First full week in Spain

Hi,

So the person that runs the loc (the internet place) was gone for like 40 min so we´ve been waiting to email for forever. But its definitely worth the wait! I love you all so much :)

We had zone conference this week. Elder Chapple is in my zone, so thats awesome! we´ll see each other every once in a while. Zone conference is all in spanish so I didn´t get tons out of it, but it was still fun to hang out with everyone. We all went to McDonalds afterwards so i got to know a lot of missionary´s better. Super fun. 

hna brown took me to my first medio dia cita (the big meal of the day). HOLY COW. It was soooo much food! It felt like thanksgiving. I had a hard time eating as much as I did and it was barely enough to satisfy the mom that I liked her food. It was amazing food, she had fried eggplant and other stuff like that. YUM! Afterwards it was so hard to focus on my language study back in the piso, i just wanted to sleep it off. Definitely didn´t eat any snacks when we got home that night. We have another medio dia cita tomorrow and Hna Brown says she wants us to eat even more. I am not eating breakfast in preparation. My stomach is going to have to strech just to be polite. No wonder missionary´s gain weight here! I´m working out hard to try and not gain any

This week Hna Brown and I tried Neapolitans. It´s a crossaint with chocolate in it. SoooOO amazing. I´m definitely having more of those. I though of you Marissa when I ate mine. It was right up the alley of that little French bakery we went to, except better. 

This week has been kind of hard. Our main investigator started reading Anti-mormon stuff online and now doesn´t like Joseph Smith. She´s not very happy about things in the church right now. she´s been out of town since that day but we´ve been praying for her and think that we´ll be able to help her through her doubts. But we´ve had extra time so we´ve been checking up on menos activos and other people we know. Not everyone is receptive but we´ve found a couple people who might be interested in the gospel. One in particular is Alice. We found her when we went to visit a different person. He wasn´t there but she lives in the same piso (lots of people here live in group pisos to save money). We´ve only had one lesson with her but we´re visiting her again tonight. I´m helping out with the lessons more this week so I´m excited to talk with Alice. She seemed great last time we talked. she really seemed like she wanted to know the truth.

So funny story of the week. It wasn´t funny at the time, but thtat´s always how the best stories are. Our alarm clock is our phone and so every night we charge it and put it between our beds. Sunday morning Hna brown wakes up and goes into the other room only to discover it´s 10:30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!That´s when church starts. We jumped up in a panic and got ready as fast as we could and ran to the bus. It was a miracle, because both busses we need to take to get to church came almost as son as we got to the bus station. Getting to church can take us up to an hour (it´s on the other side of the city opposite of our area) and this sunday we got there and ready in less than an hour. We still missed the majority of sacrament meeting but we were still relieved. I´m the pianist for the ward now that the only other pianist moved last week so they sang a cappella in sacrament meeting. but they´re used to that, so it wasn´t too bad. I played in relief society though and it went so much better than last week. Playing the piano with people singing always makes my legs shake so I could barely make it back to my seat afterwards. But the Lord had definately blessed me to be able to play decently. 

There have been so many blessings and tender mercy´s this week. Every day the Lord helps us through with some little (or big) blessing! It´s so comforting to know He is so aware of us and wants to help us so much. I don´t remember where I heard it, but someone said that the Lord is just waiting to bless us. Any time we do something good He tries to help us out a little bit. Our hardest day at the lowest point we found out that we will be able to move piso´s next transfer!! we´ve been hoping to but weren´t sure if we could. It was such a huge blessing. We talked with a realator earlier today (by we I mean Hna Brown. I don´t have the vocab for that sort of thing at all) and we´re going to check out a few tonight. So we should be moving! We´re soooo excited.

I finally finished Our Search for Happiness this week and started Jesus the Christ. Both are such good books. I think everyone should read our search, it explains the gospel so clearly. Very helpful. Hna brown was really sick one morning so I had lots of study time. We went out that afternoon but she was too dizzy to go out in the morning, she´d been fighting it for days and her body finally told her it was done. So I got lots of time to study. don´t worry mom, I´ve been drinking lots of water and staying healthy as possible :) I drink so much more water now than I ever have before in my life! We have these gian 2 L water bottles that we try to drink 2 of every day. So. Much. Water. But I feel great when I get the full 2 in. 

We had another medio dia cita with an American family that lives in the ward. They´re from Colorado and are living in Spain for 2 years so that their kids will be bilingual. They´re an amazing family, so nice. They fed us taco salad too, and it was nice to have something traditonally American. But with good Spanish ingredients. It was a good combonation. They live in an actual house which is really unusual. It´s beautiful and had the best view! I wish I´d had my camera, I would have taken pictures. I was really bad at remembering it all week and so I don´t have any pictures for you, sorry about that. I need to take some pictures of hte cool grafitti too. There´s the ugly stuff and then there´s the beautiful art work. We see a lot of both. I´m getting good at ignoring the ugly stuff and keep my eyes out for the actual art. It´s so cool to see. 

so this letter is probably very unorganized and crazy. I´m not very good at organizing my thoughts as I write. I love you all very much! I promise that if you read the scriptures with the intent of learning something new you will. God knows our heart and our intent. He´ll give us answers when He knows we´ll act on them. We all experience miracles every day, not just when we´re missionary´s. Keep your spiritual eyes open, it´s amazing. 

I love you so much! I´m praying for you. Stay strong and have fun. Have a good week! Big hug.