5/2/11

Well, they are four years old. That´s a decent age for a cordless phone, it seems.

Rather than kill you with waiting for the details, I´ll be calling on Saturday. And since you´re nine hours behind at the moment, I´ll probably call around eight thirty, which means that the call should come in at 11:30AM your time on Saturday. I´ll check my email mid week to make sure that´s all right, so reply back saying that that´s okay, or tell me if there´s some sporting event that´ll be in the way so I can change it around. Yes, it´ll be the same setup.

Sounds like things have been interesting back there. That´s sad to hear about Brian and Cindy. Especially with that many kids in the middle of it. I did kind of think that the shed was supposed to be messy. It´s a tradition of sorts, isn´t it?

I actually wasn´t in Vic this week. We´ve still got things to do here back in Granollers, so I was here holding down the fort, and Elder Keller and one of the others was out in Vic handling things. Next week is Stake Conference (I´ll see if I make it this time). No baptisms yet, but we´re still really close. Hopefully things pull through before the end of the transfer. (17th).

So, yeah, I was on intercambios this week. Elder Keller went to Gerona to see how things were moving along there, and I was here with Elder Dalton. We had a good time, though most of our visits fired us. At least I was with someone who was more than happy to make Utah jokes...hehehe, though Elder Plaskett usually joins in with us, and he´s from there.

Wednesday night was the Madrid-Barcelona game, so that was nice and crazy. It was a miracle we had a visit at nine, though they were definitely pushing us to hurry and get out.

Thursday, we go out early to catch a train out to Gerona so we can switch back. While on the train we were flipping through some newspapers that had been left out to see what the score had ended up as and other things, when I see an article titled ¨Sony PlayStation Network servers hacked, user data of potentially all 70 million users stolen.¨

Apparently they had a security breach in their main servers, but they´re not sure just how big yet. They crashed the whole system to knock out the hack, but it´ll be a while before they know everything. Most likely, they´ve got a lot of credit card numbers, and yes, my card was tied to my account. Thankfully, it was the old card, so it won´t be a whole lot of use, but if it does turn out to have been stolen, they´ll be notifying me. So if the bank calls saying they´ve cancelled my card, or if the identity theft company calls saying something about how there was a problem, well, now you´ll know. I wouldn´t worry about it too much, though. It was pretty basic, public ally available info (name, etc) and nothing overly sensitive. And that card number is tied to an expired card. We´ll have to wait and see, though, because they´re still trying to see what was seen and/or taken. Either way (I know brandon really doesn´t use the PS3), but if he does start getting messages on it(or the 360. This was a pretty serious attack and very bold, so they might just make Xbox Live and Microsoft their next target) asking personal or funny questions, or if funny stuff starts happening, tell him to let me know. Their system is still shut down, but next week when it´s back up (maybe) I´ll get on and change all the passwords remotely. Crazy world, huh? At least I happened to have seen something, or I wouldn´t have known.

Anyway, we got to Gerona, and caught the train back to Granollers...except it wasn´t a train with a stop in Granollers. We ended up in Barcelona, then had to backtrack on another train to Granollers. I was pretty tired after all that.

Friday we did some work in Vic. Had to help out a bit in the seminary class they´ve got going out there.

Saturday, we just decided to do a full blown intercambio again, so I haven´t been out to Vic since Friday. I stayed here in Granollers with Elder Plaskett (I really don´t care for his companion. Another Gilbert weirdie.) That was nice for a change to not have to travel so much. We taught some of the usual hilarious lessons to Africans (¨This is not Bible. It is like Bible, but it is not Bible. But it is word of God. So we are here to give it to you.¨). Or something like that.

There was one African guy we were waiting for in a park...the other Elders had randomly contacted him, and while he was a Muslim, he was trying to stop smoking (it was a pretty funny contact. ¨That´s bad for you.¨ ¨You´re right!¨ (then the guy throws down all the tabacco). So we were just sharing how it´s bad to smoke and ways he could stop feeling the need to smoke. That´s some of the crazy, random things we do out here....

Then Sunday was spent here, a nice, quiet, normal day. It´s usually refreshing to go on intercambios, even if they can be a pain, because you get some fresh ideas and concepts to apply, plus it´s someone who you haven´t exhausted a lot of conversation topics with.

Things should keep moving along this week. I hope you all have a good one, and I´ll be talking to you on Saturday if all goes well, right?

Love,

Bradley.