Training completed - Week 18

The last twelve weeks of training are over and another transfer has come. We got calls this morning. And... I'm staying. Elder Owens is leaving and my new companion will be Elder Hammond. I won't meet him until Wednesday, but I have a name. 

In other news, Trump got elected. That has been the first thing we are always asked about when they find out we're from America. I guess we'll see what's different in 2 years.

Not much happened this week. We taught, we street contacted, and we did all the normal stuff missionaries do. 

Sorry I didn't talk too much this week, but it was mostly just preparing me to take over the area after Elder Owens leaves. Next week will be a lot more exciting hopefully.

This is us at zone conference. We talked, and then made Hawaiian haystacks. 

Road Trip

The most exciting thing that happened this week was that we had stake Conference in Granada on Sunday. So we put 9 people in a 9 seater van and went on a 2 hour road trip. It was interesting to see how there is not very much outside of the main cities and surrounding pueblos. Stake Conference was good. It was all in Spanish, and I only understood parts of it, but it was good. The chapel actually looked like an American chapel, with pews and an organ and everything, so that was nice.

Winter has officially hit here in Spain. Well at least its equivalent. More rain came and now it's averaging mid 50's to low 60's and windy. Which I'm not complaining about. It will probably warm up after this storm blows over.

We have been teaching a woman named Leonor since about week 4 or 5, and she is finally beginning to read the Book of Mormon. She has described her experience so far as she feels like she is being filled. Which is super good. And cool to see someone's testimony of the gospel begin to grow.

Regarding Nicklas, for the past 3 weeks we've been in contact with the APs from the Norwegian mission and we set up two citas to have Nicklas chat with them about the LDS culture in Norway and stuff. Both times he failed us. This week we received an email from him saying don't come back, so yeah. 

Until next week,

Elder Pearce

Meeting after Stake Conference 

Playing Capture the Flag with Zone

Spain Countryside

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone. I know it's a little cliche, but this year I decided to dress up as a missionary. Today since it's p day we're having a 2 zone p day Halloween thing. I carved a pumpkin, we made caramel apples, played capture the flag, and ate some pollo asado.

This week we got the area Book app. Basically it's all of our schedule, planning, investigators, and old investigators in one super tedious and frustrating app. So this week we started to transfer 200+ papers into the app. Yay...

Not that much happened this week. These last two weeks a lot of people have tried to bible bash us. It's funny because it's the same every time. They more or less say, hey, your religion is wrong because in the revelations 22:19 it says you can't add more to the Bible. Then we tell them that it says that in Deuteronomy 4:2 and revelations was written before some books in the Bible. Then they get flustered and say our religion isn't true and then say they need to go. Oh well, street contacting will work every now and again. 

Spain will be very good in about 10-20 years. Now, there are three generations. All the old people who are all hardcore Catholics because they were forced to be. Then the middle age people who don't want any religion because their parents were forced and rebellion and stuff. Then there are the next generation 0-30 where their parents are the atheists, and they are open to religion. They're the ones we focus on. So in 10-20 years after all the Catholics are dead and all the atheists are old and when all the good people are open. That's when Spain will explode. 

Until next week

Elder Pearce

Rain, Teaching, Talks

Hey family,

Something I forgot to mention last week was that there was a nice rainstorm last Wednesday. It rained pretty hard all day, and I got nice and wet, oh well, I'm dry now. So this week hasn't been all too interesting. On Friday Elder Owens needed to do his yearly residency renewal, so while he was doing that I was stuck in the office and got to do stuff for the office Elders. I filed some files, I went to the post office, I stapled and organized some papers. Sounds like fun, right? But it was a good change in routine. After we went to a noodle place and ate. 

We've been working with a 19 year old Norwegian kid named Nicklas for the past 2 weeks, he's from Tromsø. Think about as far north in Norway as you can get, then go a little bit farther, and you're there. He's progressing well, and he came to church with us yesterday. Speaking of church, I gave a talk yesterday about missionary work. I think it went well. Only people that need English translation complemented me or talked about it to me, so I hope it went well in Spanish.

Otherwise, this has been a fairly normal week, a lot of walking on the street, a lot of talking to people, a lot of poor Spanish. This week I was doing a regular street contact, when the guy, who had a really bad Andalusian accent which makes it impossible to understand, stopped me and said, in English "do you speak English, because your Spanish sucks". Oh well, it will get there. 

Regarding your question about playing the piano here, I can't remember how to play anything other than hymns, but I have noticed I can play hymns better than I remember.

Until next week

Elder Pearce

Carnival and Food

Hey family,

Missions mess up perception of time. It's bad. This week flew by super fast, but at the same time it has felt like ages since I have written home. 

You know how last week I was telling you of the sketchy rides at the carnival, well, we rode them for our p day activity. The boat ride was fun, you stand in a cage and when it gets to the top of the pendulum you jump and free fall for a couple seconds and then wait for it to come back. I hit my head on the top of the cage a lot. We also rode the slingshot ball thing. It was rough, it was just straight whip lash and pain. We regretted that one. And we also rode a couple other standard carnival rides.

Tuesday and Wednesday was the average stuff, a lot of streets contacting and teaching. On Thursday we had a zone conference and then after we went to the same Bolivian restaurant we went to a couple weeks ago. We had mocochinchi (I have no idea how to spell it) which is pretty much a water that has been simmering in a pan with a lot of peaches, a lot of cinnamon, and then a dried peach at the bottom of the cup. It's a lot better than I described it. And pici machu. Which is French fries, because everything in Spain requires French fries, and on top of the fries is steak, then a lot of onions, peppers, and tomatoes on top. It was good. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were ordinary as well, we contacted a lot of people, taught a lot of investigators, and now I'm here. 

Until next time

Elder Pearce

Flamenca and carnivals

Happy three monthaversery (in two days anyway). Fuengirola seemed to celebrate it by throwing a giant carnival. And people are going all out. At least 95% of the women that go to the carnival, wear dresses, and of those probably around 75% of them are super expensive flamenca dresses. Just imagine everybody going to strawberry days or the local carnival in tuxes and prom dresses. 

And the rides are super sketchy too. For example, you know the boat ride, that just swings back and forth, and you're strapped into a seat at various distances from the middle. In Spain, there are two cages at both ends of the boat, and they put 10-12 people in without restraints close the cage and off you go. And it goes pretty high too. But yeah, it's at least as crowded as at Disneyland shoulder to shoulder pretty much everywhere.

Not all too much happened this week, it has been a lot harder to work because of the Féria, but on Thursday we went to a noche de hogar (family home evening) and they brought over 3 nonmembers so that was sweet. After, we had hot dogs with hot sauce. And everyone was complaining that the sauce was too hot, even the natives. It was a little hot, but it wasn't that bad. I've had worse. 

Until next week

Elder Pearce

                                    This is me and elder owens, I'm not sure who the other guy is

  Going clockwise, me, Elder Hansen office elder in my district, Elder Gerrard another office guy, Elder Bodily who I was in the CCM with. 

Me and some elders, the two behind ( left to right, Elder Bodily and Jamison) me and the one in front of me (Elder Neubert) I was in the CCM with. I don't know the others

                           I'm fourth row on the left side, first seat in the middle. A little up and to the left of Elder Zwick

Transfers, general conference

Another 6 weeks have come and passed and transfers have come again. I'm going to.... The same place, no change. Last Monday, since I didn't really have that much time to talk, I'll go into more detail. It was district P-Day so we all traveled down to Málaga and rented some electric bikes that had weird acceleration, you had to peddle 2-3 times and then it would speed forward. I didn't crash so that's good.

After we went to a Bolivian restaurant and ate. I had some really good cow heart. 

Nothing really happened this week until Saturday.

Saturday came and we went and helped some people move then they fed us frozen lasagna, was about average for frozen lasagna. Then General Conference came.

Saturday at 6 pm we watched the live version of the Saturday morning session, in English luckily. Then Sunday at 11 am we watched priesthood. After that we went straight to a Bolivian Family to eat and we had chicken, rice, and potatoes. Right after that we went back to the church and watched Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning immediately after. I still haven't seen Sunday afternoon, that's tomorrow morning.

I really enjoyed the talk by Elder Uceda, where he told the story of when he went to machu pichu and had the spirit say don't go over to the Incan steps 3 times, but he didn't listen. Then he fell, but was still saved even when he didn't listen. So even when we're complete idiots God still loves us and he will still help us, even if we don't feel worthy. 

That's about it this week.

Elder Pearce