Spirit of St. Louis


Hello everybody, it has been a pretty wild week. After 2 days of travel, I arrived in Spain. We went to the mission office, which is also a hotel for temple guests. We street contacted in Madrid for a bit, met with the mission leaders, then the whole group slept at presidents house. It rained a lot the next day, which i didn't expect, then we met our trainers and left for our areas. I have 2 trainers and we're in a trio. We also share our apartment here in alicante with 2 other elders.

It was a 2 hour train ride to Alicante, but it is so awesome here! We're just down the street from the church (which is an actual buidling) and walk everywhere. We have 2 wards and each one has a set of elders and sisters. The members are mostly immigrants and everyone is so nice. We get a lot of lunches and sometimes dinners, but they're so late that we have to rush back to the apartment. 

All the spanish I thought I knew has gone out the window since I've gotten here. Everyone talks so fast and there's so many accents. This part of Spain has people from everywhere, so I hear accents from Chile, Peru, Colombia, Cuba, basically any south american country. I struggle a lot with street contacting and talking to members since i just dont know the language. Sometimes it doesnt even sound like Spanish. The members usually understand though.

This was most apparent on Sunday, when we met with both the wards. They meet at the same time, so our hours are reveresed. We have sunday school first, then sacrament. I didn't understand the lesson too much and members started with english when talking to me. Sometimes they can just tell. I had to give my testimony in sacrament, and i think i did a pretty good job. That is the spanish I know best since we studied it the most. I also got to teach parts of lessons with friends, which was pretty cool.

For a spiritual thought:

A lot of people (once including me) think european missions are really closed off because there's a lot of Catholics or pride. When addressing this, my mission president said to lot let anyone say something is too hard, or that you shouldn't try. My companions also discussed Jacob 5 and how it is being fufilled right now.  We talk to mostly immigrants because they are incredibly humble and their culture is so inviting and nice. Those people are converted, share the gospel, and sometimes marry Spaniards. The new trees (new world) planted from the old one (old world) are now coming back and bringing the good fruit (humility and gospel) with them. 

Going back to how to never not do something because of what you've heard, its something ive struggled with a lot throughout my life. Right now, I have no idea how im going to learn this language, but i still try and know it will come. I have seen many miracles since my mission started, and i hope to see some for the rest of it. I know that God has called me here, and i know He will help. He fufills promises He makes with us just like we see the prophicies of the scriptures being fufilled now. 

If that was a little messy then just know that I had that whole part mapped out beautifully in my head but pday got a bit crazy. We went and saw a castle from the Islamic Age, then played games as a zone at the church. Then we had district council, put someone on date (I'm not going to remember names for a while) and went to bishop's for family home evening with some less active members.

This email was a bit of a mess, but this week has been so crazy i didnt know what should go where and there's so much to say. Thanks for staying with me, i love you all, reach out 🙏

Ve con Dios,

- Elder Puzey

For pictures, I'm probably going to have too many to put here, so i finally made a photo album: 

Arriving in the Madrid South Spain Mission, at the airport in Madrid Spain. 

View of Madrid Temple from Mission Office and temple grounds









Traveling to the mission home and preparing to be assigned his trainer the next day.




Meeting President and Sister XXXXX and his trainers XXXXX and XXXX.






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