Elder Stevenson Spain Madrid Mission: Week One in Paradise!

Dear Family,

This area is so amazing! The city is pearched on a hill so we can see the ocean everyday and the mountains are right behind us. We always have a great view. It's kind of deserty but also very green with lots of palm trees. So to answer some of mom's questions. Telde is a branch of about 50 active members. We just need a little more to have a ward so that is the goal for this year. With the Spanish they still speak normal-ish Spanish. There is no dialect but words are a little different. Like in Madrid potato is patata but here it's papa just like in South America. Also bus in Madrid is bus but here is guagua pronounced wawa. They also don't talk with the lisp on the ce ci and z like they do on the peninsula. In fact they hate it and make fun of it. They do have some famous phrases though like. They say 'chacho' a ton and 'venga mi niño' all the time. They are a mix between Spaniards and Dominicans to me.

They also have some different food out here, like mojo which goes on potatos (super good) as well as they have a drink called gofio which is basically corn flour mixed with milk. It's pretty weird. They have a soda here only sold on the Canary Islands called clipper. They have a passion fruit flavor that's really good. A nice change because on the peninsula all they sell is lemon or orange fanta or coca cola.

The work is going pretty well here. We have a couple investigators but could only meet with 2 of them this week. The rest either couldn't meet or failed the appointment. It's pretty hard to work with the members because we need to focus in the city and only 4 members live there. The rest live in small towns around the city that take about 30 minutes to walk to or we can take a guagua but the schedule is pretty difficult. The stake president lives in our branch and feeds us every Friday and we have started to talk to his neighbors so he can maybe help us there. The houses here are way different than Madrid. They are like actual houses so we can knock doors like American missionaries. It's pretty weird. We found one that said we can come by this week in the morning so we are excited to teach them. They will have a nice strong member friend right there close.

Oh yeah!,The sister that flew over with me is Russell M. Nelson's grand daughter.

We also met a man named Cesar. We were walking from an appointment and he called us over so we went and started to talk to him. He has had a pretty messed up life a lot of smoking and surgeries and accidents but he is a good guy. He believes in God but has a lot of doubts about the catholic church. We were able to teach him a bit about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We went back Saturday afternoon and met again and finished teaching the restoration it went really well. As we work with him more he will progress really quick.

We were in the street a lot this week but found some amazing people! One family the wife is Polish and the husband Ecuadorian and we will meet with them on Friday. I'm super excited. We also found a golden Cuban man who has been here for a month and doesn't have work nor is he studying and can meet any day of the week so we are going to be meeting tomorrow. I'm really excited.

It's a good place so the work should go well. Hope you all have a great week I love you all!

-Elder Stevenson

Good Byes!

Two Converts