This has been a very busy week. We sent out 15 missionaries and didn't get any to replace them yet. We were suppose to get a couple of sisters, but they are delayed a week because of visa problems. I'm sending some pictures of the departing missionaries. It was a great group, and hated to see them go, because they were some outstanding missionaries and they will be missed. The first pictures is when they were are the airport, and I doing them in reverse order. The next little one is the group going home and it was taken at the mission home and Sister Mellor sent the two pictures to us. The formal picture: Back Row: Elder Swensen, Elder Bytheway, Elder Cannon, Elder Skinner, President and Sister Mellor. Middle Row: Sister Nicoll, Sister Richards, Sister Smith, Sister Bealer, Sister George, Sister Griotti. Front Row: Elder Nelmelka, Elder Leon, Elder Dold, Elder Klinger, Elder Lundin.
The next picture is us in the kitchen, the sisters are sampling the brownie dough. Sister Bealer, Sister Mellor, Sister Richards, Sister Smith, Sister Nicoll, and me. Sister Mellor usually makes brownies for the group when they eat at the mission home. They all love brownies. I usually don't eat them, unless she saves a corner without walnuts, because they really don't like me.
The next picture is where they were eating out on the patio at the mission home. When the weather is nice enough they always eat there and it over looks the swimming pool. Sister Mellor had made burritos with cooked pork, with tomatoes, olives, lettuce, cheese, avocados, onions, salsa, etc. They elders ate more than one burrito, and they were sure good. Really sweet. We didn't stay for the meeting afterwards, but went back to our apartment, which was good because I wanted to talk with Anthony for his birthday early because on Thursday we had to be in the office and we had to have Sister Griotti with us until her plane flew out to Italy. Elder Klinger couldn't go on his plane because all the flights into London were cancelled and he ended up staying an extra day and he was the one that wanted to get home early, because he starts at BYU-I on Tuesday. But his former Bishop was visiting Spain to get ready to take a group over there next year from the University.
The last picture is a picture of the office staff and AP's and we usually take a picture each time we lose one of the elders, and Elder Harville was transfered to Almeria. He is the one behind me. We got three new elders in this week though, so we will have a big group, because they usually have double missionaries while they train the office staff and this time they are training both the financial and the president's secretary. Plus we got a new AP to replace Elder Harville.
Things are always changing. We had a great group at church today. We almost doubled our attendance because we had lots of visitors, some were stranded because of no flights going back to London. We had two families with kids, small kids, and it was great to hear the noise, because our branch's average age is about 50. We usually only have 2 youth, a 13 and a 16 year old. One family with 5 kids came for spring break from London, but they are orginally from California. The other family are in the army in Germany and they had 3 little girls, and they are orginally from Oregon, at least that is where they came from and are going back in July. She is from Sandy. We had another visitor from England, be he comes off and on during the year for several years now and he got to speak in Sacrament meeting. People came even though it was raining, at least some of the time. We walked over to Church and it didn't rain on us, but really came down after we got there, and it stopped raining so we were able to walk back home. Later on it rained again. Lots of rain for Spain this year.
We are sure enjoying the work over here and we keep finding more things that we can do in the office. We just haven't learned enough Spanish that we still need the elders for some things we can't do.
We hope you all have a wonderful week. Love JoAnne and Roy Hunt