June 13, 2010

We didn't have any new pictures this week. We were busy at the office, but not super busy. This next week is going to be really busy. We get 5 new missionaries coming in during mid-transfer, 4 from Spain and one from the USA. The one from USA is getting bored, because his group that was suppose to come to Madrid for 6 weeks are delayed because of visa problems. It is hard to get a visa to Spain and takes about 6 months if all goes well, so he is coming down to his mission early. The ones from Spain only spend 3 weeks in the CCM (the equilivalent of MTC in Spanish), because they know the language and while they are in the mission they should pick up learning English with their companions.
Next week we will also be having Zone Conferences with an area authority. Elder Kerr from Scotland will be coming down here for 3 days, doing Zone Conferences, Zone Leader Conference and meeting with Stake Presidencies, so he will be very busy.
We were trying to get a picnic together for our branch, but not enough people could come this weekend, so we will stick with the Munch and Mingles each month, because then the Philippinos can come, Since they have Sunday off. The retired people can meet easy during the week, but those who have jobs can only do it when they have a free day or a day off. We had a great Sunday today. Had good lessons, good sacrament meeting talks, plus we had 10 visitors. A couple from France, a couple from Scotland and a family with 4 children from Salt Lake City. It's always so fun to meet people from all over the world and see the dedication those people have to look up the Church wherever they go. Sometimes it is hard to find, but we always hope that they feel the spirit whereever they go. I know Roy and I have tried to make it a point that whenever we are on vacation to go to church, and we have truly been blessed because we have made the effort.
We have started over again in reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish aloud for the third time. We are beginning to understand a lot more, but still can't speak it very well, I tend to mix my German when I try to speak. They speak so fast here also that it is hard to distinguish between the words, especially if the speak with the Andalucian dialect. We can understand the missionaries better, first because they speak slower and realize that we are still learning. And we don't have to speak it in the office. If we had been going to the Spanish ward, we might understand more, but it meets the same times as our church and we go to the international branch.
I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I'll try to take some pictures this week.
Love JoAnne and Roy

June 6, 2010

This picture is the office picture before some of them get transfered. We take a picture each time after staff meeting if we are losing some from the office. Top row: Elder Stanley, new mission sec; Elder Going, old finance sec; Elder Barton, old mission sec; Elder Goodman, new finance sec; Elder Halverson, AP; Elder Bader, AP;
Front row, President Mellor, Sister Mellor, Me, Roy Hunt

Here we are with more construction. If you remember all the rebar that was put down before in a previous week, here you can see that they have poured cement to cover all the rebar.





Next they are putting up rebar on all the sides to get ready to pour the walls of the building.

It's getting a little harder to take the pictures because they have put up a fence around and I took a couple of pictures through the crack of the fence so you could see the building construction. I think it will take the rest of this week before they pour the cement for the walls, but it might be at the end of the week.

They are also putting in posts in the middle of the floor for support of the next layer. This will bring it up to the street level. We think that this floor will be the garage and we don't know how many apartments it will have, maybe only a single family house.

These next pictures are of the departing missionaries and I can't seem to get rid of the duplicate picture, so we have 2 pictures of them helping with the meal before their last meeting.
Sister Mellor had cooked pork roast so they could put it on a burrito with cheese, salad, avacodo, etc. These were a good group of missionaries and we were sorry to see them go.

Elders Swartz, Simmons, Gleason, in front, Gordon, behind, Gardner, Martin, Hyatt, Sister Mellor. Not shown were Elder Beswick and Sister Goins.

This picture is outside the mission office where the missionaries were here to get their suitcases weighed. They are allowed 22 kilos per bag and some had to rearrange or get rid of excess weight. We found that it saves money and time at the airport if we make sure they meet these requirements early. Then they put their suitcases in the van and only have their carryon at the mission home that night. They can't get into their weighed luggage, and we find it saves a lot of confusion in the morning, especially since this group left for the airport at 4:30 A.M.

May 31, 2010

I'm sending some pictures that we took in Ronda which is about 5 miles from Los Padros, where we go to home teach the Chapmans. It is about a 2 hour drive from where we live to go up there, so we don't go everyone month, but try to keep in contact with them through phone and email. They are a very gracious couple from England have have treated us really nice. They drove us down to Ronda where we hurried and took some pictures. The 1st one of the gardens in one of the main squares there.

This next picture is a storks nest on top of a chimney that the Chapman's pointed out to us.

This one of another church in the old part of Ronda.
The bridge that connects the old part of Ronda to the newer part of Ronda. It was once inhabited by the Moors, so you see some of the architecture that is noticed in the buildings there.

This one is looking down from on top of Ronda. It is built on the top of 2 hills and connected by the bridge in a previous picture.


Another view, looking back at the newer part of Ronda. The next picture is the bull ring in Ronda. Lots of the cities have their own bull ring, yes where they have bull fights. We haven't seen one yet, and we aren't sure that we will.
There is one in Fuengirola also.

Another church in the newer part of Ronda, which is still quite old, but not as old as the older part of Ronda.

May 23, 2010

This is the Mosque here in Fuengirola. I didn't know that was it was until someone told me that had seen the picture. It is a beautiful building, and I found it after I came back from getting the name tags and going by a new member to give her a Book of Mormon. She joined the church years ago, even had some of her kids blessed in the church, but none of them are baptized. They own a cafe down on the beach.


This a tree that has trumpet flower growing on it. I can't believe how much I have enjoyed the plants here in Spain, so forgive me with all the flower pictures etc. This tree has beautiful purple flowers on it, and I think some of the stay until winter. I took a picture of a tree by our place that still had flowers on it in November.

This is a field of wild flowers and weeds and after I took it they came in and started building a building. We are sending the first of several pictures showing the construction here in Spain. Lots of Cement. We now see how the Book of Mormon had so many cement buildings. They dug a hole and put cement in the bottom.

Then they start putting rebar all over the cement, You can even see the sewer pipes that will be buried in cement. I don't know what they do when they have plumbing problems. The rebar is about a foot thick or thicker.

This is the last of the building pictures for this week and maybe we won't put lots on, depending on how the building goes. This level will probably be a parking garage with apartments on the top of it.

Have a wonderful week. We are headed for a very busy week. We finally get a batch of missionaries coming in. We have been here for 8 months now and we have only received 9 missionaries total, starting in October and at most only 3 at one time, but this week we are sending another 9 missionaries home and we should receive about 9 missionaries. They have been downsizing the missions in Europe so they have replaced all of those who have finished their missions here. I think we have had about 30 - 40 leave while we have been here, we haven't kept track of all of them. So it will be different finally getting missionaries to replace those that finish their mission.

Our young man in our branch got his mission call to the Spain Madrid Mission. He will be a great missionary and everyone in the Branch is excited for him. He is English, but knows Spanish, he went to a Spanish school. It will be fun to see the progress of Jack on his mission.

Until later. Love JoAnne and Roy Hunt

Here are the 2 Elders in Motril. Elder Adams and Elder Travis. This is the 2nd time we have checked this apartment, but the 1st time that Elder Adams was in Motril, we had checked his apartment when he was in Sevilla. That drive from Almeria took just over an hour to reach there, but all in all it was a long day for us.


This picture are the 4 Elders in Almeria, Elder Vaninetti, Elder Hurley, Elder Harville, and Elder Brossa. We caught them cleaning their apartment and 2 were in P-Day clothes. We were glad the other two were on the streets, because we found them to help us find their apartment. It was a 3 hour drive out there and then we visited Motril on the way back.

Sorry I interested in all the flowers that grow over here. This 1st one is a dandelion. I was surprised how tall it grew and how many flowers were on one stem. It was was at the church just growing by the sidewalk and I couldn't resist taking the picture. The next two pictures are pictures of Cacti that we pass on the way to church. I sure we have similar ones in America, because there are several types of cactus in this garden, that some one has planted on the side of the street. We saw a lady out weeding it one day, so I think she planted it under the trees.

This pictures is up at the mission home at a zone leader conference. It really looks like a lot of zone leaders, but we were missing 4 from the pictures because they are on the Canary Islands, but we have the assistants to the president plus the office elders and with this picture we have 2 extra office elders learning how to take care of business so the other office elders can be transferred at the end of the month.

We are so sorry that we haven't written, visiting a member who had a hip replacement, been really busy with zone leader conference, zone conference, checking apartments and even took one day to go home teaching. It is just less than 2 hours one way to go visit the Chapman's. The are a great couple and we enjoy going to see them, they are so gracious and always feed us. Hopefully one day they will come back to church.

Church was great today, we had more visitors than we had members. We really enjoy it when we get families coming, which we had today. Lots of small children. (7 children ages 8 and under) One family from Finland, another family with children from England. We had a couple from Germany and another older couple from England. Plus we had another Philippino lady move into our branch who is a member.

We sure enjoy our work here in the office and in the branch and we get to meet just great people.
Next week I going to start to put some picture on the blog of a building going in. We are curious about how they build over here. We wished we had taken pictures of a building that they were building downtown, but hadn't taken pictures, so when we found they were going to build right down the corner from us we decided to take pictures each week to show everyone. It starts out with a field of weeds and wildflowers. We hope you will enjoy it.

Have a fantastic week. The church is growing, we even had a baptism today in the Spanish ward, Hopefully, his wife will be baptized next week or soon thereafter.

Guess what, they have thistles over here also. I think it is a different variety, but it is a thistle nevertheless. It has a purple flower just like at home, but the leaves are a little different. See below.

This next picture is a celebration that the Spanish Ward of Fuengirola invited our branch of sisters to join in with them for the Relief Society birthday. A few sisters on the right are from the Mijas International Branch. The lady in the black and purple is Barbara Hall, who isn't a member, but her husband is. They come to Spain 3 to 4 times each year. They have a house, or an apartment down here and have been coming for several years. Next to her in the orange is Bruna Riley, and her husband just had a hip replacement, but Brother Hall was staying with him so that Bruna could come. Next to Bruna is Sister Belinda Tyndale-Biscoe.

On the other side of the table were several sisters and I haven't found out all their names, but I recognize them and greet them, but haven't got names for them. Wonderful sisters. The two videos below are the Spanish sisters doing the flamingo dance. Just click on them and the video will play.

Church went really well today. We had 24 people there with 2 couples from Canada and United States who had to stay another week because of the volcanic ash in the air and no flights into England. Brother Hall was also here for another week. We had the High Councilor, Bro Padilla speak plus his wife. He translates her talk as she speaks in Spanish. We also had Sister Gudrun Meyer give a talk today, she is the German sister and she did excellent in her talk. Bro Meyer said she practiced several times, and she did again with me before Relief Society started. The members here are so lovely, and so generous and faithful. We really enjoy being with them. Hope you all have a wonderful week.

Love Sister JoAnne and Roy Hunt

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