La Semana Segunda

Can't believe that I've almost been here for two weeks! The time is just going by which is really good and means that I'm focused on the work. But I can't wait to actually get out into the field in about four more weeks. Today is Monday and it's our P-Day because it's a Spanish National Holiday, apparently. So instead of having it on Thursday like usual, it's today. And same with next week apparently, too, because it's a Madrid Holiday. I kinda like it on a Monday because Sundays are a bit more relaxed and then you have a day to sorta have a little bit more fun. But I think I prefer it on a Wednesday or Thursday because it's right in the middle of the week, and makes a good break in the middle for you. But it's not that big of a deal.

This past weekend it rained here for the first time! I've been waiting to see it rain because I wanted to see how it was. Utah rain has a very distinct smell, NY rain is just normal and comes in buckets, but here it's nothing special. It just comes in a little bit for a while then waits and then comes again.

We had to go to the park on Saturday when it was raining so there weren't a lot of people there to talk with. But we did find these three English girls who were visiting for a vacation and we gave them a copy of the Book of Mormon! It was way cool to answer their questions and actually know how to respond, what scriptures we could share to help us, and to also testify of what we were saying. I'm not sure what will happen, but at least we planted a seed for them.

While we were in the park we went up to a man who was just sitting on a bench and we thought he'd be a great person to talk to. But we started talking and I asked, "How are you?" and he said, "Porque te interes?"...I think haha which means why do you care. And I said something like I don't know, it's a great day! And then he just told us to leave and get lost haha. It was kinda unsettling at first but it's just a funny story now.

The food here has been awesome. There hasn't been a meal that I haven't liked which is crazy. We have a decent amount of fish, which I don't mind, and lots of meat. There's bread at every meal and lots of other fruit and stuff. I usually only eat toast and yogurt in the morning and then eat a lot more at lunch, which is their big meal.

The three French elders and sister leave next week which is kinda sad. We get along great with them and we'll miss them a lot. One Elder doesn't speak any Spanish or English so we have to have a translator with us most of the time. Luckily the Sister from France knows English really well and an Elder that's serving in Madrid knows French and English! So it works out great. The other Elder from France can speak a little English and a little Spanish. So it's a little easier to talk with him. But it's fun using signs and acting things out sometimes haha. Makes for an interesting time in the MTC. But to replace them next week, we get a ton of Spanish missionaries. Which means a ton more Spanish speaking to do, which is good.

For our service project the other day we had to rake leaves. I heard that and I was like nooooooo haha. I thought I got away from that for the next two years. But apparently not. I guess they knew that I was a pro at raking leaves since we do it so much at home every year. But it was fine because we had everyone out there and we just made it fun by talking and stuff. So service is all in the attitude. Make it fun and it will be fun.

Next week Hna. Boone and I are singing in sacrament meeting. I'm kinda nervous because I've never had to sing in just a duet before in front of people. And I don't even sing a bunch outside of church! I haven't sung in a choir since 6th grade but people keep asking if I have and if I take lessons...which I guess I should take as a compliment haha. But I think I'd rather play my violin right now. I didn't think I'd miss it this much until now. Hopefully I'll be able to touch at least one in these next two years. If not I might just go crazy. In the mean time singing will have to do.

I guess I'll update you all on the language again. I can now read Preach My Gospel in all Spanish which is pretty sweet. I've been doing it for about a week but now it's all I use when we study because I can understand it just fine. I read a little slower because I'm still learning but I can do it. I can talk and understand Spanish a lot better and I can carry on conversations with most people about a variety of things...sorta. It's just a matter of knowing vocabulary now. I know tons of church words but it's the other things that are a little iffy haha. So my goal is to work on that stuff.

I'll leave you all with a scripture I found while reading this week. It's really funny because it can totally apply to anyone, especially missionaries. It's in Proverbs 28:25. The last half says, "...but he that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat." So if you see missionaries that come home a little bigger than when they left, you know they trusted in the Lord haha. Obviously this isn't the real meaning, but I thought it was pretty funny and I shared it with everyone else.

Miss you all and I love hearing from you! Until next week!

Oh How Lovely Was the Morning

Week one down, five to go! The Madrid MTC is sooo different than Provo. First of all there are so few people here that it was really weird to not have to wait for a shower or wait for food in the cafeteria. There aren't many people at church meetings either which actually is kinda nice sometimes because the teachers and speakers talk directly to you. But we're getting 13 more missionaries in about two weeks...and all of them are from Spain, which means I have to speak Spanish to talk haha. It's not that big of a deal because I've been doing great so far but it'll just be a little different. And now we'll have longer lines in the shower haha.

Today is our first real P-Day here in Madrid, and since it's kinda a bit more relaxed here with the rules and stuff we can go to downtown Madrid!! And that's exactly what we're doing today. I gotta go buy some stuff that I don't have yet and then we're just going to tour and take pictures and everything. I'm so excited.

This past week in the park was crazy. Every Saturday we go to the park to contact people, which means talking to them and trying to share the gospel a little. I was sooo nervous, but in the end it was such a sweet experience. We were paired with different missionaries here since a few speak only French. I got put with Elder Thompson, who's also going to Barcelona. He's having a hard time learning Spanish so I had to do most of the talking and then translate into English for him. It was really good practice for me though and I was amazed to see that everyone actually understood me and I understood them! I know for sure that my spanish is farrrr from perfect haha but at least I know that I can communicate.

We play a lot of soccer and basketball here for our gym time which I absolutely love. We got to play basketball with some French kids who came down from France to visit the temple with their families. There were a tonnn of them too. And it was a good experience because you could tell that the little 10 year olds totally looked up to us haha.

Soccer is cool, as always, but also cuz we're in Spain haha. But the other day Hna. Boon sprained her ankle pretty bad while we were playing which isn't good. She went to get x-rays and everything and luckily it's just a bad sprain. But she's got this cast thing on her leg and has to wear it for like five weeks which is awful. Hopefully I don't get hurt seeing as I'm prone to injury haha. But so far so good.

The weather here in the morning is perfect. It doesn't get light till around eight or so and

the sunrise is awesome. I took a picture of one from our classroom the other day so I guess I'll have to send it home. It's the perfect briskness and temperature in the morning. Not cold but not warm. I really like that for some reason.

And for those who understand Spanish or can use a dictionary, here's some words from Elder Mathews:

Estoy muy agredecido para este oportunidad que tengo servir un mision. Yo sé que Dios vive y tiene un plan para nosotros. Os quiero mucho y os extraño mucho. Tengo mucho suerte porque yo tengo un buen compañero. Nosotros enseñamos juntos muy bien y tenemos much en común. Y tengo una escritura: 2 Nefi 22:2. Es mi aconsejo para la semana :) Ok so hopefully you can figure that out if you want. And yes i'm pretty sure some of that was wrong haha but a Spaniard would know what I was saying.

I love and miss you all!

Day 2 in Madrid

Oct. 21, 2010 - Thursday (P-day)

I lost my key today...and I´ve only been here two days! The key was to my drawer that had my passport/visa, wallet, camera, and money. So we had to go to the desk and they called people and after 2.5 hours and five people we finally got it open! haha crazy morning!

We got to go to the Madrid Temple today, too! It was so cool! The temple was way pretty and so much bigger than the Palmyra one; and it´s really strange when everything is in Spanish; so but luckily, we could hear the session in English :)

Apparently we get another hermana tomorrow! So now we´ll have 8 people here! I think I told you about contacting in the park already, but I can´t remember, so I´ll do it again haha. Every Saturday we take the metro to a huge park, like Central Park in NYC, and we go with our companions and we walk around and talk to people there and try to get referrals and things like that. They told us that baptisms do come from this so it´s not just for practice; but I´m still way nervous because these are real people that aren´t pretending to be investigators; and on top of that they speak crazy fast Spanish!

Oh funny story this morning haha. So Elder Keeler and I went to breakfast and we went to grab a tray, and this lady said something and I guess we didn´t need a tray; and she came over and said something and we just looked at each other with that blank stare hahaha. So i just said "no puedo comprender" which means I can´t understand haha. So she just smiled and kinda laughed and then spoke a little slower and used some different words and some hand motions. So we understood after that. But yeah, they speak way faster over here and with a way different accent. So that´ll be fun trying to get used to that.

Yesterday during our gym time we went over to the futsal court to play, but no one was over there! We were pretty bummed. We just played around for a little and then came back and played basketball in the stake center. The Elders and Sisters from Madrid had pday, I guess, so we got to play basketball with the Elders. It was pretty fun.

The keyboard on the computer is wayyyy weird. Since the Spanish people use different letters and symbols, they stick them on the computer keyboard and so things are in different locations, which is kinda annoying. The colon, parenthesis, quotation marks, question mark, and a few others are like on different keys so I´m still getting used to it, but it´s ok i guess.

Hope all is well back home and wherever anyone else is when they read this haha, Elder Mathews is doing fantastic :)

Hola from Madrid!

Oct. 20, 2010 - Wednesday

Well I´m in Madrid right now :) and I am definitely not caught up on any sleep whatsoever. We´re all so dead and tired, but we get to go to bed at 7:30 tonight and sleep till 6:30 which is great! The plane ride was fine; just really long.

We met a family who has a son who is also in the Provo MTC and she showed us pictures, but we didn´t recognize him. She also has a son-in-law, who was on the plane as well, that served in Barcelona on his mission! Small world haha.

We landed in JFK and one of the Elders that was traveling with us said he lost his boarding pass for the next flight so we spent like 15 minutes trying to work that out and ended up having to call church travel services. It was crazy but we eventually got it worked out.

The MTC here is sooooo different, but i kinda like it a lot better. Me, Elder Keeler, and the two other Elders that flew with us were the only four missionaries here today for a while, and then two other French missionaries joined us. So in all there as six of us right now, but that way you get more attention to your own development and everything.

The rooms are way nicer here, too, which is always a plus. We get an hour of email instead of 30 minutes which is pretty cool; and we actually go to a park and contact people....real people; not the pretend people in Provo MTC.; and here it´s allll spanish which just adds to the anxiety, but it´s still pretty exciting.

I´m pretty sure I´ll love it here, but I know I´ll miss my district back in Provo a lot just cuz they all added so much to the atmosphere and the attitude of our district. It feels weird to eat meals with less than fifteen people here instead of 2000.

The temple is right outside our window which is way cool, and the stake center is right next to us, too, and we can use it to play basketball or volleyball or whatever, which is awesome. There´s a futsal court nearby so we´re probably going to play there a lot. Apparently the local teens go there when we have gym time cuz they know that´s when we come to play haha. So at least we´ll have people to play with.

Apparently it usually only takes about 7-10 days for regular mail to ship from Spain to the U.S., or vice versa which is a lot shorter than I thought it was going to be, but I´m not complaining haha.

We were just outside getting our little orientation thing and our maestra was saying how cold it was. Everyone had pants and sweaters or jackets on and we all thought it felt amazing out! But apparently sunny and 20 degrees (celcius) is pretty cold for them. So I have a feeling I´m going to like the weather a lot. Wish I could send some of it to all of you haha.

Love and miss you all!!! But know that I´m doing great and I´m loving it :)

It's here!!!

It’s here!!!

Well the thing I've been waiting for this whole time is finally here! My visa came this past Wednesday!!! Which means I'm headed to the Madrid MTC on October 19th. I'm so excited. But also way nervous. I'm going from Spanish and English to only Spanish. And they speak wayyy faster and with a pretty good accent...so it'll be a struggle at first I'm sure, but I know I'll be way more prepared when I actually get into the field.

My companion, Elder Keeler, got his visa too and our roommate, Elder Iverson, got his too. So the three of us, along with two other missionaries who we don't know are flying out to Madrid on the 19th. Pretty sweet!

This past week flew by. I can't believe it's already P-Day again...but I'm not complaining. It's nice to have a day to just relax a bit and write people. The language is coming along great! Elder Keeler and I made a companionship goal to memorize at least 30 words/day which means about 210 a week. Sounds like a ton but it's actually not that hard. We bought notecards at the bookstore, which is really cheap for missionaries :), and started writing words for the lessons and other church words we would probably use. So far I have about 500 notecards with another 200ish on the way haha. Yeah it's a lot...but they help sooo much. Just goes to show how much missionaries and the Spirit work together for missionary work. So tonight we're quizzing each other to see if we actually remember allll those words that we learned this week. Should go pretty good though.

This past week we also got to go to the TRC (Teaching Resource Center) and the TE (Teaching Evaluation) for the first time. In the TE we taught Brother Heaton who went to Japan on his mission. We taught the first lesson in English just to get an idea of how we could split up the lesson, the layout, etc. It went pretty good actually. He gave us feedback which was really helpful so now we can change a few things when we teach again on Thursday and Friday. The TRC was pretty cool. We went to the room and just had small talk and got to know our "investigator" in Spanish for the first 15ish minutes. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Then we took a break and went back to teach the first lesson in English. But instead of just the one person there, there was another person who had joined him. He didn't speak a lot of English so he only spoke in Spanish but he could understand what we were saying. I could understand everything he said in Spanish which was awesome because he was talking way faster than what we're used to. Elder Keeler kinda had a little trouble but that's ok because we're here to learn and get better. He's progressing really fast too now that we've started using notecards.

Oh! And we're only supposed to talk in Spanish no matter where we are. It's so hard. When we're at the cafeteria or wherever else and we want to tell a funny story or something, we have to do it in Spanish which is a lot slower and just kinda kills the moment haha. But it's helped a tonnnnn and I can speak in Spanish pretty dang good now. I still make my mistakes with conjugations and stuff but I know the basic formations and a lot of vocab now so it's going great!

It's been really cold this past week every morning. Kinda not used to that yet haha. The other day there was actually snow up on Mt. Timpanogas which was crazy. Good thing I'm going to Madrid really soon.

The missionary fields have been closed for the past week because there was a pretty big sinkhole in the middle of it. So we've been inside for gym which is kinda fine with me. I get to play some awesome volleyball :). Some days are better than others though. It's kinda frustrating when you get a ton of people that all want to play and then don't even make an effort. I know some people aren't as great at some sports but some at least try which I respect. It actually makes the game more fun when people that you know don't play volleyball actually try, because they're just so funny and great to play with. I sorta wish we could play indoor soccer or football or something haha.

This past Sunday was our first Sacrament meeting here since the Sunday before was General Conference. It was pretty awesome. We had Sacrament meeting at 8:00 which is usually wayyyy too early for me, but since I'm used to getting up at 6:30, it's perfect. Then we have a two hour break until Priesthood. After that we have time to take a walk to the Temple and study and all that. It's just a laid back day which is really nice. There's always a fireside on Sunday night and right after we can go watch a church movie. We chose to watch Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration this week. I love that movie.

During Sacrament meeting our Branch President was released. His name is President Weiderhold. I didn't get to know him too well since we've only been here two weeks but he got up and gave a talk and you could just feel the love he had for our branch and for us as missionaries. And I'm actually gonna miss him. He was a great guy and was a great Branch President. Our new one is President Craig. He seems nice and everything so that's good. Too bad I'm only here for another week.

Now I guess I'll answer some questions that people have had... About Elder Keeler: he actually does know Laura Mickle haha anddddd they were boyfriend/girlfriend. Small world huh?

The food's been great and I actually think I've lost some weight since I can't just snack all day when I'm bored which is awesome. At least I know I won't be getting too terribly fat while I'm out here. We sorta made an agreement as a room to cut back on the sweets. All of us got a package of junk food, haha kinda funny really. So we've been sharing with each other and with our District so that we can sorta get rid of the temptations. Soooo if you do send carepackages...go a little easy on the sweets. I already got a big enough sweet tooth haha.

No, I wasn't in the Priesthood MTC Choir. If I had arrived here a week or two earlier I could've been but I wasn't. Oh well. It was pretty cool to still be here and watch it with all those 2000 missionaries. There's so many of us here and it's so cool to look around during devotionals and stuff and see 2000+ missionaries in suits and ties, or dresses, haha.

Oh I forgot to tell about my flight plans for next week. Our flight leaves at 8:44 am for JFK and then we fly to Madrid at 5:50 pm local time and arrive in Madrid at 7:25 am over there. We're going to be so tired. I hope I can actually sleep on the plane. But since we leave so early we have to get up around 4:00 am which just stinks. And since we fly out on a Tuesday, which is P-Day, we have to see if they'll let us do our laundry on Monday so that we don't have to pack our dirty clothes. I'm excited I'm actually flying with other Elders I know too. I've never flown with other people my age that I know...kinda weird. But exciting at the same time.

Thanks for the Love and Letters!! Miss you all!

Elder Mathews