A high of 39 degrees Celsius--wait, that's a fever!

Dear Everyone,

I´m already kicking myself for not bringing my camera to the place where I email. This week has been one of the best. It started out really terrible though. I had the worst sore throat in the world and a fever of 39º. I tried to sleep it off, but I couldn´t even sleep because every time I got close, I swallowed and woke myself up. I got fed up and called the office and told them I thought it was strep throat, so they told me to get myself to Valencia as soon as possible. I dragged my poor companion all the way to the hospital in Valencia, which is an hour and a half train ride plus a 20 minute metro ride plus walking a fair amount in the pouring rain to get to this hospital. I ended up sitting in the emergency room for a while feeling awful. I looked up and saw on the TV the news was talking about a plane that crashed in France and I figured I don´t have it that bad. When they finally looked at me, they said it was pharyngitis which is the family of diseases that includes strep throat. They prescribed antibiotics and on our way home, even though it was super super late, I made my companion stop at a 24 hour pharmacy and we got my antibiotics. I took them that night and boom! the next morning I was perfectly fine. This Saturday had to be one of the best days ever. We had 3 baptisms here and also Diego, our Uruguayan investigator came to the baptism, as well as Antonio and Gloria, the couple that live in Ontinyent where she´s a member and he isn´t. It took a lot of planning to get them there, but they came! Antonio and Gloria also came to church the next day. They were so excited and so grateful. Diego is already going around telling people he´s getting baptized on the 11th. We´re trying to plan so Antonio can get baptized on the 18th. The only thing that worries me is transfers (changes) are coming up on the 14th of April and I might be going. I really want to stay here now that things are really going well. Well that´s all for this week. ¡Os deseo felices pascuas y una feliz semana santa! Recordad que Jesucristo es la razón por la que celebramos estas fechas. Os quiero! I´ll send photos for sure next time.

Élder Coleman

Sore Throat Sunday?

Dear Everyone,

So I´ve been sick. On Saturday, I was starting to feel a little bit under the weather and then I just woke up on Sunday with a fever of 103 and the sorest throat in the world. I´ll tell you right now, that´s probably the worst combo, because when you have a fever you just want to sleep but then every time you swallow, you wake yourself up because of the pain. It sucked. I´m doing better today, but I´m still super out of it. This week we had a fair amount of success. We´re working with this guy named Diego who is really interested. Also, we got a referral of someone who was looking to meet with us a little while ago. We went to out to visit her a few weeks ago, I don´t remember if I wrote about it or not. But basically the wife is a member from Mexico who moved to a tiny town in Spain. The husband´s not a member but wants to be. We went to visit them for the 2nd time on Saturday after already talking to the bishop about their situation and everything and they agreed to make the sacrifice to take a 3 hour train ride, stay overnight at a member´s house, go to church on Sunday, and then go back on another 3 hour train ride. Their faith really impressed me. I´m really glad the fallas (the big party here in the community of Valencia) are over. They were really cool though. We got to see a few of them burn and they are super impressive. I´ll send pictures.

Élder Coleman 

Fallas and fireworks!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been a continuous party. It´s the week of Fallas and it´s crazy. There are everywhere, all the time, kids of all ages lighting firecrackers and throwing them all over the place. There are large figures all over the streets that people have spent a lot of time making throughout the year. They all have some sort of political significance. They all get burned however on the 19th. It´s part of the tradition. As for the work here in Gandía, it´s been slow this week. We did find a really great guy named Diego, who is excited to be baptized on the 28th of this month. He´s from Uruguay and he´s already good friends with all the young single adults in the ward. He loves learning and we´re really excited for him. Today we´re going to Valencia to greet a missionary from Gandía returning from his mission in Athens Greece. He´s going to be a huge strength to the ward.

What do you do when you're stuck inside? Watch movies, of course!

Dear Everyone,

This week has been kind of slow. Elder Carter has been violently ill all week and we all took turns staying inside so that we could get  to visits in both areas. So I spent a fair amount of time inside with Elder Carter. I watched Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration a couple times and the DVD they made with all the Bible videos on it. We were going to help a lady cut down a palm tree, but that got put off until next week. Today we are going to visit with a woman who is really interested in learning about us, she keeps asking us to come over. I´m excited to see how it goes. Today we are going with a few members to a mountain to hike it and eat food, picnic style afterwards. It should be fun.

Elder Coleman

Pop goes the missionary, fireworks, eardrums!

Dear Everyone,

Today has been crazy. I´m currently in Valencia. My companion Elder Arriarán finished his mission and is on his way home. We have eaten so much in this past week, saying goodbye to people, I thought I was going to die. My new companion Elder Bartschi gets here tonight (that´s why I´m in Valencia, to pick him up). The crazy thing is, he only has one transfer (6 weeks) left, so I´m going to be finishing off 2 missionaries in a row. The last time was stressful enough, but I´ll survive. I already kind of know him; he´s from Arizona and he´s super interesting so I won´t be bored this transfer. While we were in Valencia this morning dropping off our old companions, Elder Stolk and I got pulled into a crowd of hundreds of people. There was a large police barricade and everything. Then fireworks started going off, but they were so loud I thought I was going to go deaf. It was so loud you could feel each blast on your face. It´s all part of this huge celebration here in the Valencian community called "fallas" (pronounced kind of like figh-yas). There are other things they do on other days. In a couple weeks, there are a bunch of bull fights and I´m going to see if we can go to one. In all the community, including Gandía, there is a large parade of very detailed, well made floats that get set on fire at midnight. We´ll see if we can get some members to video it for us. 

Love, Élder Coleman