Well I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving day. We ate with the Mission President and his wife and 20 of the missionaries in Malaga Zone and the elders from Algeciras. We had turkey, yams, potatoes and gravy, salad, homemade rolls and cranberry sauce. It was very good. We even had some pies, pumpkin, lemon merigue and one of the elders made an apple pie.

It was an overcast day and it even rained on the missionaries as they were playing soccer, but they still played as we, Roy and I and Sister Mellor got the dinner started. The Missionaries got there after 1:00 p.m. and we ate about 2:30 and then most of them had to leave to catch the 5:00 p.m. train back to their apartments. It's great getting to know all the missionaries.

On Friday, Roy and I left about 7:00 a.m. to go to Jaen, which is a 3 hour drive from our place to check the missionaries apartment. That is one of our duties is to inspect the apartments to make sure they clean it regularly. There were 4 elders in the 1st apartment. Elder Han, Elder Mullis, Elder Salls, and Elder Iglesias. 2 of the elders were going to go do a service project and were dressed in their p-day clothes.

The next apartment was in Granada which is over an hour's drive south of Jaen. There were saw the ZL'S apartment. This is Elder Gleason and Elder Martin. They had worked very hard on their apartment to get it ready on Thanksgiving day. They had celebrated Thanksgiving with the rest of their zone on p-day (Monday). Afterwards we stayed in Granada and found the sister's apartment, which is in a very, very old building, where the ZL's were was a very new building.

Here we have Sister Goins and Sister Byers. Right now we have 15 sister missionaries, but by April we will only have 12. All of missionary force will be reduced by April. But the missionaries are still baptizing, even though the numbers are smaller. Before we got here they had 120 missionaries and by April we will only have 72 missionaries. They met their goal for baptisms for the year back in October. They had a goal of 134 baptisms and now there is over 156 in the mission right now. I'm not sure how many will be this weekend. Roy has to call and make sure they send the paperwork in so that they get recorded.

This picture of Roy shows the Alhambra in the background. We were trying to go and visit it, but they only time available was when we had to be at the Elders apartment, so maybe another time we will visit it. The Alhambra was the last
Moorish outpost in Spain. The Moors were finally driven out of Spain in 1492. It is built up a hill overlooking Granada. The next picture is me at the same place as Roy but overlooking Granada. The last picture is a picture of Geraniums that were still blooming in Granada on the 28th of November.

I hope that this finds all of you nice and happy. I'm so thankful for the gospel and the redeeming love of our Savior. I'm also so thankful for my family. It was great being able to spend Thanksgiving day with you through Skpe. It seemed like I was just in the other room and I could almost smell the turkey. Have a wonderful week. We love you all, and thank you so much for your support and prayers.