1 Week in Spain!

¡Hola!

So this week I realized I am almost done with my 3rd month! That is crazy! Time flies here, and it is about to get a whole lot faster! I leave for Málaga tomorrow via the high speed train and I'll be assigned to my first area and my trainer and everything. I don't know when I'll be emailing again because I don't know when pday is in the mission or anything, but I guess we'll see soon enough!

It has been a great week here in Madrid. We have gotten to go into the city a couple times. On Saturday we went to the park and did some contacting. Since I am in the "advanced" class here, I was companions for the day with Elder Forrest, who hardly speaks Spanish at all. He is an awesome guy, but we had trouble understanding people...some people here have REALLY heavy accents. We were able to talk to quite a few people, though, and gave one lady a book of mormon and she said she would come to church. That was really awesome. After a few hours we all gathered together and sang a couple of hymns. There are lots of street performers here and people always just walk past them, but quite a few people stopped to listen to us and we had the opportunity to talk to them a little bit about why we are here in Spain and tell them about the Gospel. It was really fun. Besides that we have just gone out to do paperwork (we have to do tons of stuff to maintain residency in Spain...it is a real pain) and today we had a bit of time to go see some sites in the city before we leave tomorow.

Last week I talked about the place where we play Soccer and how it is all covered in grafitti...I said we couldn't understand any of it, but I was wrong. On one of the walls someone has tagged a big L.D.S! I don't know if they meant something else, but we all had a good laugh about it. It is only about a block from the temple...so you never know...

So the 4th of July was this week. Apparently they don't celebrate it here (ha....ha....ha.....). President Earl made sure we all got a little celebration, though, and had the cooks here make us hamburgers. He had to supervise them to make sure they did it right. We also had orange jello. I sure will miss jello for the next 2 years. It was really weird because all day we kept realizing that it was 4th of july but nothing was different. I guess they celebrate Independence on the 2nd or 3rd of May, but it is not as big as 4th of July in the states.

Well, that's about it I think. I'll attach a few pictures. Can't wait until I get to Málaga tomorrow....I'll finally be there! I'm so excited to be able to start teaching and meeting people. Here we aren't always allowed to contact people since we aren't included in the Madrid mission. I am always so excited when we are on the metro because I just want to talk to everyone! I am so thankful for this opportunity to be a missionary. The restored Gospel is an incredible blessing for everyone because there is something in it that can bless us no matter where we are in our lives. I can't wait to share that!

Love you all!

Elder Mockler

Downtown Madrid

We visited the stadium where Real Madrid plays. It was 16€ to take a tour and

we didn't have a ton of time so we didn't get to go in, unfortunately.

Some cool buildings and a monument in Madrid. To be honest none of us really knew what it meant, but it looked neat. The big gold thing is HUGE and in the middle of a roundabout in the middle of the city.

Good to see America has left a lasting legacy on the world.

This ad is everywhere here.