Announcements

Well, I wish that I could say that this last week was a bit more exciting, but it was more of the same old finding people in the streets. To be honest, I loved every second though. People think that we, as missionaries, are strange and almost like a different breed. But as you know, we are normal people, with families, and everything. So when they actually stop and get to know us, they too start to open up and you get to meet some very interesting people. The people that I have met in the past two weeks have been amazing. People all over the world... well, at least here in Huércal-Overa, have such interesting lives. Every single one has a different story, with different dreams and different challenges. Each person is like a movie. It's so itneresting to get to know them and learn about their life.

 

For example, this past week we were walking down the street when a man out of the local butcher shop yelled out his window, and told us to stop. We stopped, and then we realized... "Wait... he told us to stop in English..." He came out and spoke to us in a perfect Australian English. We were confused. We asked where was he from and he said he was a Spaniard, but he lived in Australia for 27 years. Since he learned English from scratch over there he has an authentic, perfect Australian accent. If he never told me he was a Spaniard, I totally would have thought he was an Aussie. Well, he ran away when he was 16 and somehow (Haven't asked him yet how) got to Australia, and learned English on the streets. Well, throughout his life in Australia he met some missionaries when he was older, and every Wednesday he would play a game of chess with them, and over time he learned to recognize and spot out missionaries. So when he saw us in the middle of nowhere Spain, he got excited, and so now we have a friend at the local butcher shop. I mean, how cool is that? If we were anyone else, he wouldn't have said anything. Just the people you meet is so cool....

 

Then, we were knocking doors when we came up to a man who was sitting on his patio, and we approached him in Spanish, but he responded in broken Spanish that he doesn't speak the language very well, which, was quite apparent from how he spoke. We resaid what we had said in English and he was shocked that we too also knew English haha. He invited us in since he was from Birmingham, England and had since retired in the middle of nowhere Spain to get away from it all. He told us that he absolutely did not believe in God and he was going to prove to us why using the philosophies of men. We had a nice long conversation. We were there for about an hour and a bit, and we got to learn a lot about him. We also taught him the plan of salvation since he had a lot of questions about what happens to us after we die. Needless to say, we will be returning again to see what happens. I'm excited.

 

Wow, two English experiences in a week. What are the chances of that? Well, other than that nothing too exciting happened. Well, I mean besides meeting all of those new people. This week tends to look a bit more interesting. I have to do a couple interviews this week for people getting baptized, and afterwards I am going off to do splits in a pueblo called Lorca. Well, we'll see how it goes....

 

Oh... yeah.... the announcement!!!!! Well, will not probably be all that exciting to you but.... we just received news of our new mission president!! President Clegg sadly goes home in June, so as of July 1, 2012 our new misison president will be Monti and Bobbi Deere of Alpine, Utah. He is an attorney and has two kids that he will bring along with him. He served his mission in Guatemala. Well, to me it is super intense. I don't know how to take it haha. It's weird. But we shall move on. Anyways, I gotta go, but thanks for all!!

 

Love

Elder Steven Card

Giant Pink Cupcakes and... Ants

What a week. I'll tell you what. There have been fewer weeks harder than the one that just passed. We just have zero investigators right now so we have been in the street contacting like crazy. It has been a long past couple of days. Funny enough, the best day that we had this past week was my birthday, the 15th! We did nothing crazy for my birthday. We actually had a completely normal day, which is how I would have preferred it. Looking back it's crazy, because at the time we thought it was just a normal day, but now looking back with 20/20 vision, I see that it was actually the best day this week. That was the day that we were actually let into houses and received references and found new investigators. It was a good birthday present from the Lord.

Like I said, most of the days have been in and out of the street so I don't have too many exciting stories this week. We did travel to Murcia on Tuesday for our zone conference and it was great. We all learned a lot and it is always fun to spend some time with the other missionaries. Like always, all the missionaries with birthdays that were close to the date of the conference went up and so I got sung happy birthday to and got my gift of candy haha. Later in the week we experienced Carnaval! it is basically Halloween, with the whole city dressing up. People get way more into it here than people in the United States get into Halloween. I'm saying EVERYONE dresses up. There are parades in the street. In fact, the parade was right outside of our house.... and it lasted til 5am.... it was a long night that night haha. Well, on the way back to our house an overweight Spaniard, dressed up as a giant pink cupcake (He was drunk) ran up to us, and extended his hand, so Elder Marchello shook it, and the Spaniard would not let go, and was calling for all of his other friends to come and look at our great costumes haha. A short while later, a giant group of ants were walking in the street and they saw us, and they either thought our "costumes" were awesome, or they just didn't like Mormom missionaries because they all swarmed us. The leader, which I guess we can appropriately call the Queen Ant, pointed at us, yelled something at Spanish, and charged. We were swarmed and everyone surrounded us and asked to shake our hands. Probably one of the funniest nights ever.

As if it couldn't get better, we discovered a giant group of LARPers. LARPing is that thing where people dress up as knights and swordsmen and attack each other with swords made of duct tape. Yeah, that thing. We found a giant group of them playing their.... battle game, on a giant lawn while we were in Murcia. Just when I thought the week couldn't get any more strange, we ran into them and their giant (There were seriously at least 100 people) battle on the grassy knoll. Other than that, missionary work wise there are no amazing stories to tell this week. We are just going to continue to work hard but that's about it! Thanks again for all of the birthday wishes. Til next week!!

Road Trip

Well... talk about a roadtrip! Last week was pretty much just travel all day and see people that I haven't seen in a long time. On Tuesday I had a leadership conference in the mission home so it is time to travel to Málaga, but my companion also had to travel to do some residency work in Cádiz on the other side of the country so we set off on Tuesday morning by bus to Granada. Once we got in Granada we connected on another bus and on that bus were three other missionaries. Elder Hatch, Bradley and Jones. I had been Elder Hatch's companion back in Puertollano and I knew Elder Bradley because he was in my district there as well, so it was a great surprise reunion. They too were on their way to the leadership conference. Then, we get to the mission home and have the conference over two days and there I saw a lot of my old former district members and just a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a long time, so ti was a great reunion. The reunions continued when I stayed the night in Málaga and met up with more people. Now this doesn't sound exciting at all I am sure, but for me, it was one of the best weeks ever. I formed really tight relationships with these people and it was awesome to see them again for the first time, in some cases, a year.

 

Well, when we got back to our area a few days later we realized that we had no investigators that really were progressing, so what did we do? We fasted and hit the streets, with zero lessons planned and tried to see what we could do, and it was a great day. A long cold day, but a great day. We talked to everyone in the streets and it was just awesome. We got a lot of peoples' information and now the next step is to see if they want anything more. I'm sorry it wasn't that great of an email, nor eventful week. Well, to me it was haha. This week was filled with great reunions and days of nothing but talking to people on the streets, so it may not be eventful for an email, but it was one of the best weeks I have had. Well, next week when I talk to you I will be officially 21!!! Woohoo crazy. Actually... to be honest, I am sure it will be a completely normal day in the mission field haha. But, I appreciate all of the birthday wishes. Thanks for all of the support! Stay in touch!

Love

Elder Steven Card