Letters from 4/1/2014

Letter to Mom:

Hey Mom,

Wow Spencer has a girlfriend!? Better tell him that I have a year and a half left and then after that I will probably get married before him. Oh and Robbie too. haha! Well things are going good here, still teaching Fidel and Sylvia. Not really a ton of action going on here. Today was transfer week so one Elder left our piso and is going to Zaragoza which is closer to Barcelona. He was probably one of my favorite Elders in my mission. I guess after the mission I am going to have to go visit him in Argentina. He tells me they have the best meat there and I believe him because we went to an Argentina buffett before he left and the meat was incredible. I loved it!

 

Still working with a long list of menos activos and finding out that most of them don´t live here anymore. For conference we stay here in Santander, but I don´t know if we get to watch it in English. We are going to try because there will be three North Americans. My piso has flipped again from 3 South Americans to three North Americans.  We just cleaned our piso today and feel like a champ because of how gross it was, it was the most nasty thing ever. 

For now I can´t think of anything that I miss right now but I am sure there is something. Oh wait I do have something that I can´t get here SLEEP! We are always dead. 

Hope everything is good.

Love Elder Blake Billingsley 

Letter to Dad:

Hey,

It is for sure my Spanish is a little better, I can pretty much communitcate anything in a round about way but they understnad me and I understand just about everything they say to me.  It is true I am starting to have more fun now that I can make connections with people.  I know I can´t believe it, pretty soon my cousin will be out on the mission too. That's whats up! Of course Cole wanted some extra money I could never get him to help me clean our room, and then he wanted to go to scouts to see what they do there, what? Where did that come from? 

 

Wow dead lifting 200 pounds, tu eres una bestia!! Watch the back those ones will kill you if you do to much or do them wrong. Well I think I have been gaining weight. It is so hard, the members here like to make us food. We have 2 familys that feed us every week at the same time. One feeds us seafood and the other usually something from Colombia because that would be where they are from. We are always eating with other people. The native Spanish food will make you pack on the pounds too. Potatoes, bread, and eggs. I know, sounds like the staples of a missionary, but that is the main food here. They have bread with everything. 

 

Well we have transfers today, I'm still in Santander and probably will be for another transfer at least but it is possible that I could be here for 3 more. My current companion has transfers 2 left. They keep sending me all the old guys in the mission to kill them off. 

 

Not much more going on here, just teaching some of the same old people and hoping they get baptized sooner than later, but we have a lot of work to do. Actually today while we were doing our shopping for the week we got a call from some guy we had given one of our cards to in the street and he wants to talk to us on Thursday. It is starting to get really hot here and I am sweating like a dog at night. Oh yeah speaking of night, lets just say that I had an experience that made me and the Argentinian Elder poop our pants the other night. I will write a letter about it I think. It blows my mind what happened. Well I didn´t think it would happen to me, but everything is good here. 

 

Love Elder Blake Billingsley