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