We just found out this past week who our new mission president will be. His name is President Mark L. Pace. He gets here July 1 and he'll be my mission president for about the last three months of my mission. It's kind of exciting to think that we'll be having a different mission president but also sad because President Hinckley has been incredible. I think the exciting part is just waiting to see what President Pace will be like. He served a mission in Madrid a while back so he should know the Spanish culture pretty well, which is great. I'll let you know more details as we learn more about him and what'll be happening.
This past week was a really good one for us, and our district as a whole. We were met with lots of success and things are picking up even more here as we've been working together as a district with the ward members. Things just pop out of nowhere and we're all pretty excited because as we look into the future, things are just looking even more incredible. This past weekend we had a baptism of Camila!! She's the daughter of a member and it was great. The only little problem was that we went earlier in the day to fill up the font and when we came back it was almost overflowing, ha-ha-ha! So we turned off the water obviously and had to start emptying the font with buckets, ha-ha. It was quite the experience. After about 15 minutes of doing that we decided that the water was low enough to be alright. Luckily it was :)
This past week Carnaval started as well. Carnaval is a big party holiday where people get into some crazy costumes. It was pretty interesting, ha-ha. We still had to go out and work obviously and Elder Watkins and I were coming back to Tarragona on a train from another town nearby at around 9:40 and we had to run to catch the train. The neat thing is that you can pay on the train when they come to check to see if you have a ticket. But sometimes the ticket guy doesn't make it all the way through the train by the time we get off sooooo we sometimes don't pay, ha-ha. But once again we had to run and jump on the train as it was about to leave and just wait for the guy to come. We were almost stopped in Tarragona when the guy came. Some luck huh? So we did end up paying which is fine but it's become sort of like a game for us to see if we make it there or not without paying, ha-ha. When we were back in Tarragona we went down the main street to get home and it was packed. We had forgotten that it was Carnaval and that they were going to have a big parade. So we couldn't cross the street for a while because of the parade so we just had to stand and wait there. It was pretty neat though because they had some floats and some extravagant looking costumes and it was way intense. Makes me sorta wish we had Carnaval back home, ha-ha. Elder Watkins and I decided to walk down the main street with our cameras taking a video. We held it right in front of our stomachs and just walked. So I'll be able to send that home and you'll all see a little bit of what it was like :)
Yesterday we had an incredible experience with a young man named Ivan. We were at church talking with people and this young woman in our ward, Lesly, came in with a friend. He stayed for all the meetings and then afterwards Lesly grabs me and my companion and says that Ivan wants to learn more. The crazy thing is that he's 15 and she's only 16 and she's an incredible member missionary. We had the visit with him that afternoon and it went so well. It was a little strange to teach him at first because he's only 15. Jared, my little brother, is 15, ha-ha. This young man had a lip ring and an earring with some spiked hair and he honestly didn't look like your ideal person to teach. But we saw a different side of him that showed what he really valued. He's interested in learning more and said that he wants to come back to church next week, which is way exciting. It's funny because the way he came to church was so simple. He just texted the member and asked her if she wanted to hang out that day and she said that she had to go to church and then just asked if he wanted to come. It's that easy! We invite people to come to church alllll week and they don't come and then a member invites them and they do, ha-ha. So lesson to learn: invite friends and others to come. It's actually pretty easy :)
Transfers are March 6 just so you know, and I'm not sure if I'll be getting transferred or not. There"s a good chance for both, ha-ha. So I'm not really sure. So just keep that in mind if you're planning on sending letters again :)
