Ups and Downs in Aranjuez

Dear Mom and Dad,

This past week has been pretty good. I've had some ups and downs but overall we are doing good. So in the way of our new schedule instead of exiting the piso everyday at 11:30 we now leave at 10:30. Our morning schedule is wake up at 7:30, exercise for 30 minutes, eat and get ready until 9, personal study is from 9-10 and then we have language study till 10:30. We leave and are allowed to do pros activities until 2 then we have an hour to eat. From 3-4 we have companionship study. The we are back on the streets by 4 until 10, or 10:30 if we have a lesson late. So that's our schedule in a nutshell. This week we got a pretty huge blessing on our first day of the new schedule but I'll talk about that later.

LEARNING THE LANGUAGEThe language for me is going super good. I don't take any credit for any ability that I have to be able to speak or understand. I have a huge blessing from God. I recognize it every day. I understand everyone in Spanish. I can't necessarily respond to all yet but wow, I never thought I'd be able to fluently understand in 4 months.

EATING THE FOOD
When we eat with Melisse she always gives us rice, meat, and a little Spanish Salad with vinegar. I'm gonna get home with my taste buds burned out. Haha! It's not anything special but it tastes pretty good, and it's always nice when members feed us.

 

We have a polish member here that fed us once and that was the only time I didn't enjoy the food. We appreciated the meal, but...we ate like buckwheat and meat with a thick mushroom sauce. Ewwwww it was pretty gross. Plus he made homemade gazpacho which was essentially like really bad salsa from the U.S. And I had to drink it. Oh and if anyone ever says that jamon cerrano is good, don't believe them. It's sooooooo nasty, and the smell makes me want to puke.

THIS WEEK'S ACTIVITIES:

Monday el 17- Today for Pday we pretty much just had a chill day. We went to the chapel and ate some pizza and also we just wrote emails for a while. It's nice to have a lot of time to do it because it makes it a lot easier to write everyone that I want to. Sometimes it's stressful to try and write everyone because I want to make sure I put a lot of detail into what I write you guys. I usually spend about an hour writing to you guys every week. [Then we played futbol.]

 

Tuesday el 18 - Today was our first day of our new mission schedule. Wow, we received almost an instant blessing. We were outside in the morning contacting and if we hadn't had been out at this time we probably wouldn't have found this investigator. We were walking our usual streets when we saw a Latino guy and they are usually nice and will listen to us, so we instantly contacted him. His name is Axxx and he's from Columbia. He was so prepared I feel because he accepted a Libro De Mormon. He's so awesome and some extra prayers could never hurt so please pray for our friend, Axxx.

Wednesday el 19 - Today we had district meeting in Toledo. We got 2 new elders this week. Their names are Elder Doxey and Elder Whiteman. Elder Doxey is our new DL and he is actually cousins with the Facer family from Old Hickory ward. Haha! What a small world the church is. He's a really nice guy. Also Elder Whiteman is from San Diego. He's a surfer guy. He's cool. Everyone in our district has less than a year on the mission besides Elder Norrell so he kinda feels like really old now. Tonight we ate with Ginger. We ate ribs and rice and a little bit of salad.

TEACHING LESSONS
Thursday el 20 - Today we had our first lesson with Axxx. He's great and he really enjoyed our lesson about the restoration. He said he's been looking for a reactivation of his faith. So we were kinda an answer to his prayers. He's so gold. Help us by praying for him.

Friday el 21 - Today we did a lot of contacting and we had a lesson with a recent convert Haydee. A lot of the days here we just spend contacting. It's a lot of work for little results but it is our best option. We just keep positive. We are changing our area. We are setting the example for the people that follow us.

FUN AND GAMES

Saturday el 22 - Today we had a branch activity. Originally we were told there were going to be a lot of investigators there so it deemed it worthy of missionaries being there. We went to a park out in the middle of nowhere and it ended up that '0' investigators came. So we kinda wasted 5 hours. Because of where we were we didn't know how to get anywhere to get back to Aranjuez so we were stuck there because we didn't want to make any of the members leave early to take us back. The branch activity nevertheless was very fun we played games and I got to eat papa huancaina again so I was happy. 😍😍😍

Saturday night we had three lessons planned and they all failed on us so it was kind of depressing. But, we started to contact and we found a lady from Panama who actually seemed pretty interested she was really nice. It might take us a while with her because she lives in another town and she's a JW (Jehovah's Witness).

SINGING IN CHURCH
(making mama so proud!)

Sunday el 23 - Today we had church and it was pretty good. The Elders quorum had a special musical number during sacrament meeting. We sang Grand eres tu. (How Great Thou Art) It was actually pretty good considering it was only a group of 5 of us. We had fun. Then we ate with a member Jose and his Aunt. We call her Tia Colombiana because we don't know her name. Haha!

COMING UP...!

This upcoming Friday we are going to have a zone meeting in Pavones next to the temple. It's a tri-zone meeting. President Pack will be there so that will be cool. I haven't been to the temple since I have left the MTC. But it's okay I might get to go this transfer because Elder Norrell is going home and they usually let those missionaries visit the temple one last time before they go home. I sure hope so. I miss it.

This upcoming transfer we gain 43 new missionaries. So, almost half the mission will be training in 5 weeks. I sure hope I don't end up training. That's like a huge worry. I've only been out almost 5 months but I'm told I speak and understand Spanish [pretty well] so I'm scared they might recommend me to train. But I guess if it happens I'll be happy to do it.

That's super cool that Bret (Thomas) has a roommate from Spain. I probably know the town he is from. Also the story about Tanja (Crouch) is way cool. She has written me a few letters about that story, wow what a flip for Cory. I'm really impressed.

[These are some photos of the "Captain Moroni" sword that many of the Spain missionaries get.]

 Elder Norrell having a little SWORD FUN



Captain Moroni, his sword and the Title of Liberty
(Read about it in the Book of Mormon, Alma 46)

Well, I love you all, wish you the best till next week. Remember to pray for Axxx!

Love,Elder Grayson Harris 

SIDE NOTE:

Elder Harris is NOT in this photo. If I understand correctly:
Elder Harris' district got to go to the BYU game IF THEY BROUGHT AN
INVESTIGATOR -- but since he and Norrell didn't have any, they didn't get to go.