Hola a todos!

Elder Bassett, Elder Phillips, Elder Jepson, Elder Simmons

It's been a pretty good week; keeping super busy which is awesome. So going back to the beginning of last week. Elder Chabot and Hermana Quispe left, and we got Elder Jepson and Hermana Moyle who is just entering the field. They are both pretty cool missionaries; it's been fun getting to know them a little more.

The shell of one of the snails we ate

So on to the rest of the week. Like always, I can't remember a lot of what happened so just a bunch of stuff that stood out. So to start out, we had a challenging eating appointment. A sister from Africa, heard that Elder Phillips likes fufu, so she decided to make it for us. Now, as I have stated in a previous email, fufu is pretty interesting, kinda different, but the crucial part to a good fufu is the soup. And this member made us a very typical African soup made by her tribe. This was a soup made of spinach, chicken, bones, fish, a black mystery sauce, and huge chunks of caracól. For those who don't know, caracól is Spanish for snail. Now, I love trying new foods, and when I heard what we were going to eat, I was pretty excited, but it wasn't what I expected. It was pretty hard to eat. What made it even worse was that due to the festival a couple days earlier on p-day all of the stores were closed, so we couldn’t get groceries, so by this point we had almost nothing to eat. I was pretty queasy for the rest of the day. Ha, but that was a little fun, too.  

So, another fun thing that happened, Elder Simmons and I were passing by our investigator, Vivian, when we start talking to this old Spaniard who speaks a little English. He very quickly tells us that he learned English, because he loves to sing. He then proceeded to sing "Oh, Holy Night" while we just stood there awkwardly listening. He was actually pretty good; that was a little fun. We invited him to English class and to check out the Mormon tabernacle choir and then said bye. He was a pretty nice guy.

So one last story that was super funny. So we were teaching one of our investigators named Carmen who attended church last Sunday. We taught her yesterday, and we were talking about the Plan of Salvation and baptism. She says she wants to keep meeting with us and asks if she has to bring anything when we meet. I of course tell her that she doesn't have to bring anything. Then she asks what she would bring to her baptism and I tell her "nothing". The only problem is, that that isn't what she asked. Instead of asking what she should bring to her baptism, she asked what she should wear to her baptism, and I just misheard her. So that's the story of how I accidently told an investigator to come to a baptism naked. Not gonna lie, the Spanish is coming along pretty well, but sometimes there are moments like that; although, that was probably the worst one yet. She was a little confused, but Elder Simmons helped explain what happened, and then we were all laughing about it after. So yea it's been a pretty interesting week.

For p-day today, we came to the Madrid Open. Both Elder Simmons and Elder Jepson played tennis, so they wanted to go a bunch, so we all came. It's pretty fun to just get out and learn a little more some stuff. So far we have gotten to see a couple high-ranking tennis players. The big ones were that we watched Murray and Wawrinka warming up together. The other elders tell me that they are both in the top 5. It was kind of cool; they were just playing a short game and laughing and joking around. So yea that's where I am up to this point.

Fun checking in, till next week!

-Elder Bassett 

Elder Phillips trying out Carmen’s glasses