Feliz Navidad~desde España Hermoso

Querido Familia y Amigos,

Feliz Navidad!  It is 9:00 pm Christmas Eve and we are on the road, returning from the pueblo of Corbera de Llobregat where we watched a live nativity—“Pressebre de Vivent”.  We wanted to do something that would bring a sacred spirit to the holiday and create yet another Christmas memory, so we decided to drive two hours to see it.  We are so glad we did!  It was magnificent! No only did they have live animals but an entire village of authentic artisans, families, homes and stables.  Mary and Joseph wound their way through the trees on the donkey and found their way to a rustic, old stable tucked in the hillside.  When the angels announced the birth of the Savior, dozens of Catalonian Shepherds poured out of the surrounding hills and cliffs with their sheepskin vests and red, wool caps and knelt before the Christ Child.  

Catalonian shepherd toasting bread over the fire.

No room in the Inn.

Rustic Stable (Note Cow in the Corner)

Joseph and Mary cradling the baby Jesus.

Shepherds throng to worship the Christ Child.

Young Jesus...the carpenter's son.

Magnificent Backdrop

Blacksmith's Shop

On our drive today we decided to stop and explore these old “pillboxes” that we think were built in the 1930 during the Spanish Civil War.  We have driven by them dozens of times thinking that we should take time to go explore them.  We had time to do that today…so interesting.  I am curious to find out more of their history, but there is no doubt that they were very strategically placed.  I could just see my grandkids scrambling over the hills exploring these old structures.

"Pillbox"in defense of Catalonia

Hidden Entrance

Strategic Viewpoint

As for the rest of the week, things were really quiet.  Nearly all of our members left town to celebrate with distant family or were busy with other holiday plans.  We did prepare and serve our last two holiday meals for families from our branch.  They are such dear people!  Many of them carry burdens that we don’t really understand but we have tried to show our love by inviting them into our home.  Earlier in the week we were able to deliver our last five cookie tins full of American cookies to investigators and less active members.  During the holidays doors and hearts seems to open more quickly to our visits.

Antezana Family at the Farmhouse

We found ourselves with an empty morning so we decided to take a hike across an old medieval bridge in Andorra.  The first half-mile was sunny and beautiful, but remember that all mountains in Andorra go straight up.  After the next half-mile I thought I was going to pass out or have a heart attack from lack of oxygen!.  Elder Fowers had to dump me on the trail and press on without me, so I just sat on a rock and took pictures.

Hiking the Medieval Bridge Trail

Chilly Morning

Village Below

A bit of sad news for us, we are losing Elder Graham this week because he is being transferred to Valencia next Tuesday.  He is the last of the two Elders who helped us so much during those first few weeks when we were trying to get oriented.  Our Christmas dinner with the Elders tomorrow will be his last supper in the old farmhouse.

Farewell Elder Graham

May you all be filled with the joy and hope that Jesus Christ gives to this troubled world.  Remember to take a moment to thank God for the gift of his precious son.  You will be in our thoughts tomorrow.  Merry Christmas to all!

Elder and Hermana Fowers

Fiestas de Navidad

The best place to start is at the top, and that is where we started this week.  For our prep day, we rode the ski tram up the mountain to the Vall Nord resort.  Snow fall this year is light thus far, but the bunny hill was busy with kids and their parents. The European mountain biking competition was held at this resort last year and there are biking trails everywhere.  Elder Graham is from Florida and had never experienced mountains of snow before so he enjoyed slipping and sliding all over.

Top of the Mountains

Endless Vista of the Pyrenees

Wednesday we left early for the Zone Conference in Zaragoza, which is a 4-plus hour drive.  On the way we stopped in Lleida to inspect the Elders and Hemana's apartments. It is always interesting to hear all the creative reasons elders invent to explain their less than stellar flats. We helped the Rohdes (another senior couple) prepare the Christmas feast for 26 elders and Hermanas.  This is always a challenge for Hermana Fowers, in that all the church buildings in Spain have super small kitchens with tiny ovens. We had three pork loins to bake, so I scoured the empty lot next door for broken bricks which we cut with the tire iron and used them to stack three layers of pork in the little oven.  The Rohdes brought warming thermoses, to keep the potatoes warm while Hermana made gravy in the crock pot.  I think we should get a silver beaver merit badge for inventive cooking.  As always, the meal came together nicely and nothing was leftover.

Rohdes & Hermana Making Final Preparations for the Christmas Feast

President Dayton lends a hand.

Happy Missionaries

Zaragoza Zone

We stayed the night in Zarangoza near the city center.  I have never seen so many ancient cathedrals in one place.  The magnificent "El Pilar" was beyond words in the misty fog. Some of the structures evidence architecture dating from the Moors. There are the remains from a stone wall built centuries ago by to Romans.  We snapped a few pictures in the  misty fog with Christmas lights added to the mystic.

Magnificent Clock Tower

Spire of El Pilar

Enjoying the Holiday Decorations in the Pilar Square

We returned to La Seu and began preparing for the Andorra Branch Christmas Fiesta planned for Saturday night. We planned a semi-live nativity scene, a nice meal and some games with gifts for the kids. The Elders were able to fashion an impressive stable scene out of cardboard.  We borrowed straw and shepherd sticks (cow prods) from our neighbor Juan. We used a couple of the chicken nesting boxes from my chickens for the manger.  Luci made the best looking angels, and shepards from an assortment of random clothing, in true Fowers tradition. We had about 40 in attendance which included several investigators and a couple of less active members.  Not a crumb left over.  There was a blessed spirit of joy and fellowship among the members!

Our Live Cast of Investigators and Less Actives

Joyful Spirit of Christmas

We are entering a phase now where we are trying to teach the members themselves to step up and lead.  They are too accustomed in setting back to watch the missionaries and the senior couple do everything.  That will be our challenge and our goal moving forward.  How do you create strong, motivated members who will lead this branch into the future?  That is our goal for the coming year.

We have visited every members home with a tin of cookies and one simple, sacred message.  Jesus Christ should not only be at the center of our celebrations, but in the very center of our lives.  May it be so with you and yours.  Take time to truly consider God's gift to the world...His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  Nothing else really matters!

Feliz Navidad,

Elder and Hermana Fowers

Food...The Language of Love

One of the joys of serving in Le Seu is the beautiful environment in which we work.  It has turned bitter, cold so I have to really bundle up to go walking in the morning…but the misty majesty of the valley make it worth it.  The Pyrenees are capped with snow and Andorra is full of seasonal skiers arriving from all over Europe. 

Sunrise

A follow up of last week’s sausage marathon, I dropped over to deliver some cookies to Carmen and she took me on a tour of her menagerie of sausages.   After having spent a great deal of time with Juan and Carmen, we have come to realize that we were “city” farmers compared these folks.  They produce every part of their livelihood…meat, milk, eggs, produce and etc.  They even share their house with the pigs!

Carmen and in her Sausage Room

Even though I don’t speak Spanish very fluently, I do speak “food”.  So I have been showing my love to the members by cooking.  We have now hosted four different family dinners and have three more scheduled.  It is lovely to spend an evening with just one family and get to know them better and learn how we can best serve them. I have master Grandma Faye’s roll recipe.  Two dozen rolls disappear pretty quickly!

During this week we hosted a family with three little boys who had a bit of extra energy to spare so we gave them each a hammer and let them crack walnuts. The scatter pattern was pretty impressive when they were finished but we had a few quiet minutes to chat with their mom.

Food is the Language of Love

We decided to visit all the members in our little branch before Christmas and take a message of how they could better worship the Christ Child through gifts of personal worship.  We made a custom Christmas card with the Nativity scene and our message printed on the inside.  Additionally, we purchased some cookie canisters (torros de galletas) and Hermana Fowers filled them with several varieties of freshly baked cookies.  We enjoy seeing each recipient feel a moment of peace and joy as we performed a simple act of giving. In this part of Spain there is nothing that even comes close to Hermana Fowers’ “fresh-out-of-the-oven” cookies.

Baked with Love

Torros de Galletas

The front yard of our farmhouse once was a beautiful flower and vegetable garden, but has been abandon for many years.  Next spring we hope to bring this back to life again by allowing the member families to have their own garden plot.  Saturday we had a clean-up party cutting the excess grass and weeds.  We will then get a neighbor to plow the rich, brown soil after we spread manure from Juan’s cows and my chickens.  We plan to use this project to teach self-sufficiency tool for the members.

Members Working Together in Branch Garden

Today we had our Andorra Branch Primary Program.  Our new Primary President had never attended Primary because she joined the church as an adult, but today she organize a sweet little program with two primary children and a nonmember cousin singing and giving their little talks.  I remember the last primary program I attended in our Silver Lake Ward.  There were probably 200+ kids on the stand singing and giving their little talks over the pulpit.  The spirit is the same.  Primary children are the same all over the world we have come to see first hand.  Little 10-year-old Faviana gave a 10-minute talk on the restoration and coming forth of the Book of Mormon without any help from her teacher. There was an “espiritu sagrada” (sacred spirit) in the words and songs of the children.

Andorra Branch Primary Program

I sometimes wonder what the Lord would have us do during our 18-month calling in this branch where real growth is so difficult.  The local people have no God in daily routines and only go to church when someone dies.  Today in Priesthood meeting I called upon the 5 brethren to stand up and represent Jesus Christ to this Godless community.  I know that all of God's children will have his opportunity to know the truth and that all will eventually confess that Jesus is the Christ.  May we endure joyfully together until that day comes. It will be worth it.  That I believe and testify.

Elder and Hermana Fowers

Day by Day...Giving Thanks

Querido Familia y Amigos

We have learned our lessons…first of all, never leave your computer in the hotel and never go two weeks without writing the blog!  So much has happened in the last two weeks that it is rather overwhelming to try to decide what to write about. So we have decided to create a timeline that will give you snapshot of what fills our days.

November 22:  Attend a Catholic Funeral and High Mass for the mother of a sweet member, Maria Teresa in Andorra, who died at the age of 101 years.  It was a rainy, wet night and we only had a few hours warning, so winding our ways through the heart of Andorra de Valle to find the cathedral in a down pour was a miracle unto itself.  We understood little of the service because it was conducted entirely in Catalonian.  There were a few heads turned to try to read our badges and figure out why the Mormon missionaries were attending their services.

Funeral in the Andorra Cathedral

November 23:  Journal:  “I spent the morning studying and preparing for both my Seminary Lesson and visuals for primary music. I asked God for his help before I started and I could really feel his presence. I have come to love my quiet mornings of study as a sweet treasure.”

November 24:  After much searching, I finally found some turkey parts (a leg and a breast) and Amy sent me some sage seasoning so we were able to pull off a pretty authentic Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a bit more challenging this year because nothing come from a box or can.  Everything was made from scratch including the mushroom soup for green bean casserole.  We shared our feast with our missionaries and Shane our new member.  It never ceases to amaze me how much these young missionaries can tuck away!

So THANKFUL!

November 25:  Thanksgiving #2.  We drove to Lleida (two hours to the south) to help the Hermana’s there prepare an American Thanksgiving dinner for their branch.  Thank goodness I made the dressing ahead and had it in the crock pot, because all the prep for the meal was done on one tiny stove.  With a lot of help from the sisters in the branch, who cooked the chickens and some magic with stacking food five-deep in the mini-oven to try to keep it warm, we manage to serve a tasty meal.  What was to be 25 turned out to be 45 people that attended their activity!  There was a great spirit, which was felt by the many members and  investigators that participated.  We fell into bed exhausted!

American Thanksgiving including the Stuffing

Happy Hermanas after successful activity!

American Thanksgiving!

November 26:  We took off for Barcelona for Seminary training at the crack of dawn and managed to leave our computer in the hotel room!  (Thus the reason for no blog last week.)  We didn’t realize it until two hours later—PANIC MODE!  After much angst and maneuvering, and a lot of help from the local missionaries we were able to get it secured but had to wait another few days to get it back.  A miracle and a blessing!

November 27:  This was a Sunday.  So many of our members are young in their faith and have never had the responsibility of a calling, so we generally go prepared to help out wherever we can to bring the spirit into our meetings.  Last Sunday Elder Fowers spoke, and lead the music while I played the piano.  Then we taught Seminario together the second hour. The third hour he taught Young Man (we only have one) while I taught Primary and with my limited Spanish… it was really challenging!  The highlight of the day was that Shane received the Priesthood and was ordained to the office of Priest.  What a great young man.

November 28:  There is a little chapel called Saint Antoni, on the hill near our house that we decided we would hike to for preparation day.  It was a cold, overcast day but was so beautiful as we saw in emerge from the distant mist. In our travels that day we also visited the ancient city of Cerc just a few miles from our house.  Its centerpiece at the top of a steep, winding road was an old chapel built in the 9^th century.  I am always so in awe of what they were able to construct without any power tools or machinery?  I would love to have had a bird's eye view to watch that construction.

Morning Mist

Exploring St. Antoni

Still standing after ten centuries!

Bell Tower

Ancient Foot Bridge

Top of the World

November 29:  Sometimes as missionaries, we think that everyday we should have some amazing interactions and spiritual experiences, but that is not really the case.  Most days are pretty normal filled with the routines of life.  The spiritual experiences happen very rarely, but when they do, it is enough to keep you going.  The joy of that occasional bright light and joyful heart makes all the redundant work worth it!

December 1:  One of our greatest assets is the farmhouse, so we decided that we would invite individual families to our house for a holiday dinner.  In the past week we have had three families join us for a feast.  It gives us the opportunity to love and serve them on a more intimate level and testify of Jesus Christ.  “If you feed them they will come…”  has become our mantra. 

One of many Holiday Meals

December 3:  Saturday morning we had pigs ears for breakfast. We were invited by our farmer neighbors to join them for their annual pig slaughter.  We missed the first day when they were dressing out the beast, but joined them on the second day.  They traditionally serve the pig’s ears and feet that have been boiled all day for breakfast the following day…So there I was sitting next to Juan at the breakfast table and he was scooping the delicacies onto my plate.  I could not bring myself to eat them…but Elder Fowers gave it a go.  We spent the rest of the day up to our elbows in bins of ground meat and fat helping them make miles of sausage that were encased in cleaned intestine.  They will then hang and age them for six months. Luckily we had a afternoon appointment so we miissed the blood sausage production. What a cultural experience.  Elder Fowers explained it precisely when he said, “They eat everything but the oink!” 

Mixing Sausage by Hand

Making Sausage in the Slaughter Room

Miles of Sausage

As you can see.  We keep ourselves very busy. The people of Spain are beautiful. Not only our sweet members, but the kind people we meet on in our Le Seu community. Each day as we interact we try to see them as Heavenly Father sees them.  Not as they are at the moment, but what they may become.  We are humbled and thankful for the blessings in our lives, especially each of you.  May you all be blessed during the holidays.

Mucho Amor,

Elder and Hermana Fowers

Hermana helping neighbors move their cows.