Valencia!

¡Familia!¿Que tál?

We received our areas and trainers last Wednesday. I am serving in Valencia (southern part of our mission) and my trainer's name is Hermana Shaffer! I am so, so, so, so excited! I LOVE Valencia! They speak Valenciano here (pretty much the exact same as Catalán) which is kind of frustrating but at least down here they have a lot more Castellano (whereas Barcelona everything is Catalán). My trainer is an absolute doll! She is 8 months into her mission but she VISA waited in Idaho for a while so she has only been in Spain for 3 months but all of it has been here in Valencia. She is amazing and has taught me so much. She and her old companion unfortunately had a really tough week last week, with investigators dropping them just a couple of days before their baptisms so when I got here Hermana Shaffer and I had 0 progressing investigators. Because we had to stay up in Barcelona an extra day for residency stuff we didn´t get down to Valencia until Thursday evening. We did a little street/metro contacting on the way to Xátiva. Xátiva is the city center of Valencia and it is BEAUTIFUL! It´s a lot more like what you would picture Spain to look like. Time is so different here in Spain. People eat mediodia (also referred to as ciesta but they don´t really nap anymore) from 2-4 then they eat dinner 8-10 pretty much. It´s a really pretty scene to walk around Xátiva at 9 and see people eating out on the plaza under lights, it´s kind of what I picture people doing in Paris.!

We share an apartment ("piso") with the two other sisters that are in this southern part of the mission and they are awesome! Our piso is in their area which is super convenient for them but Hma. Shaffer and me not so much. We are about 40 minutes away from our area but "no pasa nada" (no big deal). I had no idea how HUGE areas are on the mission. I imagine my situation is very common but it would seriously take a day to walk from one end of the area to the other. Hopefully with all that walking and daily P90X the tagline "happy and fat in Valencia" won´t apply to me. Oh just a little more background about Spain EVERYONE has a dog (a terrible over exaggeration....probably 98% of Spaniards of dogs) it´s kind of ridiculous!

So like I said earlier, we had 0 progressing investigators and we have had several meetings and random things to do the last few days so I don´t have too much to tell you about but I will say that we had a lesson on Thursday with a couple named Fran and Jessica. They are so cute! They finally set a wedding date which means we can count them as progressing again because we can schedule Fran to be baptized right after that. He´s totally ready to be baptized they just didn´t want to set a date for their wedding. Unfortunately it´s not until the end of July but chances are I will still be here then so fingers crossed everything works out with that. Other than that lesson we hadn´t had any success really, we basically had just been knocking doors and trying to get in contact with old investigators. We were getting pretty discouraged but yesterday we received an answer to our prayers and fasts. We went to a members house to help her out because she has been going through a hard time and she had invited a friend over to meet us. The woman is from Nigeria which is awesome because we have a lot of Nigerians in our ward and is very interested in learning more. We are teaching her this Thursday and she is coming to church on Sunday. I can´t tell you how good it was after four days of nothing to finally find someone interested in what we were saying last night. Please keep the missionaries in your prayers, that we can find people who the Lord has prepared to hear this gospel.

Real Quick: Hma. Shaffer and I started talking about how we decided to go on a mission the other day, I seriously just said "well, I had signed up for a study abroad to Spain and..." and then she stopped me and told my entire story to me. She told me about how the previous MTC president President Brown had told the story in a fireside. I remembered when Bishop Brown told me that his dad had shared the story but it was just a really cool experience to hear someone I had never met before tell me my story.

Alright well I have to go but I will talk to you all next week! It will be much more like a regular missionary week I´m sure.

Love you all!

-Hermana Tuttle