Week 2 in Valencia

Wow what a week. There have been challenges this week!! I´m sick, my big toe was swollen (it´s going down), I have trouble during lessons knowing what to say or knowing what is being said, oh I fell down the stairs and hurt my elbow, but we did get our investigator to church on Sunday. His name is Frank. He´s from Ghana and he speaks English!! He wants to move forward from his past with drugs and follow Christ! His fecha/meta is to be baptized on Valentine´s Day! It´s so funny how we met him. When we leave our piso we always contact the first person we see. He was the first person we saw and when we said hi to him he just looked so surprised that we were talking to him, I´ll never forget his face. It was so funny. 

We finally got HOT WATER in our shower! Because I´m sick we called Hermana Pace and she said to take a hot shower and when we told her we don´t have hot water she started freaking out, she said that´s now how we live here, we´re in Spain! I was like, well I just thought that´s how people lived here!! Haha, so we called the landlord and he came and fixed it. Yeah. Should´ve called him a loooong time ago.

We ate at 2 member homes this week. Super nice to be fed by members! Really good food, too! For dessert the Spanish bring out a fruit bowl of bananas, oranges or apples. And there´s always bread and hot chocolate during the meal! 

Also at two homes this week when we were visiting they gave us like this packaged dry bread, like a crouton, but unflavored, as a snack.  At one house she gave us apple soda from colombia, so we dipped it in the soda. Also, everyone here is from Colombia, Ecuador, or Bolivia!! Or Nigeria!

We had zone enfoque this week. I love getting together with all the other missionaries in this area. They´re all super great. 

There´s a member here who we love. He´s a recent convert. His name is Richard. He´s from Nigeria. He´s so awesome! He has such a strong testimony. He speaks in English. He loves the gospel. He comes to a lot of lessons with us. He´s so giving. After one of our visits with him he gave us neopalitanos and juice! Neopalitanos are a chocolate filled pastry/croissant. We love them! They´re in all the panaderias here and we eat them a lot. :) They had them in the MTC too, super good. And then at church yesterday he gave me and my companion a journal and a nail care kit, haha, so cute. 

The mission president is coming for Specialized Training, to our zone for the missionaries! So exciting!!

Also we visited this really cool man the other night. He was 85 years old, in a wheelchair, only one leg. But he was so adorable. He spoke really loud. He had a HUGE personalized Book Of Mormon. It was like 3 ft tall and it had different volumes and the print was huge! And it has his picture and testimony in the back. So funny. Also he is a cook and makes paella for the missionaries. Can´t wait to try it someday. But he showed us his paella pan, it was like taller than dad!! He was so proud of it. So cute. One of the elders described him as ¨celestial¨  because of how faithful and service oriented he is. I would agree.

My companion is so funny. Everytime she gets really happy or something good happens, she yells ¨The church is true!!¨ or ¨the church is so true right now¨ . Haha, it´s funny. 

The work is hard, the work is GOOD. ¨This life is the time for men to DO THEIR LABORS¨. In other words, DO WORK. 

Love you so much,
Hermana Birch

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