10/12/10 pictures

 Bradley w/ one of the oldest members in Gandia, Spain.  Tomas Costa

 Bradley w/ Hillary...the little girl they baptized.

 Bradley w/ Erardo.  They baptized him after he came looking for them.....lovingly nicknamed Sid (the sloth) went out everyday with them for weeks before his college classes started.  Wants to be a missionary when he turns 19.

The wedding he attended....that he spoke about in a previous letter. 

10/12/10

Okay, I´m in Tarragona now. Just got in about thirty minutes ago. Crazy trip.

We left Valencia about six, got to the Office about 10:30 since we had to take the Metro (Three suitcases+stairs=not fun). Office was pretty full, so we were all making a big racket last night. Had a good joke, though. Elder Parry was in panic mode (as usual) with all the tickets. Finally, he got a break and was off the phone for about two minutes. So Elder Crofts pulls out the phone, and dials the office. He goes ¨Hey, Elder Parry, what do I do if I missed the train?¨ Now, he´s sitting literally ten feet from Elder Parry. Elder Parry puts down the phone and puts his head in his hands. ¨Aaarrrgghhh!¨ Elder Johansen says ¨What´s up, did someone miss a train?¨ He goes ¨How did you guess? Elder Crofts is stuck in the train station.¨ Elder Crofts goes, ¨Hey, I´m here.¨ Elder Parry picks up the phone, calls Elder Crofts back. Elder Crofts is like ¨I¨m here, Elder Parry.¨ Finally, he had to get up and walk over to the desk. ¨Elder Parry!¨. Elder Parry just sees him...then groans. Whole office just about died. Elder Parry didn´t realize he was in the room the whole time.

Then, got up this morning, most of the Elders went in to the Trainers meeting, but the Hinckley´s asked Elder Fairchild and I to go up to their residence and fix the TV and the computer, so that took some time. Another group came in, with some other friends. They told us to get out of the office before the greenies came in, so we headed for Sagrada Familia. I get to that Metro stop and the office calls ¨Elder Mattice, could you come back? Elder Close is here.¨. Then I go back, only to come back to Sagrada Familia with Elder Close and another group. Fraid I didn´t think to grab the camera, so no pics of that. But I´m attaching a fair amount, eh? Still, we´re only an hour out of Barcelona, so it wouldn´t be hard to go back. Lot cooler up here. Good thing-it´s almost jacket time, and I´d been hoping it´d cool off before that happened.

Piso is a little newer, but we´re looking here. Have to be out by the 30th of October, so we´re in a hurry. Apparantly they found a nice one, but you could kind of see a pool, which meant no go.

Surprises? Well, there´s about twenty VHS copies of Finding Faith In Christ under his bedspread. Those should be fun to sleep on. Then a few other things just left around.

I´m sure I´ll be able to drive fine. If I ever end up stuck in the office, you pretty well have to drive, so...

Not a ton more to report on. We´re going to go by groceries tonight, then I´m not sure what else

10/11/10

Well...I´m not sure when I´m going to get my package. If it doesn´t get here by 4:10 today, it could be a few more days. Elder Crofts says he´ll forward anything that comes.

 

I´m being transferred already!

 

Hehe, yes, not joking. I´m going to Tarragona now. Everyone was kinda surprised, since I only had two transfers here. Elder Crofts is staying here to train someone else now.  Plus, transfers were moved up a week because President will be in Germany next week. So I take a train out of Valencia at 5:30 this evening, up to Barcelona, then Tarragona is only an hour out of Barcelona. Half the zone is being transferred, so I´ll be with a big group. (Elder Greenburg only was here for three weeks.) My district leader here is being transferred to the Hospitalet zone with me to be the new Zone Leader there. I think Crofts might end up being the district leader here. He´s looking forward to that...not. ;) But I´ve left plenty of surprises for him for when he gets back. :)
 

So, yeah, better hold the mail for a bit. Tomorrow is the official p-day, so I should be able to send the new address pretty quick.

 

No, we never did anything toward a new apartment. But I know Tarragona just switched, so it should be nicer.

 

Got to pack today. I hate packing. :( A lot is still packed...but it´s a pain.

 

I considered it, but I think I´ll leave the typewriter. Too big to drag across the country.

 

Of course he can stay in country and learn Spanish. Elder Crofts´s brother just started his in San Antonio. Lazy bums have a car and everything. And they´re always eating barbacue...

 

So, since tomorrow is still p-day, I should be writing more, but it´s not guaranteed.

 

Tell Determan ¨No way.¨

 

No, never heard of that book. Never read it either, so must have been something else.

 

So, it was a fairly quiet week. Not a lot to share. I feel bad with this short letter. 

 

I´m sure he´ll drive fine once he can reach the pedals. Not sure how he´s going to do that until he grows a bit...

 

It´s finally starting to cool down, thankfully. And It´ll be colder in Tarragona, since it´s more north. 

 

More tomorrow, hopefully. If not, next week. 

 

Bradley.

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.

9/27/10

Oh, it should be a good week. Wednesday the unions are calling for a general strike...basically it´s when the Spainards find a way to be even lazier... :)

 

We´re not sure how big it´s going to be just yet. Some people are saying mild, President and the AP´s say we need to be prepared for it to last a full week (aka everything closed for a while). As long as the demonstrations don´t get too violent, we´ll get to go outside and work. Otherwise, it´s staying in the flat and playing poker. It´ll probably be pretty mild here, but I¨d expect Valencia and Madrid to be messy, and Barcelona to be a disaster. The Catalunians love to make a mess as long as it causes problems for the Spanish government. They´re like these great little rebels you just want to cheer on.

 

Been an okay day this morning. We decided to test just how flammable Germ-X is for study time (it wasn´t my bottle) and lit it in a glass. Pretty interesting-nice alcohol fire, then it just goes out. Then we went to play basketball with Sid in the church parking lot, so we´re out in civilian clothes this morning. First time I`ve worn my tennis shoes since leaving the MTC.

 

Conference...we´re going to see. We may go into Valencia, since they´ll have it in English there. The spanish translation is always terrible. No expression, and bland. If not, we may watch it with some of the English speaking members here.

 

We´re still working with Erardo and company. Hillary was baptised on Saturday. I asked him after it whether he liked it and he said yes, so... The dad´s gotten more interested again-he came to the baptism and everything, so that was a good thing.

 

Sunday´s are usually interesting. The ward´s got so many little disputes between members at the moment. Our poor ward mission leader doesn´t have the support of half of his ward missionaries, and the bishopric doesn´t support him either. He said ¨I asked you to make sure the ward missionaries you were calling could at least come to weekly coordination meeting.¨, but Bishop just washed his hands of it and said ¨That´s your job.¨ The bishop...well, he´s not the best. We´re trying, though.

 

Made omelets this morning, but they didn´t turn out so great. I think I´m going to strip down the skillet and try again.

 

Today, I´m going to kick my comp´s butt in poker, which should be good, and then I´ll just enjoy the day. Probably going to buy some premade sandwiches you toss in a skillet and brown (different, more expensive skillet), then buy some Fartons and enjoy those. 

 

I think we´re going to try to visit Hillary tonight, since we´re going to be reteaching everything again. 

 

Friday night, Sid told us he was going to some protest on Saturday night they do every year trying to make it mandatory to learn Catalúnian (different dialect of Spanish, mainly spoken in Catalunya). I told him I didn´t feel real good about him going and that if anything got bad to get out. We didn´t see him until Sunday morning in church (first time he blessed the sacrament. Pretty good-he didn´t mess up). A little bit after, we were out with him when he told us what happened Saturday night. He said he was sitting around with some friends when they tried to get him to smoke marijuana. I guess they pushed pretty hard, and with the alcohol too. He said he felt like he needed to go and told them he was going back home. Thankfully he followed the Spirit and left. 

 

I think that´s all I have for this week. 

 

Bradley.

9/20/10

Not a whole lot of new things going on here. We´ve been digging for anything new for the whole week, but that seems to happen here a lot. Finally got some new investigators, as we were essentially down to just those two kids. Erardo´s pretty well just stopped participating in anything. His mother says ¨Oh, he´s just used to the catholic church...¨, which translates into ¨Church for him is not making any decisions and going once or twice a year.¨. But, not a whole lot we can do. Hillary is still going to be baptised unless it falls through. We´re going to see. We´ve got a new investigator who accepted a date in the first lesson, so that´ll be for the 16th of October.

 

So the wedding was interesting. Went to the reception (had to bum a ride, since we took the train to Xeraco for the wedding. I keep telling Elder Crofts that we should requisition motorcycles from the office. The scriptures say that Ammon took his Honda with him when he preached to the Lamanites...), and waited an hour for the bride and groom to show up...with plates of food in front of us. Luckily, it was just snacks, but we all gave in after about fourty minutes. All the people assigned to our table didn´t come, except for Benjamin (from Holland, speaks English,  he´s the High Priest Group Leader), so we combined with another table. Main course was a suprisingly good lamb...I was very surprised that it tasted that good. Fell off the bone. Then there was ice cream, then the cake. Music was too loud, so no one really danced. We weren´t allowed to dance anyway(apparantly it´s one of those rules), not that I would have danced... Still, i´ve got a few pictures, which I´ll get developed and sent along soon.
 

Less insane travel this week. Just the normal district meeting on Tuesday. Elder Crofts and I hauled the typewriter along as a joke. Elder Corbitt was so jealous. Ever since he saw it during an exchange, he´s been scouring secondhand shops in Alcoy for one.

 

So, last p-day, I went and got a Texas Hold´Em set and taught Elder Crofts how to play poker and Baccarrat. I´m afraid he´s become quite the gambling addict...he may need counseling when he goes home. ;)

 

Today, we´re going to go to the Burger King that we discovered is in Gandia. Been here months and just happened to run into it the other day by accident...sort of embarassing it took so long. Then again, it took two weeks just to discover we had the same birthday.

 

Sid´s still doing fine, though he´s started school again, so we can´t take him many places anymore. Though I think we were getting so many lessons out of him we didn´t quite realize how bad our investigator pool had gotten.

 

Nothing new food wise. Same old, same old. I´ve discovered it´s remarkably easy to eat green beans when you mix them with applesauce...

 

We´re in the middle of a Mercadona boycott, so we´ve been shopping other places. Nice change. I can´t believe they thought they´d get away with charging 10 cents per plastic bag. They may get the weakwilled socialists here, but they won´t get this capitalist! I´ll shop around.
 

It may rain here today. We´re going to see, but I´ve got my umbrella just in case.

 

That´s all for this week.

9/13/10

So...the trip to Madrid didn´t go as planned. In fact, it was a disaster. I had to go with Elder Booher (yay...kentucky...), and we´d planned to stay in Catarroja and catch a simple Cercanias train into the station in the morning. But it turned out the first commuter train wasn´t until the Madrid train left. (yeah, we didn´t fly). So we went into Valencia, show up at the Zone Leader´s piso, and I call on the phone. ¨Hey, can you buzz us up?¨. Poor Elder Ames. Bad first week in the area as a ZL for him. Then we got up at 5 to get to the station by 630, picked up the tickets, got on the train, and got into Madrid at 1030. Unfortunately, I´d turned off the cell phone and when I´d tried to turn it back on, I´d learned that we have a pin code to punch in on start up...and I didn´t know the code. So, I tried for fifteen minutes to get the payphones (which are STUPID) to accept my Visa. Finally, I bought some twelve ounce bottle of Fanta for 2.20 to break the 10 I had, so I could get change for a pay phone to call the office. Then it turned out it was just 1820...*headdesk*. So, got through the metro, picked up our card, and headed back to the station. Elder Parry says ¨Okay, all the trains to Valencia from Madrid are booked, so I´m going to send you to Barcelona, then from Barcelona to Valencia.¨

 

I´m thinking ¨okay, we could just, you know, stay at the MTC for the night, but whatever.¨ So we got on the train to Barcelona (at least he got us the high speed train), and we got to Barcelona. I go to print out the tickets for the return and see that he reserved us tickets...back to Madrid. As I´m calling him to figure out what happened, I see the departures board start flashing ¨Sold Out¨ on all the trains to Valencia...

 

So, he tells us to get to the Mission Office. They got back from proselyting (Office elders work from 830AM to 600 PM, then go out from 630 to 1030. to do missionary work) and he buys us tickets for a 930AM train to Valencia. Spent the night in the Mission Home talking with some others who were there waiting for trains back to their areas, though President, the AP´s, and half the office staff were in Vitoria for a Stake Conference.

 

Saturday morning, get back to the station, try to board the train, only to find out it´s over booked. We´re sitting on the platform as it pulls away, along with about fourty other people. So I called Elder Parry again, he panicks, says ¨go get new tickets.¨ The only scheduled trains were for 730 and 830 that night, putting us in Valencia at like 11 or 12. Luckily, there was a train that just had a stop in Valencia at 3PM. Got off in Castelleon to pick up Elder Crofts, then spent two more hours on commuter trains back to Gandia...got back at 9PM. Then I had to write a last minute talk, which I didn´t end up giving anyway. Either way, I´m glad it´s back to normal now. Our weekly totals were really good with only three days of real proselyting in Gandia...not. :(

 

I´m going to try to do some more repairs to the piso today, though we´re still looking for a new one. I think I´m going to rearrange the living room to make it a little more comfortable.

 

Erardo is on hiatus right now. His mom says he´s terrified of being baptised, but he won´t say anything to us. His sister still wants to be baptised, but now their mother says she wants them to be baptised together...we´re going tonight to see if we can straighten things out.

 

Because of the madness with the Madrid trip, I left my brush in the Mission Office. No idea when I´ll see it again, so I´m going to find a new one today. Wish me luck...

 

Hookay, so I needs some pictures. Mainly just to show people a little more about the US. So...some pictures of the DC trip, pictures of dune trips, pics of you guys, etc.

 

And...did you find out when the Reach soundtrack is coming out? Is it soon?

 

Right now, we´re essentially starting from scratch. One of our investigators is essentially dumping us again, the other two couldn´t care less if we never called again, and that leaves the Bolivians. Still, there´s some old contacts that could be promising. And we´re going to put our 12 ward missionaries to work. And we´re trying to get the members to start giving some references. It´s hard to bribe them with baked goodies if we don´t have an oven, though. Vamos a ver.

 

I´m fine on deodorant and all. Still on the first can of Barbasol. I´m wondering how long that thing is going to last...

 

I guess they´ve been talking that if all of the 40 missionaries with visa delays got here by December, my group will be either training or in leadership positions already. :\.

 

Being in Barcelona for that short period got me the ´Catalunya bug¨, aka I now agree that it´s a seperate country, and I like it better than Spain. People there actually work! It´s like the US! They even have Jaguar dealerships! :)

 

Okay, that´s all for this week. More next week. I´ll try to send out a picture of Sid this week too.

 

Bradley.