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