¡¡Familia!!! ¡¡Y todos!!
Hola de Málaga! And it really is Málaga, I´m assigned right here in the center of town, not any suburb or anything nearby, but right here in the city! And I´ll tell you about everything in a second!
So, I think I´ve adjusted really well to being here! I kind of miss the MTC but really the only things I miss are the scheduled meals three times a day! But I also sometimes miss the really cool teachers and President Sitterud (he and his wife were like the sweetest people ever! And that´s one cool thing about the Spain MTC, is that the MTC president actually knows you by name! Provo didn´t have that with 3000 missionaries hahaha). And while the city of Madrid was cool, it doesn´t even compare to Málaga! But the Park we went to on Saturdays was super big and the best park I´ve ever been to in my life, so sometimes I miss that. I wish I lived in Madrid just so I could go hang out all day at that Park. But what I miss the most is the temple. The Spain MTC is the closest that anyone will ever live to a temple. Even people in Utah didn´t live as close as we did! I´ll have to show you some pictures sometime taken from the stairwell window just to give you an idea of how close we were and how we saw it ALL the time. Like I timed the walk once from the door of the MTC building to the temple door, and it was a 30 second walk. ¡Qué guay!
Anyway, after I emailed last time, we went to the mission home and spent the night. And WOW I LOVE the mission home in Fuengirola! It´s a beautiful house and it has a great view. I wish I lived in Fuengirola but to be honest, it´s the rich part of town and so I don´t even want to know how much the Church pays for the President´s family to live there! But I don´t know if I mentioned this or anything but the President is super young and has one son at BYU,. one son who finishes his mission in a couple weeks, one daughter that´s 17 and one son that´s 14. The younger kids live here in Spain with them and we talked to them for awhile too. Weds morning was transfer meeting. And so we sat on one side and the trainers sat on the other and then we were all paired up! I´m serving with Hermana Roan in Málaga 2 ward. There are 4 wards in Málaga and the boundaries were literally all switched like 3 weeks ago so people are still getting used to everything being a little new. There are 2 sets of Elders also serving just in Málaga 2! I´ve never been in a ward where there was more than one set of missionaries! So we see other missionaries all the time, which is a lot more fun than the people out in the middle of nowhere who never see anyone, so I´m super blessed to be serving here!
My new companion is AMAZING. I love her so much. Her name is Hermana Roan and she will be 20 in a couple weeks and she is from Wyoming and went to a year of community college there before the mission. She is half Samoan so she is SO pretty. But we get along super well and I click with her really well. I can´t believe how blessed I´ve been with companions! I´m so worried that this streak won´t continue! But we have a lot of things in common, like food and TV and music preferences and we both feel like we´re on the same page with a lot of things. She is a really young missionary (like most of the missionaries here) and has only been out since May! So she just got down with the 12 week training program and now is training! But she does a great job and we´re both really excited for the things we´re going to see here!
We moved into a new piso (apartment, but we always say piso, so I will never remember to say apartment, so just know that for the rest of the mission apartment is piso) and it is seriously one of the best pisos in the mission! No missionaries have ever lived there before but it´s big and only the two of us live there, but more missionaries could definitely fit. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (I have never had my own bathroom before!!!) and a fantastic kitchen. There´s even a small enclosed balconey thing with table and chairs and overlooks the street. I feel so blessed! I have a fantastic compañera, strong ward, and new piso. Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve these blessings! Haha basically I just have to work extra hard!
So the next day, Thursday, I had my first meal at a member´s house! The member invited all the Málaga 2 missionaries for lunch (because lunch is the big meal here around 2pm) and so we went with Elders Gómez, Quinn, Whitworth and Oldroyd. All of them are super cool elders. But the member family was awesome, they are really strong. The parents are great members and the son actually spoke English since he served his mission in Scotland and they have a daughter serving in california (who is friends with my teacher, Hermano Tyndale! from the CCM! so that was exciting that they know him) and then a 6 year old son. Dinner was homemade pizza, so nothing too extreme like squid rings haha. but having had many dinners with missionaries back home, it was REALLY weird to be on the missionary side...But Elder Gómez and Quinn just amuse me to no end, mostly because Elder Gómez is SUPER short (like way shorter than me) and from spain, but he has a strong personality and walks fast, and Elder Quinn is tall and blonde and so it just cracked me up to see Gómez just taking off and the taller elder was the one struggling to keep up! Soooo funny. Sunday was the first day in the new ward! It was really awesome but kind of overwhelming! We started out helping in Primary so we could play piano for them and seriously, I just can´t handle how adorable all the little Spanish children are!!! They are ridiculously cute!!!!! I am intimidated because they speak Spanish better than I do, but that´s okay because I can read better than they can! I had to help one of the read something. And then Sunday school was fun because the teacher spoke pretty clearly compared to everyone else here, so I could follow what was going on okay. But Sacrament Meeting...holy cow, I had NO idea what anyone was talking about. I couldn´t even guess what the themes of the talks were. So I´ve got a ways to go. But lots of members are having us over for citas (appointments) this week, so I´m super excited to get to know them. Hermana Roan said that when the wards split we got a LOT of really strong members, so basically we have the best ward ever and they really want to help us!
Also, I´ve taught my first lessons! And I felt like Elder Calhoun from The Best Two Years because I came all the way to Spain just to teach lessons in English...figures! There are lots of Nigerians here and they speak English and we´re teaching a couple of them. However, if I thought that speaking in English would make me understand the lesson, I was mistaken, because the accent is really thick, so I couldn´t believe the irony, that I had spent 6 weeks in the MTC praying for the ability to speak and understand Spanish, but I never dreamed that it was English that I would be praying to understand! But my ear tuned into them after awhile so it got easier, and the more we teach the more I´ll be trained to pick up their accent. We have an investigator named Michael. I seriously love this man. He´s a Nigerian and seriously the sweetest person ever! He has a baptismal date for the 28th! He is so accepting of the message! The other hermanas were already teaching him before I was here, so I´ve only taught him about the Word of Wisdom and the commandments, but I still love him just as if I´d been teaching him the whole time!
So, the computers and internet usage is more expensive here in Fuengirola than in Málaga (we´re in Fuengirola for a Pday BBQ and softball game with the Deere´s) so we´re going to get off and finish up later. But that´s really most of what I was going to say anyway and so I´ll email people individually later and then next week I can tell you more about the culture here! And the city! Take care! Send me emails! Especially mom and dad, you guys haven´t emailed me since last week??? I need to hear from you! Oh, and my address is:
Avenida Manual Torres 6, 1B
29003 Málaga
España
Send letters there instead of the mission home, because I only will get mail sent to the mission office when we see people from the mission office, which isn´t very often!
Les quiero mucho!!!!!
Hermana Andrew
|
No comments:
Post a Comment