Last Week's Missing Email

Hello from Móstoles, Spain!

Another week down, and it was pretty good! I'm having a good time. I'm keeping pretty busy. I can't wait for the day when my legs stop being sore at the end of the day, if that ever happens, ha, but it's been good. The work is hard, but we have a good time, and we have a lot of great conversations from people from all over the world. I've been working this week on my accent and trying to use the Spanish theta more, it's taking some getting used to, but it will come with time.

We had a busy week, but I'm having trouble remembering stuff to write down. We didn't have as many meetings this week as we did the first, so we spent a lot more time contacting in the streets. I feel pretty settled in at this point. I'm grateful for is how quickly it took me to get settled in. One thing we did last week was go to a mall on p-day and get this little 3 euro backpack that all of the Madrid missionaries have and now I do, too. After that we just walked around the mall for a bit and the elders got some ties. I don't really remember what I did throughout the week so I'll just talk about some other people I'm coming to know in the area that are pretty cool.

Juan playing the guitarra

The first guy I want to talk about is named Juan. He is a member that is really cool and is always coming with us to meet with investigators. He is a little old, so he is really hard for me (and even Elder Simmons) to understand. He is a really fun guy though always has a smile on his face, and he is really happy to help and serve others. What's crazy to me is that he is the ward pianist, and he even plays the guitar too, yet he is pretty blind. I don't think I've ever seen him not wearing his glasses. He just plays everything from memory. He is a really fun guy.

Another person I want to talk about is Paco. Paco is a member of our English classes that we teach. He is a teacher, and his English is pretty good so we just have a lot of fun conversations. He is a really nice guy and is always really cheerful and has a lot of interesting questions. One thing he wants to learn is common English sayings that might not exist in Spanish. If anyone has any phrases they want to share, I'm open because he has wrung me dry. He is a really smart guy, and we always have such interesting conversations.

The last 2 people I want to mention are Lida and Carlos. They are our most promising investigators. They are from Peru, but have lived here for a while. Our last lesson was really good; they said they were feeling the Spirit, and they showed real desires to find out if The Book of Mormon was true. Unfortunately though, we invited them to conference, and they didn't show up, and we couldn't get in touch with them to remind them. I'm hoping when we meet this week we can find out why they didn't come and maybe get them to church this Sunday.

Conference here in Spain was good but a little hard for me. None of our investigators that we invited showed up, so that was a little frustrating. They watch general conference here in Spain differently because of the time difference. We watched the Saturday morning session at 6 pm here, and then we watched priesthood Sunday at 11 and then the second Saturday session at 2 pm and the first Sunday session at 6. Unfortunately, we did not watch the last session so I'm going to have to download it and watch it in my evening block when I have time over the next week. Like I said conference was a little hard for me. We watched it in the chapel, and it was in Spanish and not the best quality speakers, so I had a hard time getting something out of it which bummed me out a little. I definitely am going to download the talks in English, so I can read then over the next couple of months.

So one last thing that stood out during the week: we played soccer with some members on Saturday which was a lot of fun. We went there to meet and play with an investigator, and it was awesome. I had a lot of fun. I didn't realized how much I missed playing soccer at the MTC. After that game of soccer, we went and cleaned the church, because the members who were assigned hadn't done it for a couple weeks, and it was starting to get pretty dirty. Unfortunately that took us about 2 and a half hours, so we weren't able to get much stuff done that day.

OK I think that's all for this week. I love you and outsells, till next time!

-Elder Bassett

This picture is really quite a wonder though I'm pretty sure only family will understand this, but that right there is the flexometer 3000 which belongs to one of the elders in our Piso. He told me that this one is made from the same metal as the space shuttle, because the metal from the space ships just wasn't good enough.