us the bus number and we hurry back to the bus stop by our piso. We then spend the rest of the night waiting for hte right bus, running back and forth across the street for the bus stops going different ways. the whole time I´m fighting off jet lag (awful stuff) and starving because my body´s all out of wack. We probably bus hunt for an hour or two. Thankfully both people we missed were oka and we set up other apointments with them. We´d been hunting for forever and finally it was time to go in for the night. We decided to try one more bus. And it was the right bus! It was a miracle. All her cards were in there, all she lost was some cash and her bus card (she got a new one easily). Such a miracle. Whoever the thief was, they were a decent one. 

The next day we were doing our weekly planning when we get a call that I´m supposed to hop on a bus in an hour to take me back to Málaga to start my residency stuff. We scramble to print out our tickets and get to the bus stop in time. We´re going up north to Jaen first so H. brown will be with the sister training there and both of us newbies will ride together. Well somehow we only printed out half our tickets, the ones for jaen to Málaga. Thankfully we found out that in Spain they print a list of everyone with tickets for each bus, so we just showed ID to the bus driver and he let us on.

It doesn´t end there. :) When H. Lyons (other newbie) and I get to Málaga there isn´t anyone there waiting for us. We don´t have tickets to get to Fuengirola (where the mission home is) so we´re not sure what to do. It was kind of scary and we were both fighting off some panic since our spanish is close to nothing. We actually found a pay phone and called Sis Deere to find out if we needed to by train ticket. The elders had missed us by just a couple minutes, we´d been walking around each other i think. ´So the Elders found us a few minutes later and helped us get on the train to Fuen. Sister Deere greeted us both with giant hugs and yummy food. 

That whole day was full of traveling and residency stuff and I didn´t get home until it was tie to go in. <two days into my mission and I hadn´t met any of our investigators yet. i was getting kind of ansy. <i was so excited for Saturday. It was nice to meet everyone! They are all so kind and patient with the fact that I can´t understand much and my Spanish is awful. They all say ¨ a poco a poco´´ which means little by little. It´s true! I´m just glad everyone´s so patient with me. 

 The theta (the lisp) throws me off a lot when I try to understand people. All my teachers in the MTC went to Mexico so my whole district learned that accent. But I´m starting to hear the individual words a little better and I often get the general gist of what people are saying. I just need to expand my vocabulary enough to be able to respond more :).

It´s crazy, our church building here is an actual church! Most places have only a little rented space but our building is the stake center so it´s more like what you´d see in utah. totally caught me by surprise. I was asked to play the piano for the baptizm that night and totally bombed it. I haven´t played much in the last few years and i was nervous. But no one seemed to mind, especially not the two girls getting baptized. There parents are less active and the girls started taking lessons with the missionary´s a little while ago. they´re awesome girls. I´ll love them even more when I can understand them better :)

We have this one investigator who is a miracle in herself. I know this all second hand since i wasn´t here for most of her conversion, but it still amazes me. She´s decided to get baptized but smokes, like most Spaniards. She was smoking about 15 cigaretts a day. <but she set up a plan with the hermanas and in only two weeks she´s down to 4 a day. And for such a quick change she looks great. it´s definately been hard, but she is still functioning. I got to meet her the other day and i was touched by her Spirit. You can feel her aching desire to be baptized and be better. María´s son, Fillipe, was inactive but he passed the sacrament on sunday and is going on the ward temple trip this week! They´re such an amazing family.

Dad, I have tried my first Hellato. Oh. My. Gosh. That stuff is addicting. I´m going to have to be really careful to not eat too much. when H. Brown pulled out hte tub and we started eating we ate WAY too much for one sitting. And María crackers! they´re kind of like Ritz crackers except a million ties better. And I love that ranch doesn´t exist here. 

Apparently the hermanas eat at members houses a lot here. we already went over to a members house for a Noche de Hogar (FHE) with an investigator family the other day. Luz, the member mom, made these yummy pancake things that you open up and fill with cheese and butter. it´s a venisuallian food. No idea what its called, but delicious. 

So my first impressions of Spain: Everyone owns a dog. There´s grafitti everywhere. It smells different, but I have no idea how to describe the smell. Everyone rides the bus or a motorcycle or moped. And Spain Spanish sounds like gibberish. 

But the people are nice and I´m working hard. I love you all! Write me :)


Hermana Woolley

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