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.)