Notice the baptismal font behind them
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
9 Mar 2010 sorpresas son una pasada
Good news! I havent changed much at all on the mission, I am still just as scatter-brained as ever. So much in fact, i had to learn the word in spanish: despistado. I forgot to tell you that we have changed our P-day to, well, today. Surprise! Elder Kopishke (sp?), president of the Euro Area is coming to visit. Should be sweet.
Aaron, thank you for your faithfulness and your advance email. In return for your efforts, i will take your children as apprentices and teach them each one of my sub-par skills (guitar, wakeboarding, spanish, knitting, etc). Many may think this an uneeded risk placing such young, moldable minds under my stewardship. They may be right, but it is all i can offer. As for the rest of you, just because i wont be reading until next week does not mean you can skip out on this weeks email.
So anyway, on to the happenings...
Mom, you are gonna freak! Last week we had a lunch appointment with some members who are sweet. That is not the freaky part. The husband's name is Mike and he is from California, and his wife's name is Pilar and she is a crazy, hiped up spaniard lady. Every few years they shift between wher they live, USA or SPA, and now they are here. That is not the freaky part either. We were small talking it up and i asked them what they do for work here. Turns out they are both english teachers. Still not freaky. He then went into more detail about it and it turns out he does something a little different. He is a trained EFT coach and professional reflexologist. You may now feel free to freak (if you want, now that i wrote it down i realize i did a really bad job of climaxing it). I felt so at home talking to him about the craziness of the EFT. His stories are amazing. He has had a ton of success in his coaching. Everything from crappy students to hurt/trunky missionaries to investigators having difficulties giving up catholicism. The coolest part to me is that i have gotten to the point where i am pushing myself a ton. I am just dying to give it everything and be what i know i can, but i know i have a lot of bad habits. A lot of baggage from stupid stuff. Companions, mistakes, lest downs, turn downs, and just the overall pressure from the dimishing mission clock. I have made a lot of good feeling steps in the last few weeks, and i was getting to this point where i felt like i couldnt add much more without getting rid of a few things weighing me down. He was sent at such a perfect timing. Little miracles like this are so cool. When he saw the look in my eye when we were talking about it, he went ahead and offered to do some work with me. We are gonna have a go at it this week. Mom, i know we all call you crazy, but you are rubbing off on everyone. Dont get me wrong, we will never stop calling you crazy, but now we will have to include ourselves every once in a while.
Yesterday was pretty funny. I invited President to come to a district meeting one of these weeks and he decided to take me up on the offer the same week i made the invite. We had been going for a few minutes and he called us up telling us he was outside. We let him and his wife in, they sat down, and we got things going on the road again. The first thing i said to him was, "Well President, we are playing a game and you are up next." The look on his face was priceless. He already makes awesome facial expressions, but this one was amazing. After our get to know you game we moved on to "happy thought hour" where everyone shares their favorite happy thought from the last week. It doesnt actually take an hour to do, but its sounds better than "happy thought minute". After the happies we had the hermanas make a spanish study skeleton. Turned out great, really boney. Then to bring it to an end we practiced awkward contacting situations. Any contacting practice is super fun so we ended well. When President finally recovered from his shock we got some pretty good feedback which is always helpful. His wife told me i have a style that has a lot of Bon Ami. I dont even know what that means, but i love it. Then to top it all off, we had a feast of spanish pastries. Apparently it made an impression on him because today we heard from a few missionaries that they heard about our district meeting. Dont know what impression it was because the missionaries just laughed when they said it. I am just happy i made it out without a scratch. I kept forgetting president was there. I kept making jokes and then remember he was there. He didnt laugh at too many, which is fine, but his wife was having a ball. I will consider it a success.
We have a baptism this weekend. His name is Carlos Ruiz and he is so funny. He is a big old buff peruvian. Everytime we go over to teach him and ask him how he is doing he always comes of with a different way to describe how he is. He always manages to explain his current state of being by connecting it to the him breaking the word of wisdom in some absurd way. He thinks the laws of the church are hilarious, because to him they are common sense things. But he loves teasing about it. So we always get a good scare at the beggining when he explains that he was feeling tired but he is better now that he finished his pot of coffee spiked with rum. The best part is that is combinations never make sense. We get along really well.
Shoot, out of time.
Well, loves,
Elder Sky
Aaron, thank you for your faithfulness and your advance email. In return for your efforts, i will take your children as apprentices and teach them each one of my sub-par skills (guitar, wakeboarding, spanish, knitting, etc). Many may think this an uneeded risk placing such young, moldable minds under my stewardship. They may be right, but it is all i can offer. As for the rest of you, just because i wont be reading until next week does not mean you can skip out on this weeks email.
So anyway, on to the happenings...
Mom, you are gonna freak! Last week we had a lunch appointment with some members who are sweet. That is not the freaky part. The husband's name is Mike and he is from California, and his wife's name is Pilar and she is a crazy, hiped up spaniard lady. Every few years they shift between wher they live, USA or SPA, and now they are here. That is not the freaky part either. We were small talking it up and i asked them what they do for work here. Turns out they are both english teachers. Still not freaky. He then went into more detail about it and it turns out he does something a little different. He is a trained EFT coach and professional reflexologist. You may now feel free to freak (if you want, now that i wrote it down i realize i did a really bad job of climaxing it). I felt so at home talking to him about the craziness of the EFT. His stories are amazing. He has had a ton of success in his coaching. Everything from crappy students to hurt/trunky missionaries to investigators having difficulties giving up catholicism. The coolest part to me is that i have gotten to the point where i am pushing myself a ton. I am just dying to give it everything and be what i know i can, but i know i have a lot of bad habits. A lot of baggage from stupid stuff. Companions, mistakes, lest downs, turn downs, and just the overall pressure from the dimishing mission clock. I have made a lot of good feeling steps in the last few weeks, and i was getting to this point where i felt like i couldnt add much more without getting rid of a few things weighing me down. He was sent at such a perfect timing. Little miracles like this are so cool. When he saw the look in my eye when we were talking about it, he went ahead and offered to do some work with me. We are gonna have a go at it this week. Mom, i know we all call you crazy, but you are rubbing off on everyone. Dont get me wrong, we will never stop calling you crazy, but now we will have to include ourselves every once in a while.
Yesterday was pretty funny. I invited President to come to a district meeting one of these weeks and he decided to take me up on the offer the same week i made the invite. We had been going for a few minutes and he called us up telling us he was outside. We let him and his wife in, they sat down, and we got things going on the road again. The first thing i said to him was, "Well President, we are playing a game and you are up next." The look on his face was priceless. He already makes awesome facial expressions, but this one was amazing. After our get to know you game we moved on to "happy thought hour" where everyone shares their favorite happy thought from the last week. It doesnt actually take an hour to do, but its sounds better than "happy thought minute". After the happies we had the hermanas make a spanish study skeleton. Turned out great, really boney. Then to bring it to an end we practiced awkward contacting situations. Any contacting practice is super fun so we ended well. When President finally recovered from his shock we got some pretty good feedback which is always helpful. His wife told me i have a style that has a lot of Bon Ami. I dont even know what that means, but i love it. Then to top it all off, we had a feast of spanish pastries. Apparently it made an impression on him because today we heard from a few missionaries that they heard about our district meeting. Dont know what impression it was because the missionaries just laughed when they said it. I am just happy i made it out without a scratch. I kept forgetting president was there. I kept making jokes and then remember he was there. He didnt laugh at too many, which is fine, but his wife was having a ball. I will consider it a success.
We have a baptism this weekend. His name is Carlos Ruiz and he is so funny. He is a big old buff peruvian. Everytime we go over to teach him and ask him how he is doing he always comes of with a different way to describe how he is. He always manages to explain his current state of being by connecting it to the him breaking the word of wisdom in some absurd way. He thinks the laws of the church are hilarious, because to him they are common sense things. But he loves teasing about it. So we always get a good scare at the beggining when he explains that he was feeling tired but he is better now that he finished his pot of coffee spiked with rum. The best part is that is combinations never make sense. We get along really well.
Shoot, out of time.
Well, loves,
Elder Sky
Wed, Mar 3, 2010 Spain deoderant just isnt working for me
I just took a woof of air and smelt the musk of an old spaniard man, usually very pungent stuff. Sadly, i just looked around and there was nobody i could tag the smell too, and upon further under jacket inspection, it appears i am the culprit. Tragic. Oh well, at least i fit in better now. (this is not a cultural slur, it is a simple comment on the tendency that a certain culture has to spread their musks about my nose)
I dont have too much time because we took the district on a Aranjuez tour. Super fun. Then, when i got here, the computer rebeled and would not let me log on to my account, so naturally i had to destroy it. Delays delays delays.
Things of not this week:
First official guitar class took place. 9 people. 1 guitar. Amazing. Either they know how sensitive i am deep down and didnt want to hurt my fillings (i wrote this on accident, but i am going to leave it because it creates a fun little mental picture of my fillings getting hurt), or they really like it because they all said they are going to go buy guitars now. Pretty soon we are going to have an army of extremely dramatic, sub-par, rockers who overdo everything.
The ward is gaining a lot of confidence with the missionaries now. Not sure if it is because of, or in spite of my presence, but it is definitely happening. For the first time ever we are having the leaders call us to figure out when they can help us. And even more of note, i am now the butt end of every joke. Attention is a attention, no matter wether positive or negative, so i am in seventh heaven. In case i didnt inform you, i had a milestone in my life last week... i lost a toenail. I know, i know, its nuts! I may have also not told you about the stubbed toe i got playing soccer around christmas time. I also may have left out our efforts in salvaging the toe by creating an 8 elder drilling team to relieve the pressure through the nail. We saved it, or so we thought. It was really black for the last couple of months, and in the last couple of weeks it was starting to grey up. I got out of the shower one morning and the nail was really lose, and of course, i sarted playing with it. Well, one thing led to another, my nail turned into a mouth that lipsings EFY songs, and next thing you know, POP! Off came my toe nail. After i finished screaming, i did the only logical thing: i laminated it in tape and put a date on it as a keepsake. Dont worry, you will be getting it in the mail soon. It has caused quite the interesting train of thoughts to say the least. Every time i walk into the metro, or sit down on the bus, i realize in one of those AHA! moments that there is an odd number of toenails in the group in which i find myself. Even now i am making this exact realization. So anyway, not sure how it happened, but the whole ward found out (i may or may not have begun every visit with, "guess what!" and then told them) and loved it. So the point of the story- we were in the investigator's gospel priciples class and i was naturally the example of everything. One in particular was brilliant. We were talking about agency and the teacher was talking about how along the road of life there are stumbling blocks. If we make the wrong decision and run into the stumbling block, we may end up like Elder Carr and lose a toenail. I loved it. It that is what is needed to make people have a good time, bring it on. I have always loved teasing myself. I have no insecurities to worry about, so i have always rather it be me than somebody else. Plus i get my need dosage of attention on top of everything.
Oh shoot, we gotta run. Sorry about the shortness.
Keep up the good work on the home front.
Oh yeah, about how long you are planning on spending here, you decide. Any decision i make is biased depending on the day. If i know it is what you want, it will be perfect.
Lots of lovey doveys,
Elder Sky
I dont have too much time because we took the district on a Aranjuez tour. Super fun. Then, when i got here, the computer rebeled and would not let me log on to my account, so naturally i had to destroy it. Delays delays delays.
Things of not this week:
First official guitar class took place. 9 people. 1 guitar. Amazing. Either they know how sensitive i am deep down and didnt want to hurt my fillings (i wrote this on accident, but i am going to leave it because it creates a fun little mental picture of my fillings getting hurt), or they really like it because they all said they are going to go buy guitars now. Pretty soon we are going to have an army of extremely dramatic, sub-par, rockers who overdo everything.
The ward is gaining a lot of confidence with the missionaries now. Not sure if it is because of, or in spite of my presence, but it is definitely happening. For the first time ever we are having the leaders call us to figure out when they can help us. And even more of note, i am now the butt end of every joke. Attention is a attention, no matter wether positive or negative, so i am in seventh heaven. In case i didnt inform you, i had a milestone in my life last week... i lost a toenail. I know, i know, its nuts! I may have also not told you about the stubbed toe i got playing soccer around christmas time. I also may have left out our efforts in salvaging the toe by creating an 8 elder drilling team to relieve the pressure through the nail. We saved it, or so we thought. It was really black for the last couple of months, and in the last couple of weeks it was starting to grey up. I got out of the shower one morning and the nail was really lose, and of course, i sarted playing with it. Well, one thing led to another, my nail turned into a mouth that lipsings EFY songs, and next thing you know, POP! Off came my toe nail. After i finished screaming, i did the only logical thing: i laminated it in tape and put a date on it as a keepsake. Dont worry, you will be getting it in the mail soon. It has caused quite the interesting train of thoughts to say the least. Every time i walk into the metro, or sit down on the bus, i realize in one of those AHA! moments that there is an odd number of toenails in the group in which i find myself. Even now i am making this exact realization. So anyway, not sure how it happened, but the whole ward found out (i may or may not have begun every visit with, "guess what!" and then told them) and loved it. So the point of the story- we were in the investigator's gospel priciples class and i was naturally the example of everything. One in particular was brilliant. We were talking about agency and the teacher was talking about how along the road of life there are stumbling blocks. If we make the wrong decision and run into the stumbling block, we may end up like Elder Carr and lose a toenail. I loved it. It that is what is needed to make people have a good time, bring it on. I have always loved teasing myself. I have no insecurities to worry about, so i have always rather it be me than somebody else. Plus i get my need dosage of attention on top of everything.
Oh shoot, we gotta run. Sorry about the shortness.
Keep up the good work on the home front.
Oh yeah, about how long you are planning on spending here, you decide. Any decision i make is biased depending on the day. If i know it is what you want, it will be perfect.
Lots of lovey doveys,
Elder Sky
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 A sopapo of an email
I got the letter. Super fast I might add. It came on Monday. It might have even come sooner had it not been for the weekend... Amazing. If you want we can keep sending stuff straight to me. I also got the package during interviews yesterday and it is sweet. I especially love the flying cow on the bottle of the lactose stuff. It all makes sense now... actually, it is even more confusing, but at least I have an awesome mental picture of a superhero cow flying around my intestine breaking up all the evil air pockets to protect my companions olfactory headquarters. Thank you. I also let our Spaniard roommate try some of the dried mangoes and his response was "holy butterfly." We taught him holy cow and I guess he thought it was free to use with any animal... who knew? So, thank you thank you thank you.
We have been having a lot of activities with the troubled youth of the ward lately. They usually don't like the missionaries much, but lately they have been way cool. They have been calling us up to go hang out, so that is what we do, we hang out, missionary style. We do stuff like bet them they couldn't teach a single principle of the the missionary lessons, and then they try to prove us wrong. It is sweet. My favorite part is the Spanish slang. I make sure to run everything I hear by the mission leader and Elder Moreno to make sure it is not vulgar. So you can have confidence that at least in Spain it is acceptable. So to explain the subjects of the last couple emails - Estar cachas = to be a real hunk, and describing something as bombo and platillos = loud and noisy (literally drum and cymbals). They tend to use the second more with me, but we are working it towards the first. It is funny how many different kinds of Spanish there are. There are so many words that we can only use with Spaniards and so many we can only use with south americans. Then when you get into the southies, they each have their own words for everything. Confusing at times. Sad thing is, there are no Mexicans here, so I will have to learn a whole new Spanish when I get home.
So you are coming to pick me up after all? Man, you guys are so rich. It will be way sweet. Let me know how much time you are planning on spending. I will give you small lists of places and people with their emails so you can get it all planned out. Sorry, but people will take some precedence over places.
Oh yeah, Dad, last week we went to check out this free massage place and it was pretty cool. They have this so called state of the art table that uses infrared to make you feel awesome. It felt pretty good and they let you go as much as you want. It is called Ceragem. I lady in charge came to get some of my info while i was getting a massage and I gave her the low down on my Chirodad. I think they want to give a lot of free stuff to try to win us over. After i told them about you they got really nice. All i want to know is what you think of it to know if it would be something worth doing during pday.
We did actually manage to do a good amount of missionary work this last week. Things are going super well. So well in fact that President told me in the interview to start planning for another companionship to come help us. Way cool. We will be one of the first wards to get a boost. That wasn't my favorite part of the interview though. When we walked in we were soaking wet because it was raining like always. President came up to us and handed us his umbrella and his keys and gave us a big list of stuff he wanted us to grab. He then turned to his wife and asked her if she had any change, and as usual, my brain to mouth connection was working unhindered and i said, "President, no hay que pagarnos (you don't have to pay us)." Apparently he just wanted us to pay for his parking, but he look at me, shook his head, and said, "Ah el Elder Carr is su buen sentido de humor (elder carr and his good sense of humor)." The cool thing about this was that it was the third time he has said it to me, and the first time that it resulted from a joke. The first was when he asked me what the palace was called in Arajuez and I told him, "supongo que es el palacio de Arajuez (palace of Arajuez)." I hope you get the joke, if you don't, your are lame.
I think i am lame, i don't get it.
The other day we went to the hospital to visit the sister of our mission leader. She has cancer everywhere. She is the one i love to flirt with. We got there and she was doing really bad. We gave her a blessing and then tried to help her. She was really cold and there just happened to be a cup of something warm on the table. So we made her drink it. After she tasted it she asked what it was. Once again my brain to mouth connection was too well connected and i told her that it was probably Elder Wallace's urine, but to drink it anyway because it will warm her up. She laughed and felt better. It was cool.
Sorry, we gotta run already.
Love you a whole lot,
Elder Sky
We have been having a lot of activities with the troubled youth of the ward lately. They usually don't like the missionaries much, but lately they have been way cool. They have been calling us up to go hang out, so that is what we do, we hang out, missionary style. We do stuff like bet them they couldn't teach a single principle of the the missionary lessons, and then they try to prove us wrong. It is sweet. My favorite part is the Spanish slang. I make sure to run everything I hear by the mission leader and Elder Moreno to make sure it is not vulgar. So you can have confidence that at least in Spain it is acceptable. So to explain the subjects of the last couple emails - Estar cachas = to be a real hunk, and describing something as bombo and platillos = loud and noisy (literally drum and cymbals). They tend to use the second more with me, but we are working it towards the first. It is funny how many different kinds of Spanish there are. There are so many words that we can only use with Spaniards and so many we can only use with south americans. Then when you get into the southies, they each have their own words for everything. Confusing at times. Sad thing is, there are no Mexicans here, so I will have to learn a whole new Spanish when I get home.
So you are coming to pick me up after all? Man, you guys are so rich. It will be way sweet. Let me know how much time you are planning on spending. I will give you small lists of places and people with their emails so you can get it all planned out. Sorry, but people will take some precedence over places.
Oh yeah, Dad, last week we went to check out this free massage place and it was pretty cool. They have this so called state of the art table that uses infrared to make you feel awesome. It felt pretty good and they let you go as much as you want. It is called Ceragem. I lady in charge came to get some of my info while i was getting a massage and I gave her the low down on my Chirodad. I think they want to give a lot of free stuff to try to win us over. After i told them about you they got really nice. All i want to know is what you think of it to know if it would be something worth doing during pday.
We did actually manage to do a good amount of missionary work this last week. Things are going super well. So well in fact that President told me in the interview to start planning for another companionship to come help us. Way cool. We will be one of the first wards to get a boost. That wasn't my favorite part of the interview though. When we walked in we were soaking wet because it was raining like always. President came up to us and handed us his umbrella and his keys and gave us a big list of stuff he wanted us to grab. He then turned to his wife and asked her if she had any change, and as usual, my brain to mouth connection was working unhindered and i said, "President, no hay que pagarnos (you don't have to pay us)." Apparently he just wanted us to pay for his parking, but he look at me, shook his head, and said, "Ah el Elder Carr is su buen sentido de humor (elder carr and his good sense of humor)." The cool thing about this was that it was the third time he has said it to me, and the first time that it resulted from a joke. The first was when he asked me what the palace was called in Arajuez and I told him, "supongo que es el palacio de Arajuez (palace of Arajuez)." I hope you get the joke, if you don't, your are lame.
I think i am lame, i don't get it.
The other day we went to the hospital to visit the sister of our mission leader. She has cancer everywhere. She is the one i love to flirt with. We got there and she was doing really bad. We gave her a blessing and then tried to help her. She was really cold and there just happened to be a cup of something warm on the table. So we made her drink it. After she tasted it she asked what it was. Once again my brain to mouth connection was too well connected and i told her that it was probably Elder Wallace's urine, but to drink it anyway because it will warm her up. She laughed and felt better. It was cool.
Sorry, we gotta run already.
Love you a whole lot,
Elder Sky
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
