"And when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your transfer..."

I'll still be in Spain! When the rain starts to pour. I'll still be in Spain! Like I've been here before. I'll still be in Spain! And this transfer is throooough.

Hello!

This week had a little more action, but not as a result of the fresh steaming heap of contacting we've done. 

Monday, Santi took us to a border town named Olivenza, then to a bunch of castles in the area, but all of them were closed, so he took us out to lunch. European roads are very windy and uneven and could make even the most resilient of stomachs uneasy after long enough of a ride. 

On Tuesday, we had district meeting, lunch with Ytala and Borja, correlation, and contacting. Ytala made us arroz tapado, which is a layer of rice stuffed into a bowl, a layer of meat and vegetables stuffed on top of that, and another layer of rice stuffed on top of that, then you flip the bowl on the plate to create this perfect rice dome. It was quite delectable. 

Arroz Tapado

Borja is Spanish and has been taught all the lessons, he got married to Ytala (they used to live together, but not be), and he wants to get back into reading and praying before he gets baptized (or so I'm told). So we are really trying to be supportive, get him to church, and set a goal date. Ytala is a very nice Peruvian lady. She and her daughter, Briana, are members. Briana is 9 and almost always wears some sort of wheeled footwear (roller blades, skates, Heelys). They are this perfect little family, we just need Borja to make that final step and they can be that perfect little family forever. I have faith that he'll get the impression to press forward, I just hope that I can help with that.

On Wednesday, we were going to go to Zafra, but that plan fell through, so we had a lot of contacting to do. Someone actually came to English class this week! That hadn't happened in my time here. It's kind of sad, but we're making a more focused push on getting the word out.

On Thursday, I had my last weekly planning with Elder Nye :( It's a shame. He has been an awesome companion through and through. He's helped me get more experienced with street contacting, he's been very low-maintenance, and he's been a fun person to be out around Spain with. We also taught a lesson with a Colombian member named Milena. She's slightly less-active at the moment, but she realizes that she's losing that testimony that she's gained due to certain events in her life, but she doesn't want that to happen. We'll be focusing on doing the daily little things when we visit her, and we are going to try to start arranging FHEs with member families for her. I can't remember much else of Thursday.

We had exchanges Friday and Saturday with Elder Childers and Elder Cobbley. Elder Childers and I were able to get a lesson on the Restauration in with Pablo, our Buddhist, philosophical, Christian-ish friend who has many ideas that are in sync with our beliefs, and others that are....not. We're trying to get him to earnestly read the BoM, not just as some self-help book, and gain a testimony of that. We'll see how that turns out. He likes to go on tangent questions that really aren't productive and normally just give him an opportunity to tell us his facts about life.

There was a stake conference in Seville, but we couldn't go and it got a little crazy. I'll explain more next week, but long story short, the two Seville wards have combined into one, so now we have a Seville zone and a Córdoba zone instead of two Seville zones. Where I currently am, the various changes to the mission have no effect on me. Oh! Fun news, I will be companions with Elder Van Moose, whoever that is. He has a little over a year (by my own snooping).

Today was awesome. We went to Mérida but this time for all of the Roman touristy stuff. I don't have access to my camera pictures at the moment, so those will have to wait until next week.

Monday and Tuesday we got a lot of rain and it was sooooo nice. Unfortunately, it got hot again once the storm cleared away. 

Have a pleasant week!

Elder Jensen :)