Well we sure had a very busy week. Monday was staff meeting and what a great meeting to have with the Mellor's (President and Sister) and the office elders and the AP's. We have a spiritual thought, go over the baptisms that happened during the week, etc, go over the calendar for the next couple of weeks and another other things that they need to bring up, for example Roy wanted to talk with the Zone leaders at their conference to remind them how important it was to fill out the baptismal record and how to get it sent in as soon as they are confirmed. Usually in this mission they are confirmed a week after their baptism, because so many of them happen on Sunday afternoon and they confirm them the next Sunday. We usually go out to eat with Sister Mellor and she brings back a lunch for President Mellor, because he usually has another meeting with the AP's as we go out.

On Tuesday it was Sister Mellor's birthday and we went to a
Spanish restaurant and had something like fajitas, but it was not on tortillas but on french fries. It was really good and filling, because Roy and I shared a plate and it was plenty for us.

Wednesday we went to Algeciras to check out one of the Elder's
apartments to give word back to the President that they really needed to change apartments because of the mold. On all the walls, which isn't healthly for the missionaries. Of course with all the humidity and bad circulation in some of the apartments there will always be some mold. They don't heat the apartments over here so there is good conditions for mold to grow in even the best apartments, but this one was very very bad and we agreed that they needed to move. On the way there we did see the rock of Gilbrator, but not very good because of the rain, the 4th picture after we checked the apartment out it really started to rain, but we did drive into the rock of Gilbratar, which belongs to Great Britain to look around and on the 5th picture you can see that we were closer but saw even less. Needless to say, we didn't stay at all, but went home teaching on the way home.

We went to visit Sister Marion Allen, the 1st picture, who lives a lot closer to the Rock of Gilbratar than she does to the branch. She sure brings enthusiasm to the branch. She got back a week ago from her Christmas trip to England, and already has a party planned for the branch, she is the activity chairperson. It takes us usually about an hour to drive out to her place. She did go with the stake to the temple trip that we went to on Friday and Saturday. We left our branch/ward building at 9:30 p.m. It was the whole stake that went. We had a couple of buses for the whole stake. We drove into Malaga and picked up more people and met the 2nd bus there and left there about 10:30 p.m. Then we drove to Granada and picked up more people, the busses weren't completely full, but we had a good group and we left there between 1:00 a.m. and 2 a.m. We had another rest stop around 4 a.m. and reach the temple at about 6:00 in the morning so we took a picture to show you the moon and the temple. We had to wait for a session to start about 8:00, we did get into the temple about 7:00 and then we did a couple of sessions, the youth did baptisms for the dead and some did a third session. We left Madrid about 4:30 p.m. and drove back and we didn't arrive home until about 12:00 in the morning. That made it a very very long day and we were very tired. This picture of the elder is Elder Ruz who lives in Spain and finished his mission on the 9th of January. I met him in the celestial room of the temple. What a shock to see him there, his sister was going through for the 1st time.

I also found Sister Raimez who is coming into our mission on the 9th of Feb and is right now in the MTC in Madrid, which is on the temple grounds. I really needed to meet her because we are the ones that have to pick her up. The President and his wife will be on the Canary Islands and won't get back in time to pick her up. Another one of our duties. This picture is what the Rock of Gilbratar looks like on a clear day, the mountains behind the main rock is Africa. So far we have had many clear days when we were in that area and Sister Mellor took this picture.

The 3rd picture is our branch members that went to the temple, Bro and Sis Meyer from Germany, Roy and I and Sister Allen from England.

The most exciting news is our branch new grandson that was born on the 30 of January to Evan and Hilary Fisher. This is Gavin Fisher weighing in at 6 lbs, 14 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long. He was born in Yuma, Arizona and joins his 2 1/2 year old brother, Conlan. Isn't he just cute? We are biased or anything like that, but this makes # 21 grandchildren for us, and later on when Evan gets his laptop back or a new webcam we can see him other than just pictures. We did get to talk with Evan today and they are already home. Everything went fine and Hilary's mother got there on Tuesday before the baby came, so that was great.

We wish you all a very great week. We plan to have a very busy week, Zone Conference Wednesday, Home Teaching on Thursday( 3 hour drive one way) and Stake Conference on Saturday and Sunday. Love you all.

Sorry about last week, we didn't add to our blog, I had a cold and didn't feel very well, but I'm on the mend now. So just a recap of our last two weeks. The Wednesday before last we went out and checked apartments of the missionaries. It was really an all day affair because to get to the first one it took us over two hours to drive there and the others were close to each other, within a half hour or less between each one. The first one we went to was Jerez, with Elder Gleason, Elder Ross, Elder Lauener, and Elder Solari. We had met Elder Ross and Elder Solari in the MTC in Madrid. Elder Lauener is Switzerland and I was able to speak German with him, but his English is also very good.

The second one we went to was in San Fernando, where the zone leaders lived with two other missionaries. This second picture is Elder Hafen, Elder Beswick, then Elder Woodland, and Elder Larsen. They were great missionaries and fun it talk with. Elder Hafen has an egg in his hand that he was going to use for an object lesson on faith.

The next ones were in El Puerto de Santa Maria and we have Elder Phillips and Elder Basurto, who is our newest and now our shortest Elder. Elder Ruz was the shortest and he went home this thursday. Elder Basurto is from Spain, but was born in Ecuador and Elder Phillips is from England as well as the Elders Wallace, and Elder Woodland and they all knew each other in England before they came on their missions. These last elders didn't get changed during the transfers this last week.

We then went to Cadiz, which is a port city in Spain that is really just an island and was an old city, at the time of Christ. The sisters lived there and we have Sister King and Sister Campbell. They were delightful also to talk with. Sister King just got transfered to the Canary Islands and Sister Campbell had already been on the Islands.

We then went over to El Puerto de Santa Maria where Elder Ellis and Elder Wallace were serving. They had a very nice apartment and quite large compared to some of the other apartments. Elder Wallace Also got transfered to the Canary Islands on Thursday. We first met him in the MTC in Madrid while we were up there. It is really great to talk to these missionaries and see their excitment in serving a mission.

We plan to go this week to Algeciras, which is across the bay from the Rock of Gilbrator, so that should be an interesting trip also. We plan to do our Home Teaching on the back back, because Sister Allen lives closer to the that area and has to come all the way to Fuengirola to go to church. She really lives closer to Algeciras, but she wants to go to an English speaking ward. She just got back this week from England, and when I called her, she said she only got back 2 hours ago. She brings lots of enthusiasm into our branch. She is a widow and has moved to Spain to live. She is our activities chairman and already has planned an activity for us for the 13th of February.

This last picture is the newest member of our branch, Lydia Madera Duran. She is from the Philippines and is working here to earn enough to put her children through school. Right now she is with her boss in Madrid, I think they have a home there also and she has to go up there with them to work. She is a delightful new member and she is standing with the office missionaries Elder Barton and Elder Goings. They are a great companionship and we get to work with them in the office. Elder Barton is quite new to the office, he got transfered here in December and was trained by Elder Millerberg who left right after Christmas and went to Granada. Elder Barton is from Gilbert, Arizona. Elder Goings is from Richmond, Utah, up by Logan.

We have a busy week planned, meeting with the office elders, and the Assistants to the President and President and Sister Mellor on Monday. This usually happens every Monday if the Mellor's haven't gone to the Islands for Zone Conference. On Wednesday we first have a meeting with the branch missionary leader and the elders and afterwards we travel to Algeciras. We will be late in getting back that day and won't go into the office at all. Back to the office on Thursday and again on Friday. Friday night we are going with some of our branch members and members from the Spanish ward to the Madrid Temple. We take a bus late at night and travel to Madrid during the night, catching whatever sleep we can and then do a couple of sessions in the Madrid temple and travel back the Fuengirola and then try to be awake for church the next day. We will let you know how this goes.

We really love it over here and the missionary work is going great. They have great plans for the coming year even with fewer missionaries and hope to have more baptisms than last year. With the members help I know we can do it.

Well we had a very rainy first of the week this year. We had put off a couple of times of going to Malaga to see the Christmas lights and we finally did it for Family Home Evening with the branch members who could go. We went inbetween the rain storms. We were afraid that there would be lightening storms that were predicted. The Meyers, the German couple really wanted to go and we were willing to also go, the Tyndale-Biscoes said that they would go, but there were hestiate about going in the storm. But we went in one vehicle and we were very lucky because it would rain for about 5 minutes and then let up.

We picked up Aaron Jacobsen on the way so that he could see the lights with us. He is the single guy from Alaska over here working on his doctors' degree in history. He has been in Berlin and wanted to come to Spain and enjoy the sunshine, but ha, ha, it has been raining for most of the time that he has been here. But he has been a welcome member of our branch and all the members have enjoyed his company, he hasn't lacked for dinner invites. He will be leaving our branch at the end of January to go Vienna to finish writhing his disertation, etc.

They keep the streets lit up until after 3 Kings Day, January 6th. So we had to go to see them before that and we decided it was worth it. We saw the nativity scene in one of the public buildings. There were also other Nativity scence put up around the city. They had several trees all decorated with lights, and many of the main streets had different light above the streets. Some of us got out and walked around the streets and we were went to return to the vehicle it started raining on us. You can see part of the group around the tree in one of big market plazas. On the right are the Meyers, from Germany, and on the left are the Tyndale-Biscoes from England with one of their sons, Seth.

There was another tree lit up also. They also had the tree wisemen made up of flowers in one of the round-abouts, but my picture didn't turn out. They celebrate Three Kings Day, like we do for Christmas, they have a parade, exchange gifts, etc.

We didn't stay at the office and watch the parade, but the elders told us that they throw out candy from the floats like they do during Peach Days. And they say that the last King, Baltazar, the black king, has the best treats.

I have been tutoring Holly Tyndale-Biscoe with her math, she missed about 3 weeks of school right before Christmas because of the flu and needed to get caught back up. I glad I have been able to help and that I haven't forgotten all my math. She is taking a pre-calculus class and later wants to take the SAT so that she can go to BYU when she finishes over here. She is going to an English school here, but has to travel by train and bus to get there every morning and night with her younger brother. She has one more year left after this one and then the family wants to move back to England.
We had a very enjoyable district meeting today. We are very impressed with the missionaries and the lesson that they give. Those that we have worked with are excellent leaders and will be a benefit to the church wherever they will serve in the future. They even have a Spanish lesson each week.

We hope you will all have an enjoyable week and may the missionary effort fill the earth. We do have a testimony of the importance of the message of Jesus Christ for the whole world.

Well, we want to wish all of you a Happy New Year, it came in with a bang here in Spain. They set off firecrackers and fireworks to bring in the New Year. Some of the people started a lot earlier, because we have been hearing firecrackers go off for a week now, but on the 31st of December there were definitely more of them and several more when the clock turned to 12:00. We didn't go out and chose to stay home, but the noise kept us awake.

The bad thing was the poor dogs in the neighborhood. Every time one of the big firecrackers would go off the dogs would stat to bark.

It must have really hurt their ears.

We did get some pictures from Sister Mellor that were taken at the Mission Home on Christmas that I thought that I would share with you. We had a traditional Christmas dinner with turkey, dressing, yams, mashed potatoes and gravy and tossed salad. We happened to be at the head of the table this time. These missionaries were a great group to eat with and they left shortly after singing a few Christmas carols so they could be back to call their families. While we were waiting for the dinner to begin we finished a puzzle and of course I had to help, I miss putting puzzles together. I didn't put it altogether myself, the elders also helped, but Sister Mellor took my picture.

This week started out really warm. When I walked down to the post office, I got really hot and wished that I hadn't worn my sweater. On Tuesday it started out about the same, but later on during the day it started raining again and rained for the rest of the week. Saturday was a very sunny day and we walked over to the church for our district meeting. But it suppose to rain again maybe tomorrow but definitely on Monday and that is the day we wanted to go see the lights in Malaga.

We did go into the office on New Year's Day but didn't stay the whole day because the internet wasn't up and they were having trouble with the computers.

We hope that all of you will have a prosperous and happy New Year.

I can't believe another week has gone by. Christmas has come and gone and the New Year is approaching. We didn't really take many pictures this week because it rained the whole week, even had lightning and thunder to go along with it. It wasn't really too cold, only if you got wet through and the wind continued to blow. One day, I think it was Monday, my shoes got soaked all the way through just walking to the office. (Jo walked too close to the down spout of on of the builings and it filled her shoe full of wather.) We tried to get everything ready for the zone conference that we had last Tuesday in Malaga. We had a wonderful Zone Conference, and had a program about Christmas, with Scriptures and songs. We had a wonderful meal with the missionaries and enjoyed visiting with the missionaries from the 2 zones. They have 2 zones meet together for Zone Conference and then they try to have a zone Conference about every 6 weeks or so, usually between the transfers.

We were going to go with the Branch back into Malaga to see the lights on Wednesday night but it continued to rain so it was cancelled and we will try to go next week. They tell us that they keep the lights up until 3 Kings Day, which is January 6th. On Tuesday night Roy and I went home teaching to a couple of members, Fred and Bruna Riley, they have been members for about 17 years and have lived here in Spain for 7 years in Mijas Costa. He is from England and she was born in Italy and grew up in Beligum. They met in Yugoslavia at a (Communist Party)conference. She speaks several languages, and he only speaks English. They are a delightful couple and very strong members in our branch. He was in the Branch Presidency when we got here and is now the branch mission leader. She is the Young Women's Advisor, we only have 1 young woman, Holly, and she is a joy to have in any class. Holly has been our Pianist in Sacrament meeting until her brother, Jack, got back from Australia. Jack Tyndale-Biscoe is getting ready to serve a mission and he plays the piano beautifully. He is self taught and studied a very intensive music course while he was in Australia. He will be a great missionary.

On Thursday we got ready for Christmas, that is when we took our preparation day, which entailed cleaning our apartment, doing the wash, etc. I also did some baking. I made a lemon merigue pie to take to the mission home for Christmas dessert. On Friday we went up to the mission home to help with the cooking, but didn't need to do much. We did eat with President and Sister Mellor and nine other missionaries. They were a great group and enjoyed the Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, and yams and salad. It was great food. Then the missionaries hurried back to their apartments so they could talk to their families and then we were able to visit all of our kids on SKPE. It was so great to see all of the grandkids and what they got for Christmas. We really enjoyed talking with all of them.

On Saturday the English celebrate Boxing Day and once again we were out at the Riley's to a dinner about 3:00 o'clock and we had 15 people there. 4 of the missionaries and the rest were members of the branch. We took Aaron Jacobson, who is the member that is from Alaska who is over here working on his Doctor's degree. He is doing it out of England, but is doing research in Germany. He wanted to spend some time in the sun in Spain and then it has rained the last week here. He was here a month ago and decided to spend his time in our branch. He will be here until the end of January. He went to Columbia on his mission and has learned German, so the Meyers, the Germany couple really like to speak with him.

After we were at the Riley's on Saturday we went to the Meyer's for supper and we took Aaron with us. We always enjoy ourselves when we are there, even though Roy doesn't quite understand everything when they speak German.

On Sunday we had 17 people for Sacrament meeting, and we hope in a couple of weeks several of the others will come back from whereever they spent their holiday. It was a great meeting, even though it was small.

We wish you all a Happy New Year.

Well we are getting close to Christmas and the sun is still shining. It has been a bit cooler and we had a good rain on Wednesday. But Thursday was a beautiful day. We had scheduled a "Piso" (apartment) check in Nejar and Motril. One Elder from each area had to come into the Mission Home for residencey processing so we were able to take them home. This was good for them and for us. At least we had guides to the Pisos.

The pictures to the right represent an interesting Christmas practice here in Spain. Since, they don't heat their houses there are no chimneys for Santa to come down. Therefore, they have these little Santas and the Three Kings (Three Kings day, 6 Jan) is as big or bigger than Christmas here in Spain) on ladders climbing on the balconys so that they can leave their gifts for the children. They have all sizes of Santas to buy to hang outside on your balony. The children get gifts on both of the holidays, so we are told.

As I said Thursday was a beautiful day. We traveled to Motril on the Autovista (Freeway) and then returned on the old coast road so that we could see some of the scenery. This picture is of a bridge for the Autovista and the road below is the old highway that winds its way down the coast. Sometimes we were driving right along the beach and sometimes we had to go through tunnels because the hills go right down to the coast. In Fuengirola where we live there are miles of sandy beaches. We saw lots of peach orchards and citrus orchards where as when we travel to the interior of Spain where it is drier there are miles and miles of olive groves. We were surprised that in the stores the olive oil is more expensive than other vegetable oils.

This picture is of an old castle in one of the towns we went through. It was interesting how it had been built on top of the rock outcropping and almost looked like a part of the rock itself. It took a while before you realized that there was a castle up there. You can see the buildings that have been built up the hill under the castle. Its even worse on the back side. One almost can't see the Castle any more.

This is an example of the coast line. This mountain comes right down to the water and there isn't any beach. In this case the road will go though a tunnel. Along the road we saw a lot of towers setting on the tops of ridges facing the Mediteranian. I don't know how old these towers are but they were built as watch towers to set up an early warning system if invaders were spotted off shore.

The area aroung Nejar and Motril is mostly small farms where they grow fruits and vegitables. They use almost every available inch of land. The mountain side were terraced almost to the top and what looked like lemon trees were planted on them. When we got down in the valley we saw large orchards of what looked like Peach trees to us.

They also had a large number of greenhouse where they grew vegetables. I guess the greenhouses allow them to grow crops year around. There were acres of these green houses plus lots of small farms around them. I could see potatoes growing plus other crops. This area has lots of peaches, and they juice their peaches and there is a lot of peach juice that they drink here called Melocoton. Off course they drink lots of orange juice, pineapple and grape and apple juice here in Spain.

It is still hard to believe that next week is Christmas, I guess after all these years of having white Christmas, it hard to feel that it Christmas now. They put their poinsettias right outside and it look very pretty. We do wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year or as they say in Spain "Feliz Navidad".

Dec. 13, 2009

Can you believe another week has gone by. The time is going by so fast. This first picture is the office missionaries with Pres. and Sister Mellor and the AP's Back row. Sister Mellor, Elder Going, the financial secretary, Elder Barraza, an AP elder from Barcelona, Roy, JoAnne.

Front row: President Mellor, Elder Millerberg, executive secretary, and then Elder Lundin, the other AP and the last time he was going to be there, he was transfered to the Canary Islands. They are an excellent group of elders to work with. Elder Millerberg will leave on the next transfer and is now training his replacement.
The next two pictures are how they decorate for Christmas they string different lights up above the streets. You don't see many homes decorated with lights, mainly because most of them are apartments. There are all different designs and I only put in a couple. We aren't sure how the Spanish all celebrate Christmas, but have heard that they give presents on Christmas and then again on 3 Kings Day on Jan. 6th. One tradition I heard was they put a ladder outside their balacony for Santa to come in their apartment since they don't have chimneys for him to come down.

The next picture is the symbol for the town of Fuengirola, a big sun design and this is in one of the round-abouts with the name of the town in letters around it. So this sun symbol is on lots of things that represent the town of Fuengirola.
The last picture is how they clean the streets, a big water truck with a person behind using the hose to wash down the sidewalks and the streets. Lots of manual labor here. We have seen a street sweeper, but we have also seen people with brooms sweeping up

things along the streets.

We had to wait for him to finish the street before we could drive through it since it is a one-way street. This was taken right outside our apartment building. They do try to keep the town clean.

Church was good today and we had 22 people at church, but next week it will be way down in attendance because we have several that are leaving Spain for Christmas. We had our Christmas party on Thursday night and we had a little program, where everyone participate. We would sing a song together and have a scripture reading that Sister Marion Allen put together and it spelled out Christmas Love and then she told a story how something like this was used by another group years ago and one little boy holding his sign had it upside down and it gave the real message of Christmas. He had the M upside down. That was a great message in itself.

I hope this finds everyone well and we pray that all will go well tomorrow for our son Earl, He is going to be operated on tomorrow for Pancreatic Cancer. Look up the Whipple Procedure and you can see what they are going to do for him. Our Prayers are with him at this time and we are all staying positive for the outcome.

We wish you all a very Merry Season right now.