Mission update

 I’m currently writing this at what I guess is thursday night on a train, and I will get to that later, because things have been so hectic I wanna make sure I record everything I can of these first experiences here in Spain. 

Wednesday was the day I fly in. My flight left at 10am in Utah and I was getting picked up at 7am so I woke up at 4:50am to play basketball one last time and then got ready to go. The flight in Utah went to New York and we got there with a 4 hour layover. In New York we met up with some other missionaries and then feeling like the intrepid experienced travelers we are, we hopped on some random bus to another terminal got food and hopped back over. This excursion went fine and stoked our confidence in travelling that was smashed later that day.

We get on the flight in New York at 8pm and land in Madrid at what is technically like 9am thursday and then walk around as a group of 7 lemmings following the crowd but that works out, we get picked up, and off we go to the mission office. We had an orientation, met the president and filled out paper work until about 3:30pm. Then we learn where we are going.

My new companion is named Elder Whipple and he arrived on the flight with me and has been on a mission in Vegas for 8 months. We are both being sent in to whitewash the ENTIRE CITY OF CADIZ! This means we will have a complete reset out there with 2 new missionaries who have never even sniffed Spain before being thrown together, in an apartment alone, in a new city where we hopefully will be able to at least survive. As I'm writing this thursday and send emails on monday if you're reading this right now it's safe to assume we survived.

I didn't know anything about Cadiz before but apparently it is a coastal city in southern spain that is one of the oldest ports on the Mediterranean, the oldest city in Spain, and Old testament Tarshish from the story of Jonah. I'll probably have more info on Cadiz later too when it's not thursday but the tale continues right now. 

After announcing where everyone goes president whipped out the pizzas and said we were gonna eat and then end for the night, except the Cadiz boys who actually had to leave 5 minutes ago to catch their 4 hour train ride to Cadiz. What!!?! So we grabbed our stuff chucked it in a truck and then  had our keys and sim card given to us for our phone, got dropped off at the Atocha (main train station in madrid) and scuttled along. I have never had a more hectic and stressful 20 minutes of trying to navigate a busy train station in a foreign country. I have never really traveled by train before and it was a trip. It felt like a really small airport but now I'm on the way to Seville where we'll have to change trains and finish the ride to Cadiz and then somehow get from the train station to our piso (apartment). Reflecting on it we never really got instructions on that part so its another one where if you see this email it probably all worked out. Update: it did not go well. We spent 2 hours walking around with our suitcases holding half  a sticky note with an address written in a way I've never seen before and with what turned out to be the wrong address written on it. We had to call the missionaries who lived here before to find the place. But we got to ask some nice Spaniards for directions. Spoiler: the fact we had found nice spaniards in our first contacts this night would prove to be miraculous (but not in a cool way) however just being in the city and country was surreal and I would've walked around for 20 hours gleefully that night!

I've been wearing my suit for nearly 30 hours with about 2 hours of sleep in between and feel like a mess but así es for the arrival to Spain. 

So Cádiz. It is a super pretty city that is basically an island. Its like a weird península with little bits keeping it from being a proper island but its super beautiful. There are 2 parts, casco antiguo (ancient helmet) where the old historical things are including a very cool cathedral, a bunch of plazas, and countless little streets that are super tight with tall buildings creating a little urban canyon maze made up of random stores lining the street. It is super super cool and makes me so happy to be around. There is also supposedly an area that is where Christopher Colombus set sail from before crossing the ocean blue in 1492. And there are definitely areas where modern cruise ships are coming in and out of port every single day. It's almost like going on a vacation. The other side of town, and they are separated by a giant fort wall, is more modern. It has all the stores and stuff and is like a full on city topped off by the Cádiz fútbol stadium. That is also super cool. They beat Villarreal this week. I know who they played because we saw their team bus camped out in front of the hotel. Pretty cool. Fútbol is big out here. There are a million little concrete courts all over and kids running around with soccer balls all throughout the city. Tonight with él clásico we saw all the bars filled with people watching. Safe to say it wasn't the best for missionary work.

But on that strain apparently everyday is bad for missionary work here. You can't knock doors because all of the apartment buildings are super locked, and when we've tried to contact in the street 99.9% they are super cold and don't want to talk and not friendly. It has been ROUGH. Maybe it's just that me and my companion were given no instruction just chucked 4 hours away and haven't seen any other missionaries since so we have no idea how Spain missionary work works but we did not have a successful week. I also hear our part of Spain has the worst accents to understand of ths entire country. Spanish here us tough too. I have been adjusting to the accent though and things are better every day. It is so cool being surrounded by Spanish all day. 

Analysis after week 1: I already think 8 months will not be long enough to live in Spain I just love it so much. And 8 months of this type of missionary work will be so hard I just might be willing to go home after 8 more months 😬 As 

much fun as it would be to be a tourist here I'm not trying to spend 8 months of my mission as a tourist and that's what this week felt like. BUT i have a plan and it centers on the love of Jesus Christ that I have faith will make next week better and better. Jesus Christ is always the answer. I love that guy. Que majo!

This week's motto: Philippians 1:29 "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;"