8/8/11

Yes, I did get transferred. But they´ve made me a district leader, which means I also have to go to a training meeting they´ve scheduled on Thursday(It´s really inconvenient). Because of that, they aren´t sending me down to my new area until Thursday afternoon, and I´ll probably get there Thursday night.

I could use another tube of toothpaste, si us plau. (that´s not Spanish).

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS

Okay, now, what ever you´re doing, stop, pull up YouTube, and find a video of the Huey Lewis song ¨Back In Time.¨ Once that´s playing, you can proceed to read the rest of this message. 

So, as to where I got transferred...yeah, so Saturday night we finished up, caught the train home, went to the piso, got comfortable, and we were ready for the calls that were supposed to come in between 8:00 and 9:00 PM. Then about 8:10 the phone rang. 

Now, that was an important indicator. The more important transfers get called first. So I knew that it was an important call. 

I had to wait on the phone for about a minute until President finally came on the line. After chit-chatting for another minute, he said, ¨Well, Elder Mattice, I´m calling because I´ve got a new assignment for you. I´m calling you to be district leader, and I´m assigning you to xjkweh, and you´re going to be companions with Elder Gross. Now, he´s a pretty new missionary, so you´re going to be quasi-training, but he´s a good kid. Now can I talk to your companion?¨

Oh, bummer, I just realized that the keyboard randomly scrambled the name of the area I´m going to. Well, I´m sure I might put it at some point in this letter. Maybe. Or I could wait until next week. But if I did that, would it be appropriate? Oh, the dilemma. 

Hey, by the way, I finally sent out that letter on Thursday, so you´ll probably have it Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Okay, so where was it (I love how this is going.). Oh, yes, my new area. Well, I was slightly confused at first, because in theory, this is impossible, (or at least no one has heard of it before), but I´m going back to...Gandia.

Yes, back to Gandia. But don´t send things to the old address, because they´ve changed pisos since I´ve left. I think it´s on the calle Plus Ultra if I remember Elder Dalton correctly, but I´m not certain. The back half would be 46700 Gandia. But I´ll send the rest when I get it later this week (probably on Monday).

And I guess my punny comments about the sister missionaries has come back to haunt me. I´ve got the Benidorm(please do not Google photos of this town. They´ll probably be inappropriate) and Valencia 2nd Ward sisters in my district. 

And the usual Elders from Alcoy. I do not plan to go back to Alcoy on exchanges. It´s uphill both ways in that town. . But really, it is uphill on both sides, because they built the town in a canyon.

I´ve met Elder Gross before. He´s from Minnesota, seems like the shy & timid version of me, and is a little shorter. 

From what I´ve been able to pull out of my contacts, the area is doing better than from when I left it. Unfortunately, the whole ward probably knows about my return, so the element of ¨Surprise! Can we come by?¨ won´t work. Darn. 

I´ve already notified the good Crofts, so I´m sure he´ll send me a big long letter next week. 

Well, if all the data turns out to be gone, tell them you want an efficient backup system for the future. Just ask Uncle Obama for one. . Really, though, that data probably should have been backed up. There´s no reason they couldn´t do that through the main servers. 

It was an interesting week for me. Monday, we did have the Bob Bodily tournament, went well. Then I took my little vacation to Girona on Tuesday-Thursday with Elder Dalton. The rest of the week was spent closing up affairs in Vic. 

Sunday, we finally had electricity in the bakery, and I got to provide English translation for the whole block for the Africans. While fasting...lets just say my voice was shot by the end.

We´ve also been painting a lady´s apartment on and off. She´s out of paint, and we were almost done, so I think we don´t have to go back now. 

Yeah, well, I´m sure I´ll have lots more Gandia tales to be telling you in the near future. 

Love, 

Bradley.