4/4/11

Things have been shifting around here too. One day, it´ll be crazy hot, then things will cool off again.

 

The shoes are moving along okay. Getting shoes here will be fun, though. Those seem to be the most common things seized by los tontos de Madrid. Granted, those seem to be those ´hip´ Ecco shoes that run like 160 bucks (and they´re not waterproof) I´ve never seen a missionary with a pair that´s lasted their whole mission. Every single one falls apart in the heels.

 

My slip ons are fine (still more comfortable), the other ones are chugging along. There´s starting to be a little wear in the sole on one side, but it´s nothing out of the ordinary. Those things probably have quite a few miles on them.

 

Socks are fine. They´re holding up like they should. No elastic problems yet.

 

We didn´t see Elder Scott talk. Thanks to the time zone issue, we only see the Saturday sessions and Sunday morning. But President Monson made sure we all heard it in Priesthood session. ¨I just see groups of mid 20´s men running around! In groups! I don´t know what they´re doing!¨

 

Now, a secret. The Church has produced a new version of the ¨Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration¨ movie that they released in 2005. And they´ve released it for online download. http://radio.lds.org/joseph?lang=eng

 

Now here´s the fun part. You´ll just need to download it to a flash drive (use the 8GB one, plz), flip down the front door on the Blu-ray player, and stick the flash drive in. Then it should (if there´s no disc in) switch to flash drive mode and you´ll be able to watch it that way. Get the 1080p version (the download link is right below the video box, it´s a 2.2GB file, so transfer speeds will be a bit) so it looks nice and pretty on that big screen. We watched it in between sessions of conference and it´s a lot different from the old one (about 40% is new material). Yes, I know there´s a lot that that player does that I didn´t tell about. Did you know you can get on YouTube with it as well?

 

Fall on the house? I´d be more worried about it falling on my truck!  The house is insured!

So, it was kind of a slow week. We were running around preparing everyone for conference. Tuesday, an inactive had called us asking for help moving. So we all went out to Vic, get there...and nothing´s packed. She then handed around bags and had us pack, then take everything down for her. We set up a nice system, though. My comp and Elder Plaskett on the bottom, loading things in the van, Elder McKinnon and a member on the third floor, bringing things to the elevator, and me...in the elevator, taking things up and down. I probably made about 70 trips in the darn thing. Third floor, oh hi, thanks, close doors, open doors, push crap out, close doors, up to the third, oh hi...yeah. We were there all day. But it´s all right.

 

Spent the rest of the week running around. Then Saturday came. Did some work in the morning, then caught a ride in with a member. (yay...no train). We´re in the stake center waiting around while the member watched the young women meeting. Then, as we´re getting close to the conference, we happened to ask the stake president where we´d be watching it in English.

 

He says ¨Well, they just installed the satellite transceiver this morning, and it´s only configured for Spanish, and the only guy who kinda knows what to do is in Hospitalet.¨

 

So it´s 10 minutes before conference, and we´ve got no English. No time to take the Metro to Hospitalet either. The office elders get there, and we all ran up to the third floor (okay, we took the elevator), managed to get into the family history center (it´s a tiny room), and get the computer hooked up fast enough to start conference just in time. Then we packed twenty missionaries in a room the size of your bedroom...and there´s a lot of microfilm machines in there. It was toasty. But at least we got to watch it in English. After that was done, we went with some members to Plaza Espanya(yes, that´s deliberate spelling. The ¨ñ¨ doesn´t exist in Catalunya) to watch the fountain and light show. I took some pictures, but it was kinda dark. I´ll try to send them along some time. (I swear, none of the card readers in this stupid place work). Then we headed home.

 

Sunday, got up, caught the train, had to run over to Hospitalet to watch Priesthood session (since that´s not sent over the internet until later), then caught the Metro back to the stake center in Barcelona to watch the rest of conference. So we were everywhere. But at least we caught all the sessions in English this time.

 

President Monson thought he´d be funny in the last talk on the Sunday Morning session, though. Everyone thought he was dropping a surprise temple annoucement like President Hinckley used to do, except for one in Jerusalem (yeah, the age of the city was wrong).

 

So, transfer calls came in on Saturday night. Yes, I´m still here for another transfer. We´ll be working on building up the new branch, which, if things stay on schedule, will be having its first meeting there this Sunday. We´ll see how things turn out. ´

 

Today, we´re going to be getting a few things taken care of. I need a haircut, so I´ll be looking for that, and we´ll be taking it easy for the most part. Busy week planned. Hopefully.

 

Hope you all have a good week.

 

Bradley.