Monday, November 25, 2013

New Transfer! and 8 months!

So, sorry all for the email not going through last week...weird, it was just waiting for me in my drafts and apparently never got sent. Well we have started a new transfer and no changes here. Except that it is getting more cold. The coldest it´s been was the 30s for a little while but with the humidity and wind it feels worse. Who knew Southern Spain was cold? I didn´t. This last week was a good one! But as I told my district leader, it wasn´t because of anything we did really. 

Monday started out with a Nigerian dinner/FHE. Aka we ate "fu fu" if I am spelling it right. Which could definitely not be the case. It is a mixture of potatoes and rice flour with hot water so it looks like mashed potatoes. You roll it up in your fingers and then scoop out of the other liquidy dish like it´s a spoon. The dish we ate was fish based and spicy. Good too, I liked it and the other Nigerian foods quite a bit actually. Nigerians seems to be our life recently. Once you start to know one or two you end up meeting more. Speaking of Nigerians we stopped by a less active recent convert who is Nigerian to drop off her baptismal photos but only her sister Silvia was home. I asked if we could come in and talk. We taught her the restoration and watched the Joseph Smith video and she said she thought it was true. I asked her to be baptized in December and she said yes! But apparently she has to ask her husband permission to go to our church since they already go to their own. But she has already been once with her sister and also attended the baptism so we will see what happens. 

This week we have also had a lot of random people start conversations with us and some of them were extra strange. But I like people talking to us, makes life interesting and you never know what will come out of it. The whole blonde american thing never seems to get old either apparently haha. 

We had a combined ward party this week that everyone from their countries brought food and presented, some even danced. I think the Flamenco from the Spaniards won though. Us American missionaries represented well though with brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and hot dog bites. We also sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" which was pretty awful haha and I´m pretty sure no one knew what we were singing but oh well. Argentina had the best food. Sorry again Phil and Carola...but we have this member from Argentina, Estela who has basically adopted us and loves to feed us delicious foods. She is like my favorite woman. There were a ton of countries represented, it´s incredible how many people immigrate here. And so many people attended too, I felt like I was on an episode from the District. 

Lina and her family said they would show up but they didn´t come :/ but she is still progressing and working on quitting smoking and coffee. Pray for her! It doesn´t help that the last lesson her husband was in there smoking the majority of the time. If I get lung cancer we will all know why. Everyone here smokes basically. 

We are also in the process of working on a miracle. One of the women in the ward, Soledad, who is from Málaga and was one of the early members when it was still a branch has a husband who never joined the church named Antonio. We always go over to eat with them and he is a very sweet and friendly man, he just doesn´t like religion too much. Well the last time we taught we decided to teach about the first vision. He doesn´t actually have too much knowledge about our church or doctrine so we are planning to teach him all the lessons and he basically agreed. Anyway, the spirit during the lesson was incredibly strong, his wife has tears in her eyes and I know he could feel the spirit as well. We committed him to read the Book of Mormon, reluctantly but he is a good man and I believe that he will. It takes some time to say yes after you have said no for over 20 years but his family has been praying forever and I am hoping this is his time. And less active son of a member that we are trying to work with also came to church on Sunday with his two sons after many years. Miracles happen! 

Well got to go! Love you all and have a great Thanksgiving! We will be eating as a zone with Pres Deere and his wife on Thursday :)

Hermana Thompson

photos!
us with Michael, Daniel, and Oliver 
eating fu fu



more photos! of the ward party! us and our american platter and also some flamenco dancers




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