Medieval Festival

October 13, 2014

Invesigator - R.: So we met R. in the street and she was willing to sit down in front of Palacio del Obispo and have a lesson. Here´s the miracle part of it: She´s from Spain! And she´s a young single adult! And she was open to learning about us! Boom! So we met her a few weeks ago and have been teaching her since then. Everything she learns (like the whole Plan of Salvation) she was just like this makes sense. This makes complete sense. The downer is she´s super duper Catholic. Like attends Mass Catholic (that´s super Catholic, fyi). So this week we´re really gonna focus on priesthood authority, cause obviously if she´s thinking we´re the same, she´s not understanding the priesthood. But she´s so good really! She´s like a sponge - absorbing everything! She also is searching for her purpose in life so we´re gonna try to angle everything toward that. Especially now that we´re on commandments.

Lesson Learned - Hna Fowers is just so awesome and so we made a food calendar and having been meeting and getting to know a lot more members. It is so fabulous! So after we eat with these members we always leave a spiritual thought and invitation, usually. Well, we were eating at on member´s house. They´ve been members for ever and their 3 children were raised in the gospel but now they´re in their 30s and 20s and the children are inactive. The members asked if there was anything they could do for us and we responded that just letting us come over and teach a lesson in their house or coming and helping with a lesson would be wonderful. But as soon as these words left our mouths the wife (who´s about 50/60ish) responds with a quick "No." Say whaaat? She said we could use their house, but she didn´t want to help in lesson. We explained all we needed was for her to bare her testimony, but she told us she doesn't have a testimony (lemme just say that she had also just been doing a session at the temple the day before so she hadn't been able to get around to watching all the sessions of conference). We realized that she had been waiting her whole life for a grand spiritual experience like her husband had to say she had a testimony. Because many of the members here are converts they all have some great stories of how they were converted to the gospel and like to tell them often. So she had raised her kids without thinking she had a testimony. But she is amazing! She said she cries when she read the Liahona and loves attending the temple; that´s the Spirit! I wish we could say that we had changed her mind at the end, but she was just a little too Spanish (aka stubborn) for that. We don´t need a grand spiritual experience to determine our testimony! If we´ve tried living the gospel principles and experimented and noticed a postive difference in our lives - well I say roll with it! We can´t just stand on the sidelines refusing to play because we only recieved our instructions when the rest of the team recieved them (conference, scriptures, devotionals), instead of recieving a personal pep-talk from The Coach. 

Soooo the other day when Hna Fowers and I were contacting we started talking to this man. At the end of our conversation he grabs the back of Hna Fowers neck to pull her down to kiss her cheeks, but when he was refused while he was shaking her hand he brought it up to his lips and kissed it. Bahahaha!!!! Then when it was my turn to shake his hand I was just like "There is no way......I am letting him kiss my hand!" So I put my hand low for him to shake and when he tried to pull it up I kept it waist level. So he stooped to my waist to kiss my hand! Well guess he foiled my plan!!!! (p+l)(a+n)=pa+pn+la+ln

Tambien: It was the medival festival this week in Alcalá, which is the biggest medival festival in Europe! Hoop hoop holla holla! Unfortunately we didn´t even discover the biggest part of the festival until Sunday night. Which was also the last day of the festival....go figure!

Love from España, Hna Finch 

Muah! XOXO

 The banner across Calle Mayor.

The meat! (We´ve both done paleo;)) 

The 4 legged creatures were just a little smaller than what I´m used to!

The owls. 

In Plaza Cervantes, one side of the Plaza...

And the other side of Plaza Cervantes.

Jesters from a couple days before...we got to go out and explore (It was nice weather that day. Can you tell?) 

The day we were actually able to come out and spend medio dia at the festival also happened to be the day when the heaven´s decided to release the biggest torrent ever!

The Kebab tent we ate at.

Under the Kebab tent during the torrent!

Food selfies!

Don´t worry I didn´t forget about your birthday though mom!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOO YOOOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOO YOU!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MOOOMMMMMMYYYYY!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!! and many more on channel four, I kickout out the door annnnd you smell like a monkey annnnnnnd you act like one too!!!! :)

I  have come to realize that my "cool Spanish sandels" release this blue dye that stains my feet whenever they get wet....my feet we´re really blue that day....

Washing my feet in the.......butt sink! Yep we´re pretty European.

My article I read on the day of Baylee´s wedding: "Happiness: There´s Not a ´Single´ Barrier; Don´t Let Your "Single" Status be a Roadblock to Joy".  It was an Ensign article from 1988 we had in our piso. Well played old hermanas of my piso....well played. I also dressed accordingly;)...all in black!

We had a friend feed all the hermanas so I wouldn´t be lonely on Baylee's wedding day. and she made paella! It´s like a super traditional Spanish dish. And she´s from Peru....tehehe

Double dessert!!! The reason for my weight gain in Spain! 

Elder Salazar is off to Mexico today!!! He was a visa waiter, but he left the MTC with me. He would teach me Spanish and I would teach him English. Great exchange, but I think I got the better part;)