The first picture here is our district in Fuengirola, it consists of the AP's, the office elders and us who also work in the office. On the top right going counterclockwise are first the AP's, Elder Barraza from Barcelona Spain, then Elder Lundin from St. George, Utah. We are very impressed with both of these elders. Next comes Elder Dold, who comes from the state of Washington and who is over the finances of the mission for right now and will be transfered this week to the Canary Island. He has been in the office for 8 months so he is excited about getting back to more missionary work, even though they have investigators here and have baptisms. Then comes Elder Millerberg from Sandy, Utah, he is over everything else in the mission office except the finances, like an executive secretary, like over the residency, baptisms, etc. Sitting by me is Elder Going who is going to be over the finances and has been here a transfer learning the ropes of the finances, and I think he might be from Murray, Utah, but I'm not really sure. We sure have enjoyed working with these Elders here in Fuengirola. We hold district meeting every Saturday before the Elders play basketball or soccer with whomever wants to play, usually investigators. They hold the meeting in Spanish and I'm still having a hard time learning the Spanish, I catch several words that I know, but without all of them together I don't get the whole meeting was what is going on. But I haven't given up yet. Roy and I still read out of the Book of Mormon in Spanish everyday. It will come eventually if we keep trying, but we have been able to get by just fine without knowing much at all.
The next pictures are taken of the castle that is here in Fuengirola that is very old and is now mostly just a shell as you can see by the pictures. There are some very old cannons that are up there as you can see in the pictures and behind me you can see how close the mountains are and some of the city and cities that are up on the hill. This is quite a big city in population, there are lots of high rise apartments that people live in. In fact we live in a 6-7 story one ourselves. I say 6-7 because there are really seven but the bottom floor is not the first floor but the bottom floor, and not a basement. We live on the 3rd story but here it is called the second floor. The castle was built a long time ago, after the Roman were here. It was built by the Moors. They have found some Roman ruins just below the castle though. The beach is just below the castle. Fuengirola has lots of beaches and lots of apartments or hotels along the beach where lots of people come for vacation or holiday as the people call it over here. The castle is now a tourist place and they do hold events here at night, There was a picture of an orchestra in the brochure we were given as we went in. It was also in English. They do hold other festival events here.
We are surely enjoying our work here in Spain and the life here. We are happy and we seem to keep busy. To let you know about our branch here. Even though it is in Fuengirola it is called the Mijas International Branch, which is the name of the town just north of here. Very very international. In fact they just reorganized the Relief Society Presidency here. The President is American, the first counselor is German, just moved here on Friday, the second counselor is from the Philippines. The two teachers for Relief Society are from England. We have visitors almost everyweek from somewhere, mostly from the United Kingdom. Today we had a family from Germany and they knew the son of the !st counselor, but she is an American and he is from Austria and they are living in Bonn. They brought another sister with them from Spain, I think who served a mission in Oakland three years ago. There was also a Sister Scott from Scotland and she knew someone that one of the members from England knew. It is a very small world.