November 17, 2008

Hey,

Nobody told me about Hulka! That’s awesome! I’ll have to send him something for the congrats! Was he pretty excited? Tell him to send me some mail, and

I’ll get his address or something.

I’ll be honest I won’t miss the thanksgiving tradition of cleaning the leaves, but I miss the holiday like crazy! They obviously don’t celebrate it here, so they already have all the Christmas stuff up, and it is sad!

But in general, things here are pretty good, we are getting cold, and I mean cold, the humidity just chills it to the bone and wow makes things a lot colder. Yep it rains here almost once a day, if you ever look on the weather channel or something; you’ll see clouds over the northern western part of Spain guaranteed, every time we walk by a TV that has weather on, that’s all it ever shows. I like it though, at first it was a big adjustment, but now I think I sort of like it, I have a big umbrella that I use, not those little cheap ones, we have the big ones that are like canes with fabric on them, and that helps fight the weather a little. 

As far as work, yep well it’s coming along. We had a long week of ¨finding¨ even though we didn’t find too many people, we were on the street. What we do when we tract we go to big buildings that have like 12 floors with 4 doors on each floor, and knock. We get a ton done in a short amount of time because of how many pisos there are. Then if we can’t take knocking any longer we just go and do contacts and stop people on the street and try and talk to them. It is an amazingly hard thing to do. I have learned a ton about people, how they work, and all that from doing contacts. That is the thing that is most hated in the mission. A lot of missionaries like to just walk and pass everyone, because the people probably won’t stop to talk to you, ya, sure, but there are some that will talk, and some that might be interested, so until I find them, I am going to stop every person I can and find them. I don’t have a power, maybe I’m not as sensitive to the spirit as others to find people, and I can’t just look at one person and see that they are ready to receive the gospel, but the way I see it, I’ll just stop them all and find the prepared people out of the masses.

Referrals...ya they really don´t exist. Some people will give them, and they will be really good. I think I’ve only seen about 2 from members my whole mission, and they were to different elders, and they are teaching them right now. As far as advertisement, headquarter referrals, they are for other missions I guess, I’ve never seen one.

The language, another interesting point. My companion and I are both very young in the mission, and we need to learn this language, so we have some things we do. We don’t speak any English from 9:30 (the start of companion study) to 2:00. Then we eat lunch, and at 3 we have Spanish study. At 4 we leave, and do contacts, usually we'll have lessons at night, so we'll be speaking Spanish most of the night. With all that combined, my Spanish has really become much better. It’s not like I learned a ton of new words, but my ability to think in the language is improving a lot. That and being a missionary, having the gift of tongues, it’s pretty nice.

Tell Shelly hello and congrats to Stacy!

Keep me updated on the car business, that’s got to be tough. I pray for it

All the time.

Thanks for the mail,

Love, your son,

Elder Hanson