Hahaha. I love reading about your lives. Dad up in the middle of the night recording the siri email. I really miss you guys!
YES. The package arrived last week on Tuesday, but I couldn´t pick it up until Saturday. But I have it. And I love it. So much. Thank you SOOO much. You need to stop doing things for me. I don´t know how to express my gratitude. The gratitude I feel can´t be expressed with simply words, and I am on the other side of the world. I saw the postage fee, and I can guess that the contents weren´t too far off that amount either. That was one expensive package. It´s like liquid gold to me of course. Especially the tace sauce. I didn´t think anything could be more valuable than peanut butter. But I was wrong. Thank you so much. It really was perfect. I appreciate you guys so much. Don´t send me another package until Christmas or something though. I am beginning to feel really selfish and spoiled. I can´t do anything to repay you or show you my gratitude.
Things sound like they are going really well there. I am so proud of Tean!! How great. I hope he is ready for this. It is the hardest thing I´ve ever done. And I have done some pretty hard things before. This is way more exhausting than college. The stress and worrying is even worse than my grades and exams. Go figure. I guess the things I am stressing about have a tad bit more eternal significance, but still.
I LOVED LOVED LOVED hearing about Clayton´s experience in Seminary. WOW. What a blessing. And him marking his scriptures!!!!! Brigham needs to work hard with him. I am so happy for you guys. I can imagine how thrilled you are. It´s a really good sign. I love Brad Wilcox. He makes everyone feel so special and loved. SUCH great news!!
First off, I can´t move out of this apartment. I really do believe that the spores are still in the air. But Pardo about bites my head off everytime I mention anything about it. We get along. Mostly. Pardo and I get along mostly, but we have our spats and differences. I am not gonna lie, living with him might be my biggest challenge right now. But it´s all for my benefit. I have to learn to just let things go and take one for the sake of the Spirit. Which is getting easier. I know I bug him too. We only have four more weeks though. And we will miss each other for sure!! But we will also be relieved. I am praying for an American companion. I need a breath of fresh air. With Webb, we were SO different. But we got along pretty great. I miss him a ton. With Pardo, we are similar, but it´s harder for us to get along. I have learned lots from both of them!! I just hate being the junior comp. Anyway. Mold. I just need to deal with it until I leave Jerez in four weeks. Nobody wants us to move. So I am just going to live with it.
The work is going well. We have three baptisms this friday. Victoriano for sure will be baptized. He is so ready. And I get to baptize him!! My first one. I am excited. I have been doing extra pushups lately too, cause he´s a big guy. Haha. The other two are Emilio and Rosario. I hope things go well with them. Emilio quit smoking. But I am super worried that he will relapse and have to cancel his baptism. We will see. I am praying for him.
Apart from them, our investigators are ok. Before a baptism, you kind of focus on your candidates and make sure they go through with it, and then start working with the others after the baptism. Something good happened though yesterday. Maribel and Antonio came to church. The relatives of Emilio and Rosario. Her work slowed down, and they said we can come visit them. We had a GREAT first lesson with them, and then nothing for like a month, until yesterday. I hope that with Emilio and Rosario being baptized, they will realize the importance of the gospel and follow their example. Other investigators are the same. Still waiting for marriage papers. We need to start finding again.
Today I didn´t email till late because we went with the other elders in our district to San Lucar, a little town outside of Jerez. There are three sets of elders in our district, one couple, and one set of hermanas. Soon to be two, when our hermanas finally get here. All six elders went to San lucar, where two of the elders live, and spent the day with Diego, an older man that is about to be baptized. He is crazy, but awesome. He has a farm out in the fields of Spain and has animals and an orchard and bees and just about everything. It was super cool. We went and bought tons of meat to have a "BBQ" which is different in Spain. They don´t have BBQ sauce, so I guess they use salt instead. He just cooked the meat with heaps of salt, and it tasted awful. But we ate it. The cool part was how he showed us around his farm and orchard, and just plucked fruit off of every tree and threw it at us saying "comalo!!" and I was SOO full. We ate so much fruit. Things I have never seen before that are DELICIOUS. I loved it. We ate honeycomb and this rice milk stuff too, that he made. It was a good day. We got back to Jerez late and now we are emailing. It was a good day.
I go to Malaga next week, so that is when I will catch up on all of my letter writing. It means about 8 hours of train rides for me. Which I don´t mind at all to be honest. I love traveling here.
Have I ever told you about how exhausting church is in the mission field? I remember days when church was just a show up and relax kind of deal. You sit with the fam, go to class, talk with friends, and then go home to a cool, refreshing house and do whatever. Here we stress about how to get certain people to church, we worry about who will end up coming, we plan who will sit with who, we walk forty minutes in the blazing sun and then sweat through all three hours(we have to wear suits to church), hoping that our investigators will come and aching when the less actives that we have literally done everything we knew how to get them to come, don´t show up. We count all of the people in sacrament meeting and have to worry about how to increase the numbers. And we have to talk to EVERYONE. Everyone needs to be greeted, meetings and appts need to be set, and then there are meetings and everything. Plus it´s all in Spanish, which makes it even more difficult for me. Hahaha. My brain gets so tired. We do the forty minute death walk in the sun again and come home to a hot piso, just about as tired as can be!! That´s the life of a missionary though. But it´s just that the day of rest is our busiest day. I bet that is how the bishop feels sometimes. Endless meetings, people to talk to, stressing about who didn´t come and why. I think I understand a little bit about how all of the ward and stake leaders feel!
This week is a normal week until Thursday, when we have zone conference in Seville from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. And then we have the baptism interviews to do with the DL that night with our candidates. And then baptism friday. I am excited!! I really do love all of this.
If you write me tell me about the missionary meeting. I don´t know if I will get to see it, and if I do it will be in Spanish. So let me know if anything super important was said.
Well things are going well here like I said. I am almost out of time so I will end now. Thanks for everything you do for me. I really really really loved the package. I love anything from home, and you always send me the perfect things. I actually really wanted a shower smoofie thing. How did you know?? I didn´t even ask for it! And of course glow braceletes were definitely perfect. Haha. Anything from home is wonderful.
I hope you guys enjoy your last trip to CA for a while! I really want you boys to know how lucky you are to be doing what you are doing! Spencer, enjoy it while you have it. And I don´t know why his papers went in last night. I thought it would have been Tuesday night. But yeah, I am thinking July 3rd. Hopefully it comes. It does feel weird that my brother is expecting his mission call soon. Wow. Time flies!! I love hearing from all of you. And yes I got your long letter mom :) So far I think I have received everything that you´ve sent!! Enjoy the time you have together as a family!! And with the Adams of course. I miss you guys. And I am not a brown noser Brig. I think I am just starting to realize how blessed I have been all my life. Baptisms this Friday!!
Have a blast!! I love you guys
Elder Sharp
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