Habla Ingles?

Dear Everyone,

Well Gandía is starting to warm up. When I got here it was freezing, but it´s getting better now. My companion and I get along well enough, although it´s interesting to go all day without speaking any English. The last time I had a Spanish speaking companion was about a year ago, so it´s been a while. A lot of people here think I´m Spanish though when they first meet me. I´m not perfect or anything, but the key to making people think you speak a language perfectly is getting really good at copying the accent. If you have a good accent, it really doesn´t matter if you know a lot of fancy words. Something interesting about Gandía, there is a super famous TV show filmed here called Gandía Shore, it´s based 100% on Jersey Shore and it´s famous throughout all of Spain. Today the bishop and his wife, along with the first counselor and his wife took all 6 of us missionaries to a cool waterfall/natural pool type thing. Afterwards, we all went to some caves where the Arabs hid out during the war between Spain and the Moors (the arabs that had taken over most of Spain). It was super interesting. Well, take care everyone. Until next week.

Love Élder Coleman

Go South, young man, go South!

Dear Everyone,

Well, they transferred me. I´m no longer in Bilbao. Now I´m in Gandía and I´m loving it. It´s the furthest south our mission goes, so everyone told me it was going to be hot, but since I´ve been here it´s been freezing cold. Granted, it´s January still. My companion is Elder Arriarán, he´s from Cochabamba Bolivia. I already knew him from living in the same apartment in Tarragona, and he´s great. The ward here, from what I´ve seen is super good and we have a great relationship with everyone. This transfer, they just put 2 sister missionaries here in Gandía, when before there were only 4 elders. Now there are 6 missionaries, which is great, but they kind of jumped the gun a little bit. The sisters are staying in a hotel because they don´t have an apartment and they also don´t have a phone yet. It´s going to be super hard for them, but also a great opportunity as well. I know we´re doing great. We already have one girl who is going to be baptized at the end of this month. Also if you notice, I´m writing on a Thursday and it´s because I got here Tuesday late at night and all of yesterday was super packed. I barely have enough time to write today, I´m going to have to cut it short. We just have so much stuff to do here and so many lessons that we teach, it´s hard to find room. I´m loving it. Well, next week I´ll tell you how things are here.

Love, Élder Coleman 

Guggenheim-meh?

Dear Everyone,

This week has been pretty normal. Last preparation day we went to the Guggenheim museum, which is a super famous museum here. It was kind of meh. I liked it and all, it was just kind of weird. There was one room that rotated through videos projected on the walls of 5 people about my age just dancing in a white background for like 10 minutes each. Also there was a whole room just painted head to toe with multiple multi-coloured triangles. Modern art sometimes goes right over my head. We´ve been talking with tons of people this week. It´s weird because some days there are lots of people in the streets and some days barely any. We´re just looking for some solid people to teach. This week we were eating at McDonalds because they have gluten-free buns that my companion can eat because he´s celiac. As we were eating our food, a man comes up to us and says in English "I´m not interested in becoming a Mormon, but I sure would love to speak some English". Turns out his name´s Simon and he´s a 30 year old guy from London who knew enough about the Mormons to know that a lot of us are American. He was in Bilbao because he married a Spanish girl from here and was visiting her family. He´s super Catholic which is apparently very strange for a British person. It was an interesting encounter. Other than that, a pretty normal week. There are huge sales in the stores now, so we might got shopping today. Until next week.

cuidaros 

Élder Coleman

The Field Is White, Ready To Harvest!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been great. I don´t think I´ve ever found so many new investigators in one week before in my mission. We had a great New Years with a great Spanish woman who fed us paella. I never get sick of having paella. I thought the party was going to be bigger here for New Years, but there was almost no one out. When you talk to people all the time, you find some interesting people. I talked to a girl who had lived in Toronto for many years and wanted to go back to Canada as soon as she could. I also met a member from Jaén (in the south of Spain) who was up here to visit his girlfriend. He served his mission in the Calgary mission and him and Elder Hardy (my Canadian compatriate here) know a lot of the same people. We´ve talked to some pretty crazy people this week too. Everyone wants to express their opinion about everything and everyone wants to tell you about their problems. That´s pretty much all we´ve done this week though, just talking to people in the streets. Today however, we´re going to the Guggenheim, which is the super famous museum here in Bilbao. 

Élder Coleman