9/27/10

Oh, it should be a good week. Wednesday the unions are calling for a general strike...basically it´s when the Spainards find a way to be even lazier... :)

 

We´re not sure how big it´s going to be just yet. Some people are saying mild, President and the AP´s say we need to be prepared for it to last a full week (aka everything closed for a while). As long as the demonstrations don´t get too violent, we´ll get to go outside and work. Otherwise, it´s staying in the flat and playing poker. It´ll probably be pretty mild here, but I¨d expect Valencia and Madrid to be messy, and Barcelona to be a disaster. The Catalunians love to make a mess as long as it causes problems for the Spanish government. They´re like these great little rebels you just want to cheer on.

 

Been an okay day this morning. We decided to test just how flammable Germ-X is for study time (it wasn´t my bottle) and lit it in a glass. Pretty interesting-nice alcohol fire, then it just goes out. Then we went to play basketball with Sid in the church parking lot, so we´re out in civilian clothes this morning. First time I`ve worn my tennis shoes since leaving the MTC.

 

Conference...we´re going to see. We may go into Valencia, since they´ll have it in English there. The spanish translation is always terrible. No expression, and bland. If not, we may watch it with some of the English speaking members here.

 

We´re still working with Erardo and company. Hillary was baptised on Saturday. I asked him after it whether he liked it and he said yes, so... The dad´s gotten more interested again-he came to the baptism and everything, so that was a good thing.

 

Sunday´s are usually interesting. The ward´s got so many little disputes between members at the moment. Our poor ward mission leader doesn´t have the support of half of his ward missionaries, and the bishopric doesn´t support him either. He said ¨I asked you to make sure the ward missionaries you were calling could at least come to weekly coordination meeting.¨, but Bishop just washed his hands of it and said ¨That´s your job.¨ The bishop...well, he´s not the best. We´re trying, though.

 

Made omelets this morning, but they didn´t turn out so great. I think I´m going to strip down the skillet and try again.

 

Today, I´m going to kick my comp´s butt in poker, which should be good, and then I´ll just enjoy the day. Probably going to buy some premade sandwiches you toss in a skillet and brown (different, more expensive skillet), then buy some Fartons and enjoy those. 

 

I think we´re going to try to visit Hillary tonight, since we´re going to be reteaching everything again. 

 

Friday night, Sid told us he was going to some protest on Saturday night they do every year trying to make it mandatory to learn Catalúnian (different dialect of Spanish, mainly spoken in Catalunya). I told him I didn´t feel real good about him going and that if anything got bad to get out. We didn´t see him until Sunday morning in church (first time he blessed the sacrament. Pretty good-he didn´t mess up). A little bit after, we were out with him when he told us what happened Saturday night. He said he was sitting around with some friends when they tried to get him to smoke marijuana. I guess they pushed pretty hard, and with the alcohol too. He said he felt like he needed to go and told them he was going back home. Thankfully he followed the Spirit and left. 

 

I think that´s all I have for this week. 

 

Bradley.

9/20/10

Not a whole lot of new things going on here. We´ve been digging for anything new for the whole week, but that seems to happen here a lot. Finally got some new investigators, as we were essentially down to just those two kids. Erardo´s pretty well just stopped participating in anything. His mother says ¨Oh, he´s just used to the catholic church...¨, which translates into ¨Church for him is not making any decisions and going once or twice a year.¨. But, not a whole lot we can do. Hillary is still going to be baptised unless it falls through. We´re going to see. We´ve got a new investigator who accepted a date in the first lesson, so that´ll be for the 16th of October.

 

So the wedding was interesting. Went to the reception (had to bum a ride, since we took the train to Xeraco for the wedding. I keep telling Elder Crofts that we should requisition motorcycles from the office. The scriptures say that Ammon took his Honda with him when he preached to the Lamanites...), and waited an hour for the bride and groom to show up...with plates of food in front of us. Luckily, it was just snacks, but we all gave in after about fourty minutes. All the people assigned to our table didn´t come, except for Benjamin (from Holland, speaks English,  he´s the High Priest Group Leader), so we combined with another table. Main course was a suprisingly good lamb...I was very surprised that it tasted that good. Fell off the bone. Then there was ice cream, then the cake. Music was too loud, so no one really danced. We weren´t allowed to dance anyway(apparantly it´s one of those rules), not that I would have danced... Still, i´ve got a few pictures, which I´ll get developed and sent along soon.
 

Less insane travel this week. Just the normal district meeting on Tuesday. Elder Crofts and I hauled the typewriter along as a joke. Elder Corbitt was so jealous. Ever since he saw it during an exchange, he´s been scouring secondhand shops in Alcoy for one.

 

So, last p-day, I went and got a Texas Hold´Em set and taught Elder Crofts how to play poker and Baccarrat. I´m afraid he´s become quite the gambling addict...he may need counseling when he goes home. ;)

 

Today, we´re going to go to the Burger King that we discovered is in Gandia. Been here months and just happened to run into it the other day by accident...sort of embarassing it took so long. Then again, it took two weeks just to discover we had the same birthday.

 

Sid´s still doing fine, though he´s started school again, so we can´t take him many places anymore. Though I think we were getting so many lessons out of him we didn´t quite realize how bad our investigator pool had gotten.

 

Nothing new food wise. Same old, same old. I´ve discovered it´s remarkably easy to eat green beans when you mix them with applesauce...

 

We´re in the middle of a Mercadona boycott, so we´ve been shopping other places. Nice change. I can´t believe they thought they´d get away with charging 10 cents per plastic bag. They may get the weakwilled socialists here, but they won´t get this capitalist! I´ll shop around.
 

It may rain here today. We´re going to see, but I´ve got my umbrella just in case.

 

That´s all for this week.

9/13/10

So...the trip to Madrid didn´t go as planned. In fact, it was a disaster. I had to go with Elder Booher (yay...kentucky...), and we´d planned to stay in Catarroja and catch a simple Cercanias train into the station in the morning. But it turned out the first commuter train wasn´t until the Madrid train left. (yeah, we didn´t fly). So we went into Valencia, show up at the Zone Leader´s piso, and I call on the phone. ¨Hey, can you buzz us up?¨. Poor Elder Ames. Bad first week in the area as a ZL for him. Then we got up at 5 to get to the station by 630, picked up the tickets, got on the train, and got into Madrid at 1030. Unfortunately, I´d turned off the cell phone and when I´d tried to turn it back on, I´d learned that we have a pin code to punch in on start up...and I didn´t know the code. So, I tried for fifteen minutes to get the payphones (which are STUPID) to accept my Visa. Finally, I bought some twelve ounce bottle of Fanta for 2.20 to break the 10 I had, so I could get change for a pay phone to call the office. Then it turned out it was just 1820...*headdesk*. So, got through the metro, picked up our card, and headed back to the station. Elder Parry says ¨Okay, all the trains to Valencia from Madrid are booked, so I´m going to send you to Barcelona, then from Barcelona to Valencia.¨

 

I´m thinking ¨okay, we could just, you know, stay at the MTC for the night, but whatever.¨ So we got on the train to Barcelona (at least he got us the high speed train), and we got to Barcelona. I go to print out the tickets for the return and see that he reserved us tickets...back to Madrid. As I´m calling him to figure out what happened, I see the departures board start flashing ¨Sold Out¨ on all the trains to Valencia...

 

So, he tells us to get to the Mission Office. They got back from proselyting (Office elders work from 830AM to 600 PM, then go out from 630 to 1030. to do missionary work) and he buys us tickets for a 930AM train to Valencia. Spent the night in the Mission Home talking with some others who were there waiting for trains back to their areas, though President, the AP´s, and half the office staff were in Vitoria for a Stake Conference.

 

Saturday morning, get back to the station, try to board the train, only to find out it´s over booked. We´re sitting on the platform as it pulls away, along with about fourty other people. So I called Elder Parry again, he panicks, says ¨go get new tickets.¨ The only scheduled trains were for 730 and 830 that night, putting us in Valencia at like 11 or 12. Luckily, there was a train that just had a stop in Valencia at 3PM. Got off in Castelleon to pick up Elder Crofts, then spent two more hours on commuter trains back to Gandia...got back at 9PM. Then I had to write a last minute talk, which I didn´t end up giving anyway. Either way, I´m glad it´s back to normal now. Our weekly totals were really good with only three days of real proselyting in Gandia...not. :(

 

I´m going to try to do some more repairs to the piso today, though we´re still looking for a new one. I think I´m going to rearrange the living room to make it a little more comfortable.

 

Erardo is on hiatus right now. His mom says he´s terrified of being baptised, but he won´t say anything to us. His sister still wants to be baptised, but now their mother says she wants them to be baptised together...we´re going tonight to see if we can straighten things out.

 

Because of the madness with the Madrid trip, I left my brush in the Mission Office. No idea when I´ll see it again, so I´m going to find a new one today. Wish me luck...

 

Hookay, so I needs some pictures. Mainly just to show people a little more about the US. So...some pictures of the DC trip, pictures of dune trips, pics of you guys, etc.

 

And...did you find out when the Reach soundtrack is coming out? Is it soon?

 

Right now, we´re essentially starting from scratch. One of our investigators is essentially dumping us again, the other two couldn´t care less if we never called again, and that leaves the Bolivians. Still, there´s some old contacts that could be promising. And we´re going to put our 12 ward missionaries to work. And we´re trying to get the members to start giving some references. It´s hard to bribe them with baked goodies if we don´t have an oven, though. Vamos a ver.

 

I´m fine on deodorant and all. Still on the first can of Barbasol. I´m wondering how long that thing is going to last...

 

I guess they´ve been talking that if all of the 40 missionaries with visa delays got here by December, my group will be either training or in leadership positions already. :\.

 

Being in Barcelona for that short period got me the ´Catalunya bug¨, aka I now agree that it´s a seperate country, and I like it better than Spain. People there actually work! It´s like the US! They even have Jaguar dealerships! :)

 

Okay, that´s all for this week. More next week. I´ll try to send out a picture of Sid this week too.

 

Bradley.

pictures from Bradley 9/9/10

They called themselves "District Alma"  This was when he was at the Madrid MTC just prior to leaving for Gandia.....he will always treasure these moments forever.

pictures from Bradley 9/9/10

Madrid Spain Temple.  Outside of the MTC in his apartment on the 5th floor....what an amazing site to wake up to every morning...and go to sleep every night.

9/7/10

Okay, sorry I didn´t write yesterday. I didn´t know, but on transfer weeks our P´days are usually delayed until Tuesday. So we had a work day yesterday.

 

I´m still here in Gandia, and Elder Crofts is too. This transfer was a lot calmer than normal, thankfully.

 

So, the office has had me in limbo for the past week. First, Elder Parry didn´t know when I was going. Then, Tuesday at District meeting in Valencia, Elder Estrada said ¨Okay, so Elder Parry says we´re going to fly to Madrid on thursday, pick up our cards, and fly back on the same day. So I´m thinking ¨Okay, so I spend tuesday night in Alcoy, to go back to Gandia Wednesday afternoon, to go into Valencia Wednesday night, to fly out thusday morning, to come back and be dead Friday.

 

Then, Wednesday, I got a call from Elder Parry saying ¨Okay, I know you´re going to kill me, but we´re not sending you until next Friday, same way.¨ So Friday I´ll probably fly to Madrid and back. It´ll be nice to be on a plane without luggage worries for once, though. Only like an hour flight each way.

 

Poor kid. He´s got less than six months in the field and he´s drowning at the moment. It´s become the mission joke at the moment ¨Oh my, Elder Parry´s involved? Get ready for a disaster!¨

 

Yes, I got my box with the CD´s last monday, actually. I like how it said ¨book¨, but dere was no book inside...

 

Apart from that one box, everything comes fine.

 

I sent out some letters Saturday, so I have no idea when they´ll be delivered. Sent you a couple of photos, and then sent the Williams and your parents a letter. Typed with my fancy typewriter, too!

 

Ismael (small confession: he reminds us of Sid the Sloth from Ice Age, so we´ve nicknamed him Sid) is a spainard. He´s still going out pretty regularly. Good kid-¨like Nathaniel of old, in whom there is no guile¨.

 

Erardo and his sister, Hillary, are Bolivians. We barely got her to agree to be baptised on Thursday. Erardo, for some reason, is really scared of being baptised. We can´t figure out what´s wrong, but the district is praying for him right now and hopefully we can diagnose the problem.

 

Funny story. Hillary has a problem (granted, she´s only 10), in that she doesn´t make decisions. If we asked a question, she always looks to her mother, or to her sister. ANd we were closing up the lesson and hadn´t gotten her to commit to anything again. Then I felt the impression to tell her (because she had said that school was hard this year) that the Holy Ghost could help her with her school work, but that she could only get this if she was baptised. She thought about it for a second, and then said yes, without looking for help.

 

Hopefully she´ll be a good enough pull for Erardo to calm him down.

 

Now, their mother also wants to get baptised, but can´t, because they´re not married. We´ve discussed this with her husband, who always offers the lame excuse ¨I think you have to really know someone before you can marry her¨...they´ve been living together for twenty-five years. We´ve told them they have to talk this out, but it´s not going anywhere really fast.

 

So, our apartment, well, it´s not terrible, but it´s definitely not wonderful. We´ve been making small fixes here and there (a common theme throughout the mission, lazy missionaries running down the apartments), but the apartment is more than thirty years old. (And has electrical problems...had Elder Crofts panicking that I was going to kill myself and set the building on fire for a bit. I was only working with an outlet...and sparks shooting out are normal, right?) But some of the issues include broken light fixtures, no oven, aging bathrooms, peeling plaster, sagging ceilings, (my personal favorite is how it takes ninety seconds for the kitchen light to turn on. And the light fixture where it actually fused the base of the bulb to the socket...). Well, Sister Lund (one of the couple missionaries, she´s the distribution secretary for the mission and her husband is the finance secretary) called on Thursday and said ¨You´re still looking for a new piso, right?¨ Turns out the office never bothered to renew our contract, and so we can look for a piso whenever we want. Already seen that there´s piso´s avaliable that are cheaper and better.

 

It´s odd we´re in that piso, since when President Hinckley got into the mission last year he changed nearly all the pisos because he said ¨We don´t want to be in a piso that could have problems¨. Now that Cataroja has a new one, we might be in the oldest in the mission, so we´re looking now.

 

We were hoping to get one in the same building as one of our favorite members, but they were a tad higher than we´re allowed at the moment. He´s the second counselor here, probably the Spanish equivalent of Dean Kartchner mixed with Gerry. His wife died a few years back, so we visit him every so often.

Sometimes it´s just crazy how things are here. People think it´s normal to be so heavily taxed on everything. And so many people think it´s normal to be out of work. Here, if you´ve worked for only like a month, you can get free checks from the government for over three years...You want to shake them and say ¨This isn´t normal! Wake up!¨ but it wouldn´t matter.

 

Saturday, we were heading to pass by someone when we passed by one of the bakery´s of a member (who´s instructed his employees to give us free pastries all the time...we try not to pass by too often). He asked us to help him move a fridge from the old store to his new one on the main road. So we´re in his van with the fridge (he also speaks English, lived in the US for ten years) and we see that the main road is blocked with protestors. Going around, he shakes his head and says ¨You know what they´re protesting today? George W. Bush. I don´t even think those idiots realize he´s not the President anymore.¨

 

Like he said (and as we´ve noticed), the people are pretty anti-US. Everything is the US´s fault, and that means it´s Bush´s fault, because they all love Obama. Their media constantly reports on how we´re evil, and Islamophobes (because the New Yorkers don´t want a blasted mosque next to the WTC site, which is kind of a ¨duh, that shouldn´t be there, we don´t need a momument to terrorism¨ moment), and all manner of bad things.

 

But still, the work goes on.

Something else you can look for for later is to see when the Halo: Reach Original Soundtrack comes out. I can´t really guess, because for Halo 3 it was a few months after the game launch, and for ODST it was a day and date launch with the game.

 

That´s all for this week. Good luck unpacking!

8/30/10

Well, they said the mail is pretty secure here. No telling, though. Spainards set the standard for mooching and being lazy...more on that later.

 

I´ve gotten the envelope with the talks, but no box yet. Maybe today.

 

Noo! No quads with the button! Too tiny! Blind!

 

Hehe, naah. I don´t like the quads. They´ll hold out for now.

 

The baptism did happen, thankfully. No support from his family, though. Parents are separated, dad´s a muslim (I don´t even think he knows), mom´s a non practicing (like all) Catholic. None of his family came to the service, but thankfully a good amount of the ward turned out. He still goes out with us everyday, though I think we wear him out sometimes. ;)

 

 

Right now we´ve got tentative dates for a baptism on the 11th and the 18th. Though, I think we might try to get the little 12 year old´s sister to agree to be baptised and combine all the services on the 18th.

 

I´m going to develop some pictures today and get them in the mail tomorrow. And, if all goes well, (which it should) we´ll have the typewriter fixed so I can make some legible letters to send out. Yes, it´s electric. We just need a cartridge, which shouldn´t be too hard to find today.

 

We´re pretty restricted on what we´re allowed to have as far as books go, sadly. They´ve cut it down more in recent years too. So on that front, I´ll have to say no.

 

So, more on the lazy spainards. ;), They just don´t do a whole lot. If someone in the US tried to run their business by opening at 10:30, closing at 2, opening back up at 5, and closing at 8, they´d be broke in a month. But that´s how they work here. A lot of times they only work from 10-2 and then close for the rest of the day. Then, August is ¨vacations¨ month, which means it´s entirely acceptable to close for the whole month. Hope you didn´t need anything! The immigrants are the ones who do all the work.

 

Then we get to hear how evil the US is because we don´t have free healthcare. Someone was saying yesterday ¨In America if you can´t afford to pay and get hurt, the doctors will just sit and laugh as you die on their floor.¨...yeah, I´m very serious. He honestly believes that. Then he said how much better free healthcare is, and how their doctors are better(Which is bunk. I´ve seen their hospital waiting room. Talk about nightmare.)...but Obama is great because ¨he really cares for people.¨ So we just have to smile and try to push on. There´s actually a large amount of Obama lovers here. But I keep my mouth shut. It´s still hard sometimes...If they demand an answer I just say ¨I don´t really like him very much¨and move on. 

 

The oddest thing is when they bash us for building houses out of wood. That one I can´t figure out. Yeah, it´s wood, but it´s more than triple the size of your average little apartment here, so what´s it matter?

 

Well, I did say the ceiling looked odd. Not quite that odd, but still.

 

We travel a lot. The weekly trips into Valencia aren´t too bad, but this week I head to Alcoy for Tuesday/Wednesday, then next week I´ll have to head up to Barcelona to the Mission Office, then from Barcelona to Madrid to pick up my ¨This is a non citizen¨ card, then back to Barcelona, and back here again. That´ll probably take a few days, but it´s still a lot. Then today I have to go deal with registering with the government where I live, because they like to keep track of where everyone is at all times. If Obama ever suggests something similar, fight it with all you have.
 

So, we just found out that Bishop Richard C. Edgley is coming to Barcelona to speak to the stake there, but only the Barcelona and Hospitalet zones are invited. But I guess it´d cost a little too much to send all the missionaries up there. 

 

Hannah´s always been a poopoo head, right? She´ll calm down eventually. Maybe.

 

Hope everything else is well. 

 

Bradley.


#2 letter

I don´t know if anyone has ever definitively said what type of war it was. There was a story going around about someone who had a large birthmark on their back. Allegedly, their patriarchal blessing said ¨it was a spear wound from the war in heaven¨, but I´ve never heard a confirmation one way or the other.

 

Don´t forget that the accounts in Moses and Abraham are more detailed and less obscured than the accounts in the Bible.

8/23/10

Okay, so question first, since the answer might be kinda long.

 

We´re all spirit sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Jesus was the first born. Lucifer was somewhere in the beginning, as he was the son of the morning. He wasn´t evil initially, but somewhere along the line in the pre-existance, he started down a bad path and eventually revealed his evil intentions at the Grand Council. At this time we were all still in spirit form, except for the Father and Mother.

 

Because Lucifer sought to destroy our agency and God, he had to be cast out. That´s where the War in Heaven happened, where Michael (Adam) and his angels (us) fought against Lucifer and the 1/3 of spirits who declared their allegiance to him. In the end, we won, and Lucifer and those loyal to him were cast out. Lucifer became Satan, the ¨father of lies¨, and those other spirits became his fallen angels, equal partakers of endless misery.

 

Because they didn´t keep their ´first estate´, (which was our life in the pre-mortal existance), none of them received a body. (Now, if we were to see him in person, he would appear to be a physical person, because our current eyes can´t discern between physical matter here and the finer matter spirit bodies are made of. But he´s still a spirit.)  Those of us who did keep our first estate are here now. Even those who do great wickedness were at some point in the pre-existance, righteous enough to remain on the side of the Almighty.

 

So, every one is His son, but Jesus is the Only Begotten because he´s the only physical son God has created. Christ had a heavenly father with a mortal mother.

 

Now, I certainly hope I come home on a plane in a few years and don´t have to get back on another plane. I´m not sure how that´d happen, but I suppose it´s possible. The Church doesn´t typically ask missionaries to serve a second mission right after the first, but we are facing a serious shortage at the moment. Down below 51,000 worldwide from last count. Peaked at 60 thousand just a few years ago. President Hinckley says he´s begged Salt Lake for more missionaries, but they say they just aren´t available at the moment. Too many are choosing not to go, or aren´t worthy. Now we´re handling all this area, 11 million people, with only 10,000 members and eighty something missionaries. Last year they had 130. We´ve closed over twenty areas, yet the Lord knows our plight. We´re not slowing down on baptisms at all. Right now we´re sitting at something like 225 for the year, with a goal to get 600 by the end of the year. I don´t know if it´s possible, but we´re going to give it all we´ve got.

 

Christmas? It´s a tad early, isn´t it? Maybe a new set of English scriptures (I´m not sure how much longer Mr. Book of Mormon will hold out. The binding´s starting to give. It is over 10 years old now.)  Ah, as for packages, I´ve gotten the deodorant pack, but not the box. It wasn´t at Zone Conference, but a letter from the Williams sent to the MTC was, so...I don´t know where that box is at. Sometimes mail gets misplaced here for a while. Elder Crofts has a horror story of sending home a camera card in November and his parents not getting it until March... 

The post office is only open from 9-2 on weekdays and 9-1 on Saturday. And they don´t deliver on Saturday (lazy bums:p :)

 

Zone Conference was interesting. At one point President had us sign a card that´s going to President Monson, along with one of Yadrow´s new statues (the new Missionary type). I thought ¨You probably have his home address!¨

 

Elder Crofts said that when Richard came through for a tour of the mission last year, he told a story of when he was the mission president for Salt Lake South a few years ago. He said he invited his AP´s over for Christmas dinner...well, you can guess who showed up. He said he thought they were going to die from sitting in their chairs so straight. But he said they relaxed pretty fast, as he wasn´t there as President Hinckley, but as ¨Grandpa¨.

 

Ah, yes. A request. Could you put in the September package some older talks by President Faust and Elder Maxwell? Not their conference talks from April 2000, 2002, 2004, or October 2003, as I´ve got those in the flat. Not a ton, just a couple, please.
 

We´re still on track for the baptism on Saturday. He´s been going out with us on visits every day now, and the Bishop here is pushing him to go on a mission in a year.

 

Had a funny experience the other day. We were in the church teaching a lesson when one of the counselors in the bishopric dropped by. He asked us to give him some info, so we went upstairs to the secretary´s office (which doubles as the library.) I was just looking at the shelves when I see this brown book. I picked it up and realized it was a Book of Mormon, and looked exactly like the original printing from 1830. I´m thinking ¨Naah, can´t be.¨ So I open it and see ¨Printed by E.B. Grandin, New York, 1830.¨ You can bet I was a little shocked.

 

The next page said ¨Heritage reprint, 1970, Salt Lake City.¨ Ah well, it was still interesting to look at it. Nothing was in verse format, it was only like a novel.

 

Another interesting tidbit. The pulpit in the Conference Center? It´s made out of black walnut. From a tree that was in President Hinckley´s backyard...

 

That´s all I´ve got for right now. I´ll write more next week.

 

Bradley.