Someone is sick!

Dear Everyone,

I don´t have much time this week, but I just wanted to say I hope everyone had a great Christmas and Happy New Year! This week I got to talk to my family on Skype for the 3rd time on my mission. It was a good experience but always goes fast. Christmas was a good here. On Christmas and Christmas Eve we went to houses of members that might not have had very much company on Christmas and we caroled for them and visited with them. For Christmas dinner we ate with a couple that have been investigating the church for a while. The wife is from Colombia and the husband from Slovakia. We had an interesting mix of Colombian and Slovak food. We went the house of some Bolivian members for Christmas and ate turkey for lunch. All in all it was a good experience. I´ve been kind of sick lately, and at some points, it´s been bad enough that I´ve had to stay in, but it´s getting better. The Area Presidency of Europe came out with a plan for all the wards in Europe to work with this coming year of 2015. It involves a lot of aspects but some very key missionary points and we are excited to start working with everyone and their plans. We have some good plans for New Years too, so I´ll let you know how those went next week. Love you all

Love, Élder Coleman

"Él es la Dádiva" (He is the Gift)

Dear Everyone,

This week´s been kind of rough. Everyone is too busy doing Christmassy stuff that they can´t stop and don´t want to talk to us. However, there have been some super cool caroling on the streets and an African group went around playing drums and chanting super cool. We´ve got a few visits set up for the holidays, but not very many so I´m not quite sure what we´re going to do. We´ve been working a lot with a video called "Él es la Dádiva" (He is the Gift) in English. It´s the new video that the church put out for Christmas. We have tons of little cards with the link on it to look up. It´s a little frustrating because "Dádiva" is an uncommon word in Spanish and no one knows what it´s talking about, but it´s nice to be able to point someone to a video on Christmas. Today for preparation day we went to the painted forest again because everyone wanted to see it, and now I am exhausted. It´s a long trip and a long hike. We got some great photos though. This week our ward had a Christmas talent show. We, the missionaries, sang for our part. I feel like we were lacking a little bit though. It was neat to see the other talents people had. I love how someone decorated the church very festively, so even though there´s no snow, you can still tell it´s Christmas time. I´m excited to see my family this week, it will be the 3rd time I´ve skyped home so far. I hope to have more things to tell you all next week. Take care!

Élder Coleman

It's Raining, It's Pouring, But Christmas Won't Be Boring

Dear Everyone,

Well, my new companion and I have been getting soaked to death almost every day since he´s been here. I don´t think he likes Bilbao very much. He´s great though. He´s going to be going home in 2 transfers (3 months), so he´s going to end here for sure. All of the people we were meeting with have decided to not answer the phone or never be home, so we´ve had a rough week as far as getting in touch with people. The ward is getting together and doing a lot of things for Christmas. This Saturday there was a YSA (young single adult) activity and now the church is decorated with a Christmas tree and everything. It´s getting super nippy so it feels a little bit more like Christmas than it would in any other part of the mission. I´m kind of out of time, but we have some really cool Christmas things coming up with the ward. Next time I email, I´ll have more things to say and pictures.

Love you all.

Élder Coleman

Eating visits planned for Christmas and New Years? Life is Good!

Dear Everyone,

Transfers just happened. I´m still here in Bilbao, but my companion Elder Slauson got moved to Castellón. My new companion is Elder Vogel, from Orem Utah. He´s super great, and I´m excited to work with him. We have been seeing success with Julia, who we are going to invite to be baptized the next time we see her. We´ve also been putting up with this cold and rainy weather. This Friday there is a huge conference with President and I´m looking forward to it. Things are starting to feel a lot more Christmassy even if there is no snow because there are big Christmas trees everywhere and Christmas songs, and decorations. We already have eating visits planned for Christmas and New Years. The ward is really good to us. That´s pretty much it for this week.

Élder Coleman

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Dear Everyone,

So we changed our preparation day to Tuesday so it wouldn´t conflict with a few things. Next week is transfers so I´ll be writing on Tuesday again. Today my companion and I went to a really cool place. It´s called the painted forest of OMA. It´s a forest that a while ago someone used as a way of displaying their art. A Basque painter who had lived out there his whole life took to painting on multiple trees in a way that it forms an image when you look from a specific point. Don´t worry, I´ll include photos. Also up there, there was a waterfall that was super cool, and there is a Neanderthal cave with cave paintings and other archealogical finds. We couldn´t go up to that one though because you need to book a guide in order to enter. But we´ll go one of these weeks. It took all day though, so I´m writing super late and super tired. This week we had a missionary from the ward leave on his mission to Peru Lima North; he´s serving in his home country. Since he has no family here except his sister, he asked if he could stay with us between when he got set apart and when he left on his plane. So, it was a fun experience taking him everywhere. He´s super great. We´ve been working a lot with Julia, a girl from Venezuela who is progressing a ton. She asked us this week if she had to give up dancing if she gets baptized. It was funny, but it shows she´s thinking about it. The problem is we don´t get a lot of opportunities to teach her. Outside of that, we´ve been going through our ward list trying to update everything. All in all, it´s been a busy week.

Love, Élder Coleman

 Feliz Navidad!

 The Painted Forest

 Pretty waterfall above, sign for the Neanderthal painted caves below

He's Got A Ticket To Ride!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been great. I went to Barcelona on the longest train ever. It´s an 8 hour train. It sounds fun but gets super boring after the first 3 hours. The good thing is I had the newest copy of the Liahona and my scriptures to read. We got there and slept in the same piso (apartment) as the elders that work in the office and all the blankets they had smelled like urine. Then in the morning we got all four of us going to renew our residency rounded up and headed on over to the office where they do it. We grabbed a number and they looked at our passports without even looking at our faces. It was a 5 minute process and then they shipped us back. We waiting in the train station just eating McDonalds until about 2 hours before our flight left, then we took a shuttle bus over to the airport, went through security and waited again. The flight was a nice hour of rest. Other than that our week has been pretty normal. Elder Cook came to the mission, but we missed out on seeing him. We are working with an amazing Venezuelan girl who has come to church 2 weeks in a row now and is super excited to hear about the Gospel. I love when people progress. Next week is the Primary Presentation, and I hope that brings a lot of people out of the woodworks and back to church. 

Love, Élder Coleman

Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day!

Dear Everyone,

After about a week break from the downpour, it´s back again. But it´s not dampening our spirits because things are really picking up. We´ve been going through our former investigator teaching records (the forms that missionaries make to record what they´ve taught someone) and we´re finding people that were taught a long time ago. If they look promising, we put them on a list with their address and everything and we drop by their house. We´ve seen how some people were definitely dropped by the missionaries for a reason, but some have been very open to meeting with us and we´ve found a fair amount of people to teach. This week we also had the opportunity of having something called "capacitación especializada" or "specialized training" where President and Sister Pace came and taught us. It was great to hear from them, as well as to see other missionaries from other areas in the Bilbao and Vitoria zones that I already knew. Oh and I think I mentioned that we have been teaching a Venezuelan girl English in the mornings. Well, she came to church! And she loved it. We´re super excited for her. This morning the office called me and told me I´m going to go to Barcelona on Tuesday to renew my residency now that I´ve been here for about a year. That means another 8 hour train, but they´re going to put me on a plane on the way back. I´ll tell you how that went next week. Oh also Quentin L Cook is coming to the mission. Yeah, a member of the quorum of the 12 apostles is coming to a stake conference in Lleida (a city in the mission) and then a mission conference in Barcelona where the entire mission will be attending except ours and one other. Apparently we´re too far away to make it there and back for church on Sunday. So I´m going to miss that. Last week for preparation day, we went to a store called Carrefour. I don´t know if I´ve ever talked about it before, but it is huge. It´s like twice as big as a Walmart and has almost everything you could imagine. It feels super American and I am just blown away every time I go into one, because it doesn´t feel like Europe at all. Then we walked across the street to the Nike store and I bought myself a shirt for 9 € which is super cheap. I was really lacking tshirts to play sports in. Anyway, that´s about all. Until next week!

Élder Coleman

Making a mountain out of a molar!

Dear Everyone,

So for my tooth, it was super funny. The mother of our ward mission leader set up the visit and I guess lead the dentist into thinking that I didn´t speak any Spanish, being from Canada. Also, she kind of make the dentist think my problem was worse than it was. So I get into the chair and the lady starts talking to me super slow and with hand signals. When I told her I understood perfectly fine what she was saying, she relaxed a lot and said "I thought we wouldn´t be able to understand each other at all". Later she told me that from the phone call she understood that I had a massive hole in my molar. But she said it was a tiny cavity that just needs a filling and the rest of my mouth is perfectly fine. So I´m going to go fix that on Friday. So tomorrow is a missionary meeting called specialized training. Being such, President Pace (our mission president) was in town a little bit early and called us to come out with us to visits. I´ll admit. I was a little nervous after getting that call. But we just did what we´ve always done and it was super great. He is definitely a people person. We saw some pretty great miracles in our lessons with his and talking with people on the street. One thing he did say yesterday is that he forsees us having iPads in the next 6 months. We had originally though before the end of the year, but looks like it got pushed back. I bet all the missionaries where you guys are have iPads. It would help a lot. Well, that´s all the time I have this week. ¡Sonreíd todos! 

Love Élder Coleman

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been feeling a little bit like Christmas. We´ve got Christmas tunes going in our apartment and it´s been predicted to snow in the mountains tomorrow. It´s been getting pretty nippy here. It´s been a week full of little tasks along with our regular missionary work. We have been trying to get ourselves library cards because you get an hour of free computer time a day. That would help us a ton because often we need to quickly download a video or type up a form or email the ward mission leader something, and it adds up when you go to a locutorio (cyber cafe). Also I´ve been trying to find a good dentist here, really my quest started yesterday. I have this shooting pain in my tooth that Sister Pace (the mission president´s wife) says sounds exactly like a cavity. So I´m trying to talk with the members and find the best place here so they can fix that really quick. Halloween was a blast here. We didn´t dress up or anything, but we had a ward night and watched Work and the Glory 2 with lots of candy. Guess where the candy came from? As we were walking out of the metro to go home one night, I looked down and saw a 50€ bill on the ground! That´s insane good luck. So we decided to spend it on candy and cupcakes and decorations for the ward night. It was great fun. We´ve been meeting with some really great people. As we were talking to people in the park, we contacted this Jehova´s Witness man who was super excited to talk to us and practice his English. We´ve talked to him twice now and it´s mostly just asking us questions about the Bible and comparing our religions, but this last time he said "next time we meet, you tell me about that book you guys use". We´re also working a lot through members, visiting them and meeting their non member or less active family. It is a wonderful door to missionary work, and a lot more effective than street contacting or door knocking. Oh a fun little side note, we saw a band doing a show in the park the other day and they were singing all their songs in English, but the singer had such a bad accent that I couldn´t understand anything. It made all their songs sound rediculous to me even though they were great musicians. I got a video of it that I get over to you guys somehow. Take care all!

Love Élder Coleman

The singing missionaries: Coming soon to a chapel near you?

Dear Everyone,

This week has been transfer week. I´m still here in beautiful Bilbao with the same companion, Elder Slauson. This week we had a missionary Sunday. We had all the recent converts in the ward bear their testimonies and we (the missionaries) sang a musical number that everyone seemed to like. As a ward we also watched the Work and the Glory on Friday as part of our weekly ward night. We have a weekly activity for the whole ward that we bring investigators to. Also a highlight of the week, we met with this man named David who is from Ghana. He speaks English, one of the first English-speaking people I´ve taught in a long time. We contacted him in the park last week and finally met with him again this week to give him a Book of Mormon in English. He said he´s looking for the truth and he was so excited to get the Book of Mormon that it was the first thing he asked about when we met with him, and he kissed it when he got it. We emphasized the importance of reading and praying to find out for himself, so as soon as we left, he started to read right there on the bench. He is a miracle in and of himself. We also had a really great family home evening with a member family and we are working with them to help bring back their less active family members. A young man in our ward who often accompanies us to visits got his mission call to Lima Perú (he´s originally from Perú). So we´re pretty excited about that. It´s exciting to hear about so many missionaries leaving from home, it´s great! Make sure you invite the missionaries over for a family home evening, and not just the sister missionaries either. 

Love, Élder Coleman

Itsasargi? No, it's a lighthouse!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been crazy. There have been parties everywhere. People in this country find absolutely any reason to party. Also, my companion had to go to Barcelona on Thursday to renew his residency, so I was with a temporary companion. Then he must have caught something while he was there because he´s been sick for the last couple of days. We´ve been teaching a few really good people. There are 2 girls, one from Colombia and one from Venezuela that we have been teaching every other day. They want us to teach them English, but they are also super interested in the Gospel. There is also a couple that have been coming to church for over 6 months now, but they won´t get baptized. So we´ve been working with them a lot. This week we also had an eating visit with a member from Paraguay and there they drink a lot this drink called mate (pronouced mahtay). It´s a huge thing in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Think of how big of a cultural thing coffee is for us in North America, well mate is way bigger there. It´s just an herb and it´s totally fine to drink. Well I tried it for the first time. It´s kind weird, but I like it. You have to use a special filter straw and everything or it doesn´t work. I really can´t think of anything else we´ve done that´s really interesting this week. 

Here's an old cannon we found.

 This sign says "lighthouse", first in Basque, then in Spanish.  The languages are so completely different!

 Here's a photo of the Basque men's choir, complete in their traditional clothes.

Party party everywhere! Finally some pictures, but no time to spare!

OK so wow this week I have like no time at all. We have to be in a visit super soon. We went on a zone activity trip to somewhere called Bakio. It´s super cool and I´ll send pictures. This week was crazy. We had a member come down from Norway, call us up and ask us to teach his girlfriend who lives here English and about the Gospel. It was super random and out of the blue. Also it´s been a constant party here, which is super cool. Everyone is dressed in tradicional Basque wear and there are lots of random singing groups everywhere and concerts and parades. There was a really cool old men´s  Basque choir that sang the other day and they were super good. Today we went to a cool hermitage up on a mountain on an outlet in the sea. I´ll send pictures and I´ll write more next week.

Love Élder Coleman

Conference, Christmas, and contacts.

Dear Everyone,

Wow, Conference was great! I hope all of you got to watch it. I loved being able to hear the voices and counsels of our apostles and leaders! General Conference is so much more exciting on the mission. We invited a lot of people to come watch it. Turns out no one came, but that´s life as a missionary. This week it has been getting a lot colder and I heard from a member that it might snow! Bilbao is about the only place in Spain it ever snows, so I´m hoping it does while I´m here. I love a white Christmas. Christmas is just around the corner right? I´m really coming to love the members here even though I just got here. I am practicing my Guaraní (the native language of Paraguay) with a Paraguayan member here and were are going over to eat with the members here more than before. You have no idea how much eating visits mean to the missionaries, especially if they aren´t getting any. Invite the missionaries over to eat! Especially if you don´t know them really. Something interesting happened yesterday. A couple from Sandy, UT (which happens to be where my companion´s from) walked into the church last night after General Conference. Apparently they just go all over Europe on vacation and they always stop by the church. We just happened to be there. It was interesting to hear a little bit about them and my companion really related with them. It was an unexpected surprise. There are a few amount of tourists in Spain. The other day, a young man from Germany stopped us and said he was a member of the church, his dad was the stake president in Munich Germany, and he was just on a class trip to Bilbao. It´s always interesting to meet different kinds of people from different places. 

Love Élder Coleman

(I'm just going to start posting photos of Bilbao because Preston keeps promising pics but none are forthcoming.)

Eating Nemo?

Dear Everyone,
This week I had fish head. A Peruvian member invited us over to eat
and we were super excited. Then the plates start to come out and it´s
a soup kind of thing with un-shelled shrimp and oysters and the centre
of the whole thing is a big fish head. Like imagine you pull a fish
out of the ocean, cut it in half and stick the top half in a bowl. It
was cooked and all, but its eyes were looking at me. Also, this woman
got baptized this week after coming to church for a long time. She got
baptized by the other elders here, but she´s 90 years old. And she is
100% still there mentally. She awesome. She comes up to me and says "I
hear you´re Canadian. My family has a lot of postive feelings towards
Canadians because they helped us in the war." I don´t really have any
time left and the Internet isn´t working at all. I have lots of photos
to send though. I guess I´ll send them next week. Take care all!

Bilbao the Beautiful!

Dear Everyone,

Bilbao is beautiful! I promise photos next week. Today we went hiking to this super awesome lighthouse and old canons and underground tunnels from the war. Instead of the Mediterrenean Sea, I am now right by the Bay of Biscay. I don´t know why it has it´s own name, as it´s just part of the Atlantic Ocean. But yes, from one side of Spain to the other. I absolutely love the city. If I ever come back to Spain to live, it´s going to be here. The city is so well put together, unlike any other city I´ve seen in Spain. Oh also last week, Red Bull came to town and did a bridge jumping thing off the main bridge here in Bilbao. So the downtown part was pretty clogged because of that. I suggest all of you go to Google Images and type in Bilbao. You will all be impressed by how beautiful this city is. As for the work, I haven´t really met everyone yet but we are always teaching. We have some great new investigators because people brought friends to church. It´s awesome. So, all of you, bring your friends to church! I really am loving it here. My companion is great. Did you know he´s my first companion from Utah? Another side note, I am living with Elder Hardy, a missionary from Calgary and there is a Sister missionary here from Ottawa. So we are 3 Canadians here!

Butterflies, borscht, and Bilbao!

Dear Everyone,

I got transferred! Well after being 3 transfers (about 4.5 months) in sunny Catalunya in the heat of the summer, they moved me to the cold part of Spain for the winter. I´m now in Bilbao, the capital of Basque Country (a region of Spain). Here they don´t have Catalán, they have Basque. But it´s such a difficult language that I´ve heard that very very few speak it fluently and many don´t speak it at all. It´s super chilly where I am. It actually reminds me a lot of Seattle, the weather (it rains a lot here), the city, and just everything about it. I like it so far, but I haven´t met anyone yet. It was hard to leave all the people I had come to leave. Let me tell you a story. When I first got to Tarragona, like my first or second day, we had the ward night that we do every week where we invite everyone to come and share a message and play games, but not a lot of people come. There´s a Russian recent convert mother and her 2 recently baptized children who always come. Well that first night we played charades and I was supposed to act out a butterfly. But after flapping my arms a fair amount, and still nobody getting it, I got a little more and more exaggerated with my arm flapping until someone finally guessed it, but everyone was dying laughing at me. This Russian family brought it up again and again on many occasions, they thought it was so funny. Also, during a family home evening with them in my first week, I mention I had tried borsch soup before and I loved it. Well, fast forward 4 months and I´m leaving. We have a family home evening in their home because we´ve gotten really close to them. They bring me a little box with a bow. I open it and there´s a little butterfly magnet. And they made borsch for me too. It´s just touching to think about how much small things like that can mean to someone. I hope to have many more spiritual experiences and meet lots of amazing people here in Bilbao. I hope you´re all doing well.

Élder Coleman   

 

Wannahockaloogie!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been pretty interesting. First off, on Monday all 4 of us went over to our Russian recent converts´ house to learn to make a Russian dish. I don´t remember what it´s called but it is like raviolis but filled with different stuff. It´s got meat and onions and a few other things. Well, on our way to their house, a man got off the bus, but before he did, he looked at Elder Arriarrán and me, as we were sitting next to each other, and spat on us. I asked him what his problem was in kind of an unfriendly way and he just replied "¡por mirón!" which loosely translates to "for staring!" Thing is, we weren´t even looking at him. Well I can say I´ve had that experience now. On Tuesday we helped another recent convert family move. I think I said something about a recent convert´s house flooding a little while ago, well we helped move them this week. It was sure an experience seeing as they aren´t the most organized people ever. For example, they showed up an hour and a half later to the church than we had planned. Later that day we went with a less active family to a restaurant as their way of saying thanks to us for changing their tire (if you remember that story). We went to a place called Peggy Sue´s. It´s an American food restuarant modeled to look like a 50´s diner. It had a jukebox and the TVs were only playing comercials from the 50s and 60s. They had pretty good burgers, but what really surprised me was they had Dr Pepper. It´s been such a long time since I´ve seen anything other than Coca Cola and Fanta here. In that less active family, both parents are return missionaries and are always telling us stories from their missions, but I don´t know why they won´t come to church. They have a 9 year old daughter who seems super interested but hasn´t been baptized. Our recent convert Grau, the one we baptized just a couple months ago, has already been to the temple to do baptisms and just yesterday, he got his patriarchal blessing and he was so excited. He is a champ. He takes his home teaching assignments super seriously, always inviting the people he home teaches to go do stuff with him. He´s also having family home evening with his girlfriend´s family, in their house (his girfriend is on a mission in Argentina) and he invited his mom to one. She loved it. Well, that´s about all the news I´ve got this week. I love you all.

Love Élder Coleman

One year mark!!!

Dear Everyone,

It´s September already. In 3 days I hit my year mark. I already have less than a year left in the field. It´s super crazy. So this week a woman came from Pamplona to clean out the sister´s apartment so they can give it back to the owners. So we had to help her a fair amount with that. Also a recent convert proposed yesterday in church. It was interesting. As it was the 5th Sunday, Priesthood and Relief Society were combined. So he asked the bishop if he could propose to another recent convert he had met 2 weeks earlier, after the meetings were over. The bishop said sure and I was given the task of recording it all. It was super interesting. Everyone was dying laughing and clapping. Also, he was wearing my tie because it was the bride-to-be´s favourite colour. As for missionary work, we´ve been doing a lot of it. We´ve been especially trying to do what the apostles have counseled us to do and work with members, getting to know their friends and helping them get excited about missionary work. It has been going great, but I am sure excited for fall to come around and things to start cooling down. I don´t really have much time today, but I hope everything is going well back home.

Love Élder Coleman

We're all mad here!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been interesting. We have been finding a lot of interesting people. One investigator that we have on date for baptism, we just found out has schizophrenia and so we´re going to have to talk to someone about what to do now. Also another guy we stopped on the street says he sees pillars of light whenever anyone dies and that he thinks angels are aliens that bring death. Another interesting encouter of the week was when my companion and I went on a split. (We both split up and go with different members to teach lessons at the same time.) I went with Camilo, a 20 something year old recently returned missionary and we went to a lesson with a less active family the ward asked us to work with. The husband, named Rafa, was drunk out of his mind. He would tell jokes that weren´t funny at all and just die laughing. He got up to serve us food, passed gas rather loudly and then when his wife called him out on it, he blamed it on his flip flops. And to top it off, he somehow convinced me to let him put anti-inflammatory eye drops in my eyes. He works at the hospital and I found out later that he stole all the eye drops from his work. My eye was red from an encouter with a cat earlier in the day, so both him and his wife suggested I let him give me the drops. Well next thing you know, I´ve got eye drop juice all over my face and I´m crying because he put way too much in and I think I learned my lesson about being a little bit more selective about who puts stuff in my eyes.That´s about the most interesting thing that happened this week.

Élder Coleman

We'll come knock on your door, we've been waiting for you, where the scriptures are his and his and his, Three's company too!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been a good one. First of all, we had a good specialized training in Barcelona. I learned a lot of new things about working with members. When we got back, we went to visit a less active family who lives far, in a pueblo called Valls. They have a daughter of almost 3 years old who is quite a talker. Some of the things she said, I have no idea where she came up with them. Also this week they announced that Tortosa recieved permission from the Area Presidency to open a group their and stick missionaries there as well. I am excited when I see actual growth happening here. It´s sometimes hard to see in Canada or the States, but here it´s easy to see the growth of the Church taking off in Spain. Also something that was somewhat of a miracle. A lady came a couple of weeks ago to church on Sunday by accident. She was looking for the church where her friend´s daughter was going to be singing and ended up getting confused and showing up at ours. Emma, a super active and missionary minded member from our ward, invited her in and when her offer was declined, took down her number so that we could get in touch with this woman. We called her up and could never set anything firm up with her, but on Sunday she said it would be fine if we came over around 6. We went and brought with us our recent convert, Grau and she was super great. But the best part is, she had invited a lot of friends over at the same time and they all sat and listened to us teach about the Restoration. It was a great way to end a good week. Oh and something interesting. I´m currently in a trio (I have 2 companions). But it´s just temporary. Elder Ferrer´s (the one from Argentina) companion went to Murcia for a couple days to do paperwork for his Spanish nationality (he´s from Bolivia but has lived in Spain most of his life). It´s nice having a companion who can speak Spanish fluently, but I´m not a super huge fan of trios. Someone always gets left out in lessons. Oh something of note. A Brazilian guy from Torrevieja (in the south of Spain) came up to us on the street and said he´s a member. He was stopping by for a day and than catching a ride with someone from Tarragona to Germany to look for work. The funny part is, he served his mission in Madrid and actually lived in the same apartment as Elder Chris Smith from back home. The guy´s name is Fabio, but would have gone as Elder Cardoso.

Love Élder Coleman  

It's a sad, sweltering, service kind of week.

Dear Everyone,

This week has been a weird one. Super interesting but sad at the same time. Well last Sunday, the 3rd, 4 people came to church from France. They were members of the church on vacation from France and I talked with them and helped in some of the communication. So during the week I get a phone call saying one of the French members was in the hospital and they want me to come help with translation. Well, we were super far away from the hospital at that point, so I couldn´t. But the next day I went with a sister from the ward to visit and turns out he´s in a coma from a stroke. The whole family had driven down from France to see him and they were all in tears. I found out that they were just waiting for all the children to drive down so they could pull the plug and let him go. It was a huge shock for me. Anyway, he passed away on Saturday. On a lighter note, I changed a tire for the first time on the mission. I remember doing it once with my grandpa and I remembered most of the steps, but this European cars hide everything so well that it took us 30 minutes to find the jack, the wrench and the lever that lowers the spare tire down. This week also, we´ve been dying of heat. It´s absolutely oppresive. The way the humidity is here, even if you go into the shade, it´s just as hot as directly in the sun. The only relief we have is our apartment with air conditioning. Well, my time´s up for this week. I hope everyone´s doing great. 

Love Élder Coleman

Taking care of business....and laundry!

Dear Everyone,

So transfers happened. I´m still here in Tarragona and I´m still with Elder Green. Some things got switched around though. For example, they took the sister missionaries out of the area and closed their area. Now we´re going to have to take on their area and people they were working with. Also, they switched the other companionship so now the two other missionaries are from Argentina and Bolivia. It´s going to be interesting living with 2 South Americans. It´s super interesting how they expect us to cover all of the province of Tarragona with only 2 companionships. Also, our ward is looking to split within the next month. We already have around 140 people come every week to church. In Spain, that´s a huge amount of active members for one ward. This week the heat´s been unbearable. It probably doesn´t get a lot hotter temperature wise than home, but this humidity is oppressing. I´m always sweating all the time. Most people don´t have AC so their houses are like little ovens. Oh I found this new product that completely removes the dark ring I get around my collar because of sweating so much. It´s called KH7 and I´m pretty sure I´d lose a hand if I got any on it. We´ve been doing a lot of finding lately, which means we´re looking for people to teach. We´re always talking to people on the street, but our most promising investigators come from members inviting their friends. So just keep that in mind all of you back home. Another piece of news is that Jordi Grau, our recent convert that we baptized not too long ago went with the bishop and his family to the temple to do baptisms. I think it is such a blessing to serve in a country that has a temple in it. Well, I hope all is well back home. I hope some of you can send me pictures of the fun stuff you´re doing. 

Love Élder Coleman

Birdie, birdie, in the sky....

Dear Everyone,

Well this week for the first time in my life, a bird pooped on me. I was just walking along and next thing you know I have a huge green/white stain on the front and back of my shirt because it hit me right on the shoulder. Well I cleaned it up, but the top of my planner is still stained. This week we´ve been doing a lot of finding and a lot of sweating. The sisters got taken out of the area for a week because their apartment is infested with bugs. They´re going to fumigate it while they´re gone. We´ve been having a lot of family home evenings with the members here. It helps strengthen them and we´ve actually found a fair amount of people to teach through members inviting their friends to family home evenings. Overall it´s been a successful week. We also went over to the bishop´s house for a barbeque. He has one of the nicest houses I´ve seen in Spain. I wish you could all come here with me and see the things I´m seeing everyday. I love Spain, it´s a beautiful place. I hope to do some more interesting things this week, so hopefully my next email is longer.

Love Élder Coleman

Don't Throw The Missionary Out With The Canape!

Dear Everyone,

It´s been hot here. Wow. I am so grateful we have air conditioning. Lately we´ve been doing a lot of finding and working with less actives. It´s been a lot of hard work. We´ve also done 3 moves this week. The last one we did was for a less active family and part of the move included moving something called a canapé ( I put it into google translate and it just says trundle and I don´t know what that is). Anyway it was super heavy and we had to lower it out of the window. There was a little miscommunication and someone almost threw it and me included out the window. Well we ended up saving the thing and I came out with nothing more than a large goose egg on my head. Today the members are taking us up to the mountains again. I´ve been hiking almost every single preparation day this transfer. The landscape of Spain reminds me a lot of back home. Something cool about here though is that you always find old buildings no matter where you go hiking. I feel bad because I don´t really have anything interesting to talk about. This week has been pretty boring. Just keep helping the missionaries wherever you are, they can use all the help they can get. I love you all.

Love Élder Coleman

It's Like A Heat Wave!

Dear Everyone,

This week I have been so exhausted. I think it´s the heat. It really drains you. It´s been in the high 20s here in Tarragona. I don´t think it´s dropped below 25º all week. The worst part is we are almost always in view of the Mediterranean, it´s so tempting to just jump in for a little bit. As for the work here, it is going super well. Actually the mission president and the stake president are both super gung ho to open up a brand new area in our ward. There is a town called Tortosa ( you can look it up on Google Maps). It´s super far away from Tarragona, but they belong to the ward here. There are quite a few members out there but almost all are less active because they lack the financial means to travel so far every week. It costs 16 € round trip on train. I´ve been down there a few times and the people are super prepared. So there has been talk of opening up an area and putting missionaries there. In fact they put the petition in to the area presidency and they´re waiting for a reply. It´s really cool to see the church growing here little by little. Well I´ve run out of time for today. Until next week. Hopefully I´ll have pictures next time. It´s just I keep forgetting to charge my camera. Cuidaos

Love Élder Coleman

Always running out of time!

Dear Everyone,

Well Canada day went by without any excitement. The 4th of July too. Nothing happened. It was strange. But we have been having fireworks around here recently because of el Día de San Juan. We have had a pretty interesting week. Today in and of itself was interesting. We got a call this morning from the bishop saying that the recent convert family of the chico we baptized recently had their house flood. So we caught a train to their town (they live far away). When we got to their house, there were pots everywhere to catch the water that was dripping from the cieling. The cieling itself was also peeling and falling. It was a mess. But it turns out that we couldn´t really do anything to help until the insurance guy came. It was an interesting day. I´m sort of running out of time, so that´s all for this week! ¡Os echo de menos a todos! Que vaya bien

Love Élder Coleman

Another baptism? It's like South America!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been super good. We had a baptism! There is a recent convert family in our ward who the whole family got baptized in January except the 18 year old son Adrian. He was a little rebellious and didn´t really believe in it. Well a few days ago, the bishop calls us up and tells us that he got a call from Adrian who said he wanted to be baptized this week. He´d already been taught everything by us and previous sets of missionaries so we baptized him yesterday right after church because that´s when his whole family could attend. He´s a super great kid. Our district here in Tarragona has completely changed. It used to be all americans (and one canadian) and now we have 2 hispanic missionaries. The new sister missionary is a actually a mini-missionary who lives in Palma de Mallorca! So I already knew her before. Well, my time is running out so this might have to be it for this week.

Love Élder Coleman

The rains came down and the floods came up!

Dear Everyone,

Transfers just happened. I´m still here in Tarragona. My companion Elder Frederich got transferred to Huesca, which is a huge honor because the area just opened to missionaries a transfer ago. It doesn´t even have a branch there. All the work he does there will go into establishing the beginings of a branch. My new companion is Elder Green. He´s from Gilbert Arizona, and I´m excited to work with him. We already have lots of people we are working with. Grau, our investigator, got baptized on Friday! He is so great. He even made his own baptismal programs. I´ll include pictures. Well as I´m typing right now, it´s pouring rain. It´s just dumping rain. It usually doesn´t rain here, but I´m worried about how we´re going to get back to our apartment without getting 100% soaked. Yesterday we went to a camp out with the ward. We didn´t really camp out, we just showed up at the ward campout for 2 or 3 hours and those who were leaving said goodbye. Also about a week ago, we had a family home evening at a member´s house with Grau before he got baptized. It was great, we had some great food. I tried whole sardines for the first time with the head and everything. But as we are getting ready to go, it starts just pouring and there is thunder and lightning is striking every 5 seconds. One of the family members goes down to the basement to check things out and comes up yelling "se están cayendo granizones" which means huge hail stones are falling. We went downstairs and sure enough, the garage door was being pounded in by hailstones. When they opened the door to look at the hail, however, a flood of water entered the garage and we had to sweep/shovel it out. Anyway, that´s about all for this week. 

Love Élder Coleman

The Eagle's Nest

Dear Everyone,

This week has been super good. I´m writing on a Tuesday because I didn´t get time yesterday because we got stuck super far away. We went on a hike called the Nido de Águila which means Eagle´s Nest. It had some really cool waterfalls and ruins and things. My companion has been planning a lot of hikes recently, which is lots of fun but it means I never get to buy shoes or do any other errands. I love exploring Spain though. On the hike, one of the sisters had a big rock fall on her head and the other one slipped and fell into the water at the waterfalls. (It´s just a calm pool so she didn´t get hurt.) But it was a super interesting trip.  This week is going to be a really great week because our investigator Grau is getting baptized on Friday. Normally I don´t put up the investigators we have on date because sometimes things donñt work out and they never get baptized. But Grau is super solid. His girlfriend is on a mission to Argentina and he has been getting emails from her encouraging him to talk to the missionaries and read the Book of Mormon. He was never interested before she left, but he started looking into the church because of her encouragement and he´s come to the conclusion that it´s true. He is one of the most down to earth, just legitimately cool people I´ve ever met. I´m so excited for his baptism and so is the ward. I´ll try to put up pictures of our hike this week, but I´m kind of running out of time. We have to go to a family home evening really soon. Until next week.

Love Élder Coleman

 Exploring Spain!

 Say cheese!

 This is an abandoned house we found while on our hike.

Hey shrimp! Are you looking at ME?!

Just a little preface:  I did NOT say that he bores people with the things he says.  I DID ask for some of the details of his daily interactions, specifically anything unique, funny, weird, etc.  More specifics, less generic.  You get my drift.  I could've deleted that line from his post but I didn't.  You get the whole experience as is!  

Dear Everyone,

I hope everyone like the video. People come up to me all the time in the ward now and say "I didn´t know you spoke french". It´s also all over everyone´s facebook here which is really great. I hope people see it and it peaks their interest about who we are and what we do. This past week I ate paella for the first time. It´s pretty much the typical Spanish foods. If you ask anyone what foods are Spanish foods they will say paella and tortilla de patata. Well I´ve officially tried both now and I must say I really like it. The kind I had didn´t have shrimp in it though. The shrimp here, they eat with the head and legs still attached and everything and it just feels like it´s staring at you. My mom asked me to spice up my blog entries because I guess I bore people with the things I say. One of the ideas she gave me was to talk about weird people that we see on the street. In Spain, there are an insane amount of weird people. I see weird things every day, but I typically don´t remember everything that happened to write about it on Monday. But actually right now as I´m typing this, there is a guy next to me in the locutorio (internet cafe type place) talking to me about UFOs and how the government is covering up all the evidence. I should make a list of all the weird things I see every day for a week and send it. You´d all get a chuckle. Well, today we went to some Roman ruins. We went to an aquaduct name Pont del Diable which is Catalan for Devil´s bridge. The legend is that the builder of the aquaduct was frustrated with how long it was taking to build, so he make a deal with the devil that if he would build it for him in one night that he could have the first soul to cross over the bridge. So when it was done, he made a cat cross the bridge first and thus tricked the devil. There is a lot of history here and legends and just interesting stories. I will send you pictures next week because I don´t have my card reader with me. As for stories, I can´t really think of any more. Oh, I´m pretty excited because a recent convert who is Catalan is going to teach us Catalan everyFriday at 8 from now on, and we´re obviously going to teach him the missionary lessons, but I´m pretty excited to learn. Només parlo un miqueta ara. Well, that´s it for this week. I love you all.

Élder Coleman

Una Invitación a conocernos

Even famous people get hurt.

Dear Everyone,

Today was a pretty good preparation day. We caught a bus decently early to Salou, which is a city in the other Elders´area. We rented bikes as a district and biked along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was pretty fun. I got a fair amount of pictures this time. Also, on Thursday we went for a whole day to a place called Tortosa, which is super far away. It´s the same distance from here to there as from here to Barcelona. I went with Elder Jackson, who isn´t my companion, because both companionships had visits in Tarragona and neither of us could sacrifice a whole so we did splits. Our goal is to start a branch there. There are a lot of members there who don´t come because it´s super far and expensive to get to Tarragona. We met with all the members in an FHE and we think we could start a family group out there that could grow into a branch eventually. People there are really receptive too. Almost everyone we talked to out there gave us their number. Also, another cool thing that I think everyone will love is that our ward did a youtube video. It starts off with the "Gracias a Él" video from the Church that I´m sure everyone´s seen and then it has a bunch of members from the ward introducing themselves. And a bunch of missionaries too. And, I show up! Twice! They wanted me to say something in French, so I did and then I show up at the end with all the missionaries. I´m not a very good actor, but I don´t think I look bad. They wanted it to be a multi-cultural video so we have people speaking Catalan, Spanish, English, Russian, French (me) and then the bishop offers an invitation to meet us. I think it was really well done. Here is the link so you can check it out. http://youtu.be/akS9g5vG-dE 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akS9g5vG-dE&feature=youtu.be    (He's famous now!)

 Another baptism!  It's almost like South America with the number of baptisms!

 An English class activity where they wrote on their faces.  Kids will be kids!

 A cool statue in Tortosa---NOT Tortuga!  No Captain Sparrow here!  

 Yeah, that's the Mediterranean behind him.  I know, he's got it really rough!

 Bike ride!

When the bike has the last laugh!  A war wound!  So it's not all jolly holiday on the Mediterranean after all!

I AM SPARTACUS!

Dear Everyone,

This week we had a baptism, but I didn´t bring my camera to send pictures. The name of the woman we baptized is Helen and she was a former investigator who had dropped the missionaries a while ago and then on Sunday she called us and said she wanted to be baptized. So we invite her to church and meet with her there. She had already been to church 3 times. We went over all the baptismal interview questions found in Preach My Gospel, and since she was ready we baptized her this Saturday. She is from Nigeria and has 4 kids, one is still in Nigeria. We are now working on getting her 11 year old daughter ready for baptism. We also have some other really great investigators here. So far we have been super busy and super productive, which I like. As for Tarragona, I wish it had some more stuff, because it´s kind of boring on preparation days, but I love the ward and the people here so far. Oh, another interesting fact. The ward has a video of a bunch of members bearing their testimonies on a DVD to share with friends. They found out I speak french and asked me to record a segment on it. They´re also going to put the video on facebook and youtube, so I thought that was cool. 

And just for fun, here's the gladiator from the show he went to last week!  I knew you wanted to see a sunburned gladiator picture.  Check that off your bucket list!  :)  I'm assuming that's Preston's companion on the other side of Spartacus.

The trains in Spain are mainly a big pain! (Ok, maybe not, but it rhymed!) And throw in a little Gladiators just for fun.

Alright, today has been a really long day. I so far have not been able to work in my area very much because we´ve had to go to Barcelona many times in the past week. To get there, we have to take a train and then 2 or 3 metro lines to get to our destination. And then the same thing to get back. It takes a long time (like 2 hours each way) and it is very expensive. Good thing the mission reimburses us for transportation expenses so that we can have the money we need to eat. But still, until the reimbursals come in, I am pretty poor. Our ward is super great here. Yes, it´s a ward. It´s pretty different because Palma is such a big city and there are 2 branches and here Tarragona is a tiny little place and they have a huge ward. It´s part of the Hospitalet stake and our ward leaders are super great. So far we don´t have anything super exciting that´s happened. Well, we took half of our preparation day on Saturday because we had specialized training today in Barcelona. (That´s why I´m emailing so late). We went to a Gladiator fight here in Tarragona. Tarragona is an ancient Roman city and has an actual Roman amphitheater here, kind of like a mini Colosseum. So we went and watched some Gladiator fights they did here, but don´t worry, nobody died. The most that happened was a few scratches. I´ll be sure to include some pictures of that.  

TRANSFERS!! Adios, Majorca! Hola, Tarragona!

This week has been crazy. First off, there were transfers. I am no longer in Palma de Mallorca, after being there for 6 months. Yep, I´ve left the beautiful island paradise. I am now in a place called Tarragona in the part of Spain called Catalunya. There is a lot more Catalán here. In Palma, there was some but a lot less. My new companion is Elder Frederich from Kentucky and he seems to be really great. I don´t really know him yet, but I am excited to get to work here. That´s about it. I´ll send pictures later. Tarragona looks like it´s almost as beautiful as Mallorca.


(Tarragona looks amazing!  Other than his worn out shoes, this looks like a vacation!)