Sunday, July 18, 2010

Leadership, Training and Members

Where is everybody! That's what Elder Phillips seems to be saying. Actually, we are getting the family room in the mission home ready for Zone Leader Counsel. This is a wonderful time to gather the Zone Leaders and counsel one with another.
Here is the finished product! 10 Zone Leaders, 4 Office Elders, 2 Hermanas and the Presidente and I. What a great night. We gather for dinner and the evening meeting, and the next morning we finished by noon.
After our evening meeting Elder Del Molino and Hna Ruiz de Mendoza are with me on the patio. These two are both from the Vitoria Stake in the North and they both have the most wonderful parents. We love their families at home and it is so exciting to be able to work with them as missionaries. And believe me, they are wonderful, hard working missionaries.
The morning counsel was very edifying and afterwards a group picture under our favorite tree in the front yard. Great Leaders with lot's to do to help their Zones improve.
Elder Ponce waves good-bye, till we meet at Zone Conference next week!
The next morning we had the pleasure of a visit from the Holmes Family. Elder Holmes, in the black shirt, was one of our office elders in Bilbao. He helped us till the end. He went home and then just 2 weeks later his entire family came back to visit Spain. We spent a wonderful few hours getting to know his family. What a wonderful family with 4 more great missionaries to serve!
That afternoon we went to the Fuenrigola train station to greet 4 new Elders, but something went wrong.
Where are the Elders? A quick call to Malaga where they were to make a change found them their safe and sound. There was a slight miscommunication and the Zone Leaders in Malaga thought they were to keep them for a few hours. So they put them on the next train. No pasa nada!
All smiles when we finally saw them arrive. New missionaries bring new excitement.
Elders Talbot, Stowell, Pratt and Masterson are the newest Elders to come to the best mission in the church! We are ready to get them oriented and put them to work, we need them!
Here we have 4 great trainers, ready to find out who they will be training. Elders Heywood, Langston, Bullen and Wiehe are ready for action!
We had a wonderful training meeting with all 7 of the new missionaries who came to the Malaga mission over the last 2 weeks. Even though they can't get in the pool, we thought a picture by the pool might be nice!
No Elders, don't do it! I am not to great at capturing this shot, but they are trying to look like they are jumping in. Hey, who said white men can't jump? (He was probably right)
The weekend was spent discovering the wonderful District of La Mancha. Here we are with Elders Talbot and Wiehe who are working in Ciudad Real along with the Branch Presidente, Pres. Montes and his son in Puertollano. His son is preparing his papers to serve a mission. We are excited for the miracles to happen here!
We drove up to Valdepenas, and over to Manzanares to the home of Pres. Moreno and his darling family. We are excited to get to know all the members of this wonderful branch. We loved being in their home and feeling of their wonderful spirit.
We pushed on to Alcazar de San Juan where Pres. Rivas and his family were to be found. This town is the birthplace of Don Quijote. We enjoyed seeing the windmills and being with them. We also have Elders Adams and Becerra who are working in this wonderful town.
On Sunday we attended church in Ciudad Real. Pres. Sanz is the branch president there and here I am with his wonderful, talented wife and absolutely wonderful daughter, Adriana! She played the piano for the entire sacrament meeting and she was incredible!
We ended the afternoon with a wonderful lunch at the home of Pres. & Hna Pedraja. He is the District President of this district. We ate a wonderful meal along with the best desert. He is a baker by trade, so we were treated like kings.
Just outside the capilla is this beautiful catholic cathedral. Ciudad Real is a wonderful town with a great spirit. We know that this district is going to be experiencing many blessings in the upcoming months. We are excited to watch it grow.
So it was good-bye to the heartland of Spain. We loved our two days here and look forward to more in the future.
And as for the windmills, watch out, for you might find Don Quixote somewhere near one of these!

2 comments:

  1. I can just tell by looking at the pictures how different it feels. How fun to experience a new part of Spain. Great windmill pic!:)

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  2. love the pool jumping picture that was great:)

    Lesha Elder Froberg's sister badajoz mission

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