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

Hi again. What a wonderful week we have had. I have included some pictures from last week, because I didn't really take many this week. The yellow blossoms are from the mamisma tree and it smells really nice. It grows all over the place and right now the blossoms are all going away. When we drove down the coast to do our home teaching, you could see it growing everywhere. They say it does grow in England, but not as much as here.
This next picture is when we took a day and went driving through the country side. This is a picture of the village of Ojen in the mountains. It is one of the white cities that they talk about. We didn't go down into the city, but stayed up on the road and they had a couple of turn outs where you could take some pictures.
This next picture was when we went with Sister Mellor up to Mijas Pueblo. We went to lunch up there and walked around the town. It is also known as one of the White Cities, I think. We can see it from our apartment and it is up in the hills above Fuengirola. This pictures is how they used to press the olives to make olive oil, so I was told.
The picture of us is in the Mijas village looking out to the Mediterrean Sea. We didn't stay up there very long, just to take a few pictures and then we went back to the office.



This next picture is a picture of Sister Mellor and I in the office. I was shredding lots of papers to clean up the papers that have been stored for several years. The Mellors wanted to clean up old files and make everything ready for the new mission president, President Clegg, before they come in. We have filled probably 20 big sacks of papers. Of course shredding takes time and lots more room than just tossing the papers away, but somethings have to be shredded.

The next pictures is a tree, bush that we see when we walk to the office. I call it a bottle brush plant, because it does look like a bottle brush. We were very surprised when this bush bloomed. So I went and took a close up of the flower.

This last picture I took today, because Sister Leonila Garcia wanted a picture of her and Lydia with Elder Harville, who will be tranfered this week. The picture starting at the left consists of Sister Lydia Duran, the newest baptized member of our branch, Elder Jason Harville, from Colorado, but born in the Marshall Islands, and then Sister Leonilla Garcia. The two ladies are from the Philippines, but didn't know each other before here in Fuengirola.

I hope you all enjoyed Conference as much as we did. We just stayed up late to watch it. We saw the 1st session at 6:00 to 8:00 and the 2nd session from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. We did the same thing on Sunday and really enjoyed it.

Well until next week.

Love the Hunt's

This last week has been kind of busy. On Tuesday (30 Mar 2010) we traveled to Cordova to do a piso check. Cordova is about two hours North and, for the time being, the furthest North point in our Mission. (On July 1st our Mission will extend into La Mancha and there is a branch that is almost as far North as Madrid.) We arrived in Cordova about two hours before our set time with the intention of doing some siteseeing. However, we spent much of that time being lost. We did get to see some sites as we drove around through the "Old Town." Some how we managed to drive in were only taxies were supposed to go and for a time we wern't shure we would be able to get out. But we made it and were able to find a car park and then walk to the "Castle of the Christian Monarchs" (pictured above and to the right)
This building started out as Morish Mosk but after the christian reconquest it became the home of the spanish kings. This tree to the right reminded us of the "Tree of Life" in Guatamala.

On our way back to Elders piso we noticed an open door and picked in to see what was inside. JoAnne was able to take this picture of the court yard that was behind the wall. We spent about an hour with the Elders looking at their apartment and answereing questions for them, as much as we could anyway, Elder Siddiqui wanted to know were he was going to be transfered to, which areas were going to be closed etc. We just don't have that sort of information until the monday before it happens,and the missionaries involved know on the Saturday night before.

After Cordova we went to Antequera which was about an hour away but, on our way home. We managed to ge there before the Elders had to go out to a meeting.


This week was "Holy Week" in Spain or "Santa Semana" they have processions in almost every town during the night. The carry status of Christ and Mary. The picture to the left is of the virgin Mary. It was consicerabley larger and seemed to be more important to them than the statue of Chist. Also they seemed to be paying more attention the the crucifixion rather than the resurrection. (that may come tonight though)

On Saturday night we went up to the Mission Home for dinner, Pancakes with strawberries and syrup, from the USA, Bacon and Oranges. Afterwords we watched the first session of conference on TV with the Mission President, his wife, the office elders and the APs. We had an enjoyable time. We watched the second session at home from 10:00 PM to Mid-night. On sunday morning I went to Malaga for the Priesthood Session with some members of the Branch. They have a seperate room set up for English speakers. I thought the conference was great and provided some insights and information that I will be able to use with some of the less-active members of our branch.

March 21, 2010

I just going to send some interesting pictures. Here is an interesting palm tree, where it is round at the bottom. there are several different kinds of palm trees here and the other picture of trees are also interesting. It is like a pine tree but grows really tall and the branches are very spread out. There is another pine tree by it. Some of them grow as tall as some of the building that could be 5-6 stories high.

This is a picture taken at the mission home, a farewell dinner for the 5 missionaries going home, plus us and the office missionaries and assistants to the presidents. Sister Mellor is taking the picture. There were 3 sisters going home and 2 elders. The elders were from Switzerland and England and the sisters were all going back to the states. I great group of missionaries that were leaving and we didn't get any replacements at that time. Three weeks later we got 2 Spanish sisters, or midtransfers. In April we will be losing lots of missionaries again and again in May and July and then we start getting other missionaries to replace the ones leaving.

This picture is when the President and Sister Mellor took the office staff to a Brazilian restaurant to celebrate together. The missionaires were in p-day clothes and it really seems different, because we see them in the office in white shirts and ties. It was good food and we enjoyed ourselves.

This next one is a picture of the fancy tiles some of the people put on the outside of their homes. This was a single dwelling house with tile on the outside. The houses are hooked together and if it is on the street level they always put bars on the windows. Sister Mellor took the picture and then I also took one of her so she could send it to others or keep a reminder. They use tile everywhere, even on garage floors or outside instead of having lawns, in individual dwellings. There are some we pass by on the way to church. We even saw tile floors in a repair garage and then they wash it down to keep it looking nice.

This next picture isn't very good, because it was cloudy and rainy, but we were up above on the mountain and took a picture of Fuengirola, the main city with the Mediterrean Sea. Hopefully we can get a better picture on Monday, because we are planning on going to Mijas, which is on the mountain above Fuengirola, and it is suppose to be a sunny day.

This next picture is a roundabout, under the train tracks and I was trying to get a picture while we were waiting for the train. I need to go up there during a busy time of day and take a video of how the round about works. If you are in the roundabout, you have the right away even if it means that you have to cross another lane of traffic. Roy's has had to learn how to drive in the roundabouts, because it is very different than what we would do in the states, but it seems to work.

I tried to add a video, but it might now work. Try it and I'll try to do better. We love it here and hope everything is okay with all of you there.