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.