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Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009

Big week this week. I mean, we are talking big, sweaty Romanian big. I say this because there is one sweating next to me. He is big. Like this week. This week was big.

I think to properly express the enormity of this week, I will be starting a new segment. The following will be called: frolicking through the happy thoughts of my daily planner.

There is this thing we do in this mission at the end of everyday that has allowed this segment to take life. After a long day of working we put down numbers and choose a happy thought, usually just little funny things that happen. I, however, have fallen behind a bit in my journal writing. So, at the end of every day, I write down my happy thought which is usually a happy paragraph. As you may have deducted, this has now become my journal… at least until I get caught up… maybe on the plane ride home.

Let’s frolic.

Wednesday night we bought a basketball to celebrate the rebirth of the sports rule.

Thursday we played with said basketball during morning exercises. We rode extra buses to get around due to the fact that I have not played sports for almost a year, which makes pulling every muscle in the body very likely, which I did. When we taught Michael we asked him what he was planning on doing for the night. He said, “Watching kite rider of course.” Elder Castro said, “Cool, what’s that?” He answered, “You know, the show with the really cool car that drives around and saves people. Elder Castro responded, “Oh, you mean knight rider.” Michael then proved him clearly wrong by adding, “No, kite rider, the one with the car. Look, it starts with a K.” Elder Castro was then forced to apologize for his ignorance of the obvious.

Friday: Elder Castro ate yogurt that smelled like a pretty girl.

Saturday we taught Olga Marzal, one of our epic referrals, and she was amazing. She was a referral from the Bilbao mission. Apparently she was making calls for work, entered the number in wrong, and ended up calling the missionaries. The church is true.

Sunday: Michael passed his baptismal interview!

Monday: Awesome. We went to Valdemoro, a pueblo that is about 30 minutes away by train, to teach a lesson. We got there and the second coming almost started. The craziest storm I have ever seen almost completely destroyed Valdemoro. Lightning was striking all over the place, the wind was wild, and the rain fell for a solid hour and a half. I knew that if I died mom would make dad resurrect me so that she could kill me again for having the nerve to die, so I decided we would wait it out by watching the testaments (the storm was very similar to the storm in the testaments after the crucifixion, ironic). The movie ended, as well as most of the storm, so we headed out. It was pretty late so we went to the bus stop right around the corner and right as we got there a bus pulled up. Not a normal bus, though. We were waiting for the #7 which is a normal city bus. What came was a huge cross country bus with a piece of paper taped on to it that said #7. Peculiar. The driver, which was a 30ish year old Spaniard asked us where we were going. We told him the train station and he said in essence, “Well, it may take us a while, but I will get you there, saddle up!” This was when it got cool. Apparently, the storm dominated the pueblo. Almost all the streets were closed because there were rivers and floods everywhere. All the other buses had stopped running because it was unsafe, but this driver wasn’t going to leave people out there on their own, so he took his bus, left his route, and went in search of people. There were about 5 people on the bus. One of them was some girl who was freaking out and calling her family to make sure everyone was okay and she was sitting at the front. We wanted a better view so we sat in the middle. We took a loop on the edge of the city to take one of the riders to his house when we passed a round about. On one end there was a really big puddle and something dark in the middle. When we got closer I realized the dark thing was the roof of a car that had sunk. Everyone was freaking out because there was no way to get through. The driver wasn’t about to let this beat him. He took his kind size bus and plowed it over the median, through some dudes lawn, and back around to the road. That was when the really loud, over dramatic girl got off. The bus driver then said, “Hey, you boys with the white shirts and name tags, come up here and talk to me.” We obeyed. He asked us, “Did you call your mission president to tell him you are going to be home late?” Then we asked him how he knew that, and he asked back, “how do you think?” My companion remembered that a member a couple weeks ago had told us he had a son that drove buses for Spain. He asked him, “maybe you are Leonardo’s son.” Then he said, “maybe.” So we said, “nice to meet you Mario.” We chatted for a bit while he was trying to find a path through the city, but everything was closed or flooded. He told us that he would need to take us out of the city, to the freeway, and then back in because it was probably the only way. Well, it worked. We got the train station, but there were even some trains that were flooded out. He parked his bus and came in with us to make sure we could catch a train. We asked around and found out there was one more train coming. He told us to get his number just in case it didn’t work out and he would take us home or let us sleep at his house. We then thanked him profusely, jumped the tracks because the tunnel was flooded, and caught the last train home. In my missionary opinion, it all worked out too perfectly for it not to have been an answer to one of mom’s prayers of protection.

Tuesday I got a call before zone conference started asking me if I would be willing to translate for the meeting. They had a big mike they gave me and all the natives wore headphones for the English to Spanish, and all the new missionaries wear them for the Spanish to English. Well, I don’t think they are ever going to ask me again. Apparently they didn’t expect me to sing the hymns into the mike, which I did. Then I got bored after a few minutes and started adding my own commentary and various accents to the missionaries. By the end there were a lot of missionaries wearing headphones. Probably a good thing the missionary leadership didn’t approve, translating is tiring. Sometimes it is hard to match the right accent to each individual missionary.

Well, there you have it.
My happy thoughts, with commentary done by me speaking like Walter Cronkite. Feel free to go back and read it again with that in mind.
Loves, hugs, and kisses for the girls,
Elder Anthony Skyler Carr
The Half-Blood Prince