1/31/12

Arizona is almost as large as Spain, so don´t worry. Mallorca´s not that big. For the Spanish Postal Service, the Balearus Islands are the same tarriff as the mainland, so it shouldn´t cost extra. You might want to check, but it costs the same to send things inside Spain and to those islands, so it shoudn´t be different on your end.

My companion´s name is Elder Pericle, and he´s from Virginia. We´ve been having a jolly good time together.

The Office Secretary should give you a call soon to ask about travel details (or perhaps an e-mail) to ask how you´d like the flights configured, so you´ll just have to let him know. I don´t know if they´d have a flight from Georgia or New York to Tucson or not.

So we had to fly in yesterday for mission council, which took up the morning. Then by the time we got here there wasn´t time to write, and the meeting was from 4 to about 930. So we´re in the office now waiting for a 5PM flight (long story), and we´re writing today.

I had to laugh when you said ¨no turbulance¨. On yesterdays flight we´d just started to level off and they turned off the seatbelt light when the plane dropped, the light came back on, and they said ¨We´re experiencing a bit of turbulence, please return to your seats¨. It wasn´t that bad, don´t worry. But I hadn´t been in a plane for a year and a half, now I´ve had four flights in a week´s time, and we´ll be back in Barcelona on the 27th of February for another meeting, followed by a possible trip on the 6th for transfers (or to pick up my new residency card).

We were supposed to catch a 11:40 flight to Palma, but yesterday when we were in the office before the meeting I was talking with the Elder in charge of residency when we realized that the office records were wrong-they thought that I´d already done my fingerprints and everything for my second residency card.  Nope. So they sent us to do that this morning. It went extremely fast, thankfully. Now we´ll be headed out around 5PM for the short hop back to Mallorca.

Actually, I was happy to leave things. Only having one suitcase and my briefcase was rather enjoyable. A lot easier to navigate around airports and trains. And I really haven´t missed the items I stored away. It´s not like I´ll be without them for too long.

Yes, it´s been rainy and cold. I was told I was going to an island, and yet I´ve yet to see any banana trees, straw huts, pineapple plantations, Hawaiian people, or savages. Just a city with normal goodies. It´s quite large, however. With the way the branches are split three quarters of Palma is in our area, with just a quarter for the other Elders. But they survive just fine.

I´m definately not in the same level of apartment we had in Gandia. It´s old and cold. There´s heaters, but we can only have them on if there´s nothing in the washer, and if we don´t have too many lights on. In the summer we´ll be fine, we´ve just got to survive the winter, which will be ending soon, no doubt.

I´m glad to see that all appears to be well back home. I´m sure my cat is fluffy and happpy, as usual.

So I don´t know when I´ll be writing next week. We´ll be having training conferences with the Zone and President on Monday and Tuesday, so I suspect we won´t have our preparation day until Wednesday. I´m not sure how regular my writing schedule will be from here on out. Most of the time it shoudn´t be different, but you never know.

I hope all goes well and that everyone has a good week.

Bradley.