10/12/10 pictures

 Bradley w/ one of the oldest members in Gandia, Spain.  Tomas Costa

 Bradley w/ Hillary...the little girl they baptized.

 Bradley w/ Erardo.  They baptized him after he came looking for them.....lovingly nicknamed Sid (the sloth) went out everyday with them for weeks before his college classes started.  Wants to be a missionary when he turns 19.

The wedding he attended....that he spoke about in a previous letter. 

10/12/10

Okay, I´m in Tarragona now. Just got in about thirty minutes ago. Crazy trip.

We left Valencia about six, got to the Office about 10:30 since we had to take the Metro (Three suitcases+stairs=not fun). Office was pretty full, so we were all making a big racket last night. Had a good joke, though. Elder Parry was in panic mode (as usual) with all the tickets. Finally, he got a break and was off the phone for about two minutes. So Elder Crofts pulls out the phone, and dials the office. He goes ¨Hey, Elder Parry, what do I do if I missed the train?¨ Now, he´s sitting literally ten feet from Elder Parry. Elder Parry puts down the phone and puts his head in his hands. ¨Aaarrrgghhh!¨ Elder Johansen says ¨What´s up, did someone miss a train?¨ He goes ¨How did you guess? Elder Crofts is stuck in the train station.¨ Elder Crofts goes, ¨Hey, I´m here.¨ Elder Parry picks up the phone, calls Elder Crofts back. Elder Crofts is like ¨I¨m here, Elder Parry.¨ Finally, he had to get up and walk over to the desk. ¨Elder Parry!¨. Elder Parry just sees him...then groans. Whole office just about died. Elder Parry didn´t realize he was in the room the whole time.

Then, got up this morning, most of the Elders went in to the Trainers meeting, but the Hinckley´s asked Elder Fairchild and I to go up to their residence and fix the TV and the computer, so that took some time. Another group came in, with some other friends. They told us to get out of the office before the greenies came in, so we headed for Sagrada Familia. I get to that Metro stop and the office calls ¨Elder Mattice, could you come back? Elder Close is here.¨. Then I go back, only to come back to Sagrada Familia with Elder Close and another group. Fraid I didn´t think to grab the camera, so no pics of that. But I´m attaching a fair amount, eh? Still, we´re only an hour out of Barcelona, so it wouldn´t be hard to go back. Lot cooler up here. Good thing-it´s almost jacket time, and I´d been hoping it´d cool off before that happened.

Piso is a little newer, but we´re looking here. Have to be out by the 30th of October, so we´re in a hurry. Apparantly they found a nice one, but you could kind of see a pool, which meant no go.

Surprises? Well, there´s about twenty VHS copies of Finding Faith In Christ under his bedspread. Those should be fun to sleep on. Then a few other things just left around.

I´m sure I´ll be able to drive fine. If I ever end up stuck in the office, you pretty well have to drive, so...

Not a ton more to report on. We´re going to go by groceries tonight, then I´m not sure what else

10/11/10

Well...I´m not sure when I´m going to get my package. If it doesn´t get here by 4:10 today, it could be a few more days. Elder Crofts says he´ll forward anything that comes.

 

I´m being transferred already!

 

Hehe, yes, not joking. I´m going to Tarragona now. Everyone was kinda surprised, since I only had two transfers here. Elder Crofts is staying here to train someone else now.  Plus, transfers were moved up a week because President will be in Germany next week. So I take a train out of Valencia at 5:30 this evening, up to Barcelona, then Tarragona is only an hour out of Barcelona. Half the zone is being transferred, so I´ll be with a big group. (Elder Greenburg only was here for three weeks.) My district leader here is being transferred to the Hospitalet zone with me to be the new Zone Leader there. I think Crofts might end up being the district leader here. He´s looking forward to that...not. ;) But I´ve left plenty of surprises for him for when he gets back. :)
 

So, yeah, better hold the mail for a bit. Tomorrow is the official p-day, so I should be able to send the new address pretty quick.

 

No, we never did anything toward a new apartment. But I know Tarragona just switched, so it should be nicer.

 

Got to pack today. I hate packing. :( A lot is still packed...but it´s a pain.

 

I considered it, but I think I´ll leave the typewriter. Too big to drag across the country.

 

Of course he can stay in country and learn Spanish. Elder Crofts´s brother just started his in San Antonio. Lazy bums have a car and everything. And they´re always eating barbacue...

 

So, since tomorrow is still p-day, I should be writing more, but it´s not guaranteed.

 

Tell Determan ¨No way.¨

 

No, never heard of that book. Never read it either, so must have been something else.

 

So, it was a fairly quiet week. Not a lot to share. I feel bad with this short letter. 

 

I´m sure he´ll drive fine once he can reach the pedals. Not sure how he´s going to do that until he grows a bit...

 

It´s finally starting to cool down, thankfully. And It´ll be colder in Tarragona, since it´s more north. 

 

More tomorrow, hopefully. If not, next week. 

 

Bradley.

10/4/10

Germ X is just 99 percent alcohol. And it wasn´t even my idea, actually.

 

Strike was a bust. Spaniards are too lazy to get out and do anything. No one even bothered to close. I understand it was more interesting in other places, but not here.

 

So, we´d planned to have a good weekend and go to Alcoy to watch the conference with friends (in English), but as is typical, something got in the way. :P. We went to the bus station at 2:00 to wait for the 2:30 bus. Never came. Looked at the sign to see the bus to Alcoy was at 4:45 now. So we kept waiting...bus never came. Turns out they don´t bother to run buses to Alcoy on the weekends. Not sure why it was on the sign...so by then it was too late to go to Valencia, so we were stuck watching it in Spanish in Gandia. And we couldn´t get out to Alcoy with a reasonable time on Sunday, so we just ended up going into Valencia to watch the three other sessions. But we had to catch a train back, so we missed the Sunday Afternoon, which didn´t start until 10PM here. We´d planned on having a popcorn party in Alcoy and watching it, but it´s alright.

 

Conference was a little more fiery than we expected. Especially compared to April conference, the General Authorities were pretty blunt about what´s been going on. We didn´t get to hear his actual voice on Saturday Morning´s session (monotone translator), but he seemed pretty serious about the missionary shortage. I know Elder Nelson spoke the same in Priesthood Session as well.

 

Going to be another digging week this week. We´ve already tossed the baptismal date for Franns. He was good in the beginning, but then we found out he´s not married (despite the fact he says ´my wife´.) and after we had a lesson where his wife and sister were in it (both more fanatical in their religions) he´s pretty well cooled off. Now he´s denying prophets and all the things he said he knew were true. We think they´ve been talking to him. He´s really confused. Told us that a prophet had to be perfect, and no one could be perfect today. We told him that the Bible prophets weren´t perfect, but that didn´t go too well. Elder Crofts got pretty irritated, so I had to close up and get us out of there. ;) But we´ll still keep visiting him.

 

We´re going to have to get the ward more involved. We were talking with the old ward mission leader, who told us that we needed to pretty well slap the members with a commitment in a way that certain people in the ward can´t stop. One of the ward missionaries just constantly argues, misuses quotes, says that pass along cards and pamphlets are useless, and basically doesn´t want to do anything. But we´ve got a plan for her...hehehe. I even typed it. ¨A Most Excellent Plan for the Stopping of Attempted Counter-Attack by...¨. I´m going to speak in sacrament meeting soon, and going to commit the members to give out five pass-along cards a week. Even if it´s just shoving them in mailboxes. He said when they did it in England, they had baptisms every week. I suspect the lady will try to misuse President Hinckley´s talk where he said ¨This work isn´t just giving out pamphlets¨, but we´ve been working with Bishop and he´s said he´ll help push the idea. He said ¨One, that just says ¨not only¨, and two, President Hinckley isn´t the prophet anymore, President Monson is, and he´s the one who´s pushed these newer cards into Spain (we´ve got new style cards now).

 

Then we´ve got to get them to start holding activities. They don´t here, and I guess it´s because most of the members think it´s inappropriate. They´ve got the idea that the chapel is ¨the house of the Lord¨, but it´s not, that´s the temple. I guess the English family had a water party once and certain members blew a gasket because there was a little water on the tile inside. But it´d be nice to have things to invite investigators too.

 

With the shortage of missionaries, President and the leadership decided to drop the goal of 600 baptisms for this year. We had three months to get more than we´ve gotten all year, so it just wasn´t happening. Now we´re going to try to meet four hundred, which means we need like 45 a month for the next three months. Then we´ll realign based on the count next year.

 

Don´t worry too much about the pictures. Whenever you have time is all.

 

Yes, when you get a conference Ensign, send it, because it´ll be like February before we get it here.

 

We´ll be doing more poker today, but we´ve developed a ¨Prophet and Apostles¨ Memory game, and we´ve been using it a lot this week, including in lessons. Maybe I´ll sell it to Deseret Book when I get back ;).

Saturday during our lunch with Benjamin, he had some really good pasta I´m going to make today. Noodles, cheese, mayo (I know, but it was good), and bacon. Should be able to get all the ingredients.

 

No tengo mas. Eso es todo. Lo siento.

 

Bradley.