One Whole Transfer

Hello mi familia!

I´ve been running into lots of British people lately and it´s really strange to be able to speak English in the streets. We´re not supposed to do that in general because we´re supposed to be learning Spanish... for some reason.

Sorry to be a day late this week. It´s transfer week (I´m still in Palma) and our preparation day is always a day late on transfer week. I´ll try to remember to warn you next time. I can´t believe I´ve been in the field a whole transfer.

Thanks for those who wrote to me and for the blog updates. I loved seeing a few of the Easter pictures. I have the best neices and nephews ever. Ya esta. Oh, I forgot to say thanks for the pictures and such from last week. Eliza is so cute! I can´t wait to meet that little girl.

I´m trying to be patient with myself as I learn Spanish and as I learn how to be a missionary... and although I can´t say that I´m the most patient of people, I did get a nice compliment last night that made me feel a little better. Hermana Henderson and I were teaching the message at a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) and most of the people there were South Americans and other missionaries, but there was one actual Spaniard there too. The Spaniards tend to be rather blunt and they´ll tell you just what they think (not that the South Americans don´t... but they do tend to hold back a bit more of what they´re thinking than the Spanish people when what they´re thinking isn´t complimentary) anyways, before we left Ivan (the Spaniard) told me that I was doing really well with my Spanish and that my accent was pretty good. I felt pretty good until I tried to respond and said something that he couldn´t understand and had to repeat myself 4 times before changing my response. No, it was a nice thing to say and I think he meant it... so I´m feeling a little bit better about Spanish.

I think I told you all that we teach English classes once a week. I wanted to tell you a few things related to them. It´s once a week for 12 weeks and we teach basic classes or intermediate classes. Apparently every time they do the course there are always fewer and fewer people coming every week... which has been happening this time too. But we have some faithful students who love us. There´s one man in my class (Hermana H. and I teach basic) and he´s Italian but he´s married to a woman from Argentina and they live in Spain. His name is Jorge and he is great. I would guess he´s probably in his 50s. We taught him and his wife and son about the Restoration and his wife and son apparently weren´t that excited about it and they asked us not to come back (to their home to teach them), but Jorge still comes to the English classes and loves our spiritual thoughts that we give at the end of each class. He also just likes missionaries I think. He brought Hermana Henderson a special pen and he had some little free samples of french perfume that he gave us. He told the Elders they could come eat Italian food at his house. And last week we invited all of our English classes and all of our investigators to come to the capilla and watch The Testaments on the big projector screen and have ice cream and he came and loved it (along with 35 other non-members). I love meeting people like Jorge. And we really did have a great turn out for the movie. At the end I think almost everyone in there was crying and absolutely loved it. Sadly for the Hermanas, everyone lives in the Elder´s areas here in Palma and not in ours for some reason... but I love to see the gospel being shared no matter who does it.

I´ve gotta go mi familia. We´re going to Valldemosa today (little touristy town) and I´ll have some good fotos for you la proxima vez, vale?

Les quiero-
Hermana Diehl