Conquering Spain

Hello!

First and foremost, CONGRATS OWEN!! I'm so excited for you!!! Mom sent me a few picture of Emma and I hope you can send some more this week!!! :)

Well, this morning I had great triumph. Missionaries have lived in our apartment for a long, long time so there are many strange treasures to be found. The other day I found artificial maple flavoring and today Elder Rodriguez and I made....get ready for it....drumroll.....maple syrup!! That may not sound so exciting to those who live in a land where syrup flows like the waters of the Great Mississippi, but here in Spain it was quite a triumph. Syrup is incredibly expensive here and we made it for FREE!! (not to mention our bottle of flavoring serves for 24 liters.....woah.)

A little news from Aljarafe...Jesús and Angeles should be getting baptized next week! Wow! I'm super excited for them!! I wish I could be there but such is the mission...hopefully there will be pictures on the blog soon!

We had another crazy week. I don't think I'll really have a normal week as long as I'm up here in La Mancha. We had a new missionary in one of our areas decide to go home so we spent a lot of the week talking with him and with President trying to figure out what to do. It was really, really sad to see him make the decision to go after just a week or so. He is from Chile and just felt too homesick to stay. It made me realize how much the last 13 months or so have changed me and how awesome my mission is. And how excited I am for the time that is left!! It also made me think a lot about how God feels when we make poor decisions and don't follow the counsels he gives us through scripture and prophets. He knows what Eternal Life is like and is sad when we make choices that take us farther away from that goal. He knows how to arrive there because he has acheived it and has done everything he can to give all his children the chance to make it as well. I know He loves us perfectly and that he is always just waiting for us to make the decisions that allow Him to give us amazing blessings.

I think that is all for this week! We're going back to Málaga on Wednesday and don't get back until Friday morning so we have another busy week with lots of travel ahead of us. I love Spain!!

Have a great week!

Elder Mockler