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

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

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.