The Mission Experience

Querida Familia y Amigos,

Feliz Día de Padre to Elder Fowers!  It is a great blessing for me to serve beside him.  He has such a generous spirit and is beloved of many. Besides being an awesome Dadd, he is a devoted Branch President. I volunteered to write the blog so that he would have time to chat with his kids.  I bought him this little keepsake to remind him of our Spanish farmhouse…

Tractor/Cow Tic-Tac-Toe

It was a very quiet week for us with a lot of prep work at home, so the blog might be a bit short and boring today.  I not sure how we could make our daily missionary tasks sound exciting, but for us they are.  The quiet hour or two that we find in the morning to study the scriptures, prepare talks and take time to thank God for the blessing of being here are a great treasure to us.

We have volunteered to host a Married Missionaries Conference at the farmhouse this coming week, so we took some time last week to organize some sight seeing.  We decided to check out the Sant Climent Church that we had never visited before which has an interpretive center for Romanesque architecture in the little mountain village of Pal.  We decided it was to far out of the way to go there with a caravan of cars, put it was really interesting.  Beyond that we spent a great deal of time preparing menus, shopping, gardening, making reservations and preparing for the gathering of the 11 couples that serve in the Spain Barcelona Mission.

Delicate little wildflowers growing in crack of a rock.

Stone walkway to the Sant Climent Church

Yup, yet another Romanesque Church (12th century)

Sant Climent

Hermana Lasley arrived on Thursday morning early.  For those of you who do not know her, Jeanette Lasley was our neighbor and good friend when we lived in San Diego.  She is a 4’9’’ fireball at the age of 83! We extended an invitation to her several months ago, to come to Spain and have a mission experience with us, especially since she speaks Spanish.  After much consideration, she accepted our invitation to join us for three weeks.  After we picked her up, and found her awake and ready to go, we made a quick drive into the Montserrat Mountains to see the Montserrat Monastery and a bit of sight seeing on the way home. 

Rugged Montserrat Mountains

Our Sweet Friend, Hermana Lasley

We put her to work right away.  She has already been visiting teaching with me, helped me plan menus and given a talk in both of our sacrament meetings.  We are keeping her busy! We have been so delighted and blessed to have her with us.

Hermana Lasley speaking in our Group Meeting

Here is the garden report.  The lettuce is coming on strong and the zucchinis are already taking over the world.  We have to sneak zucchini into our members’ church bags just to get rid of them!  Jose Luis, our member/neighbor is an amazing gardener and come over everyday to watch his garden grow.

Wow, how does the garden grow!

Bountiful Harvest,  Elder Fowers and Jose Luis

Yesterday, our beloved Andorra Branch President, Elder Fowers drove 2½ hours one way to take 6 of our youth to the seminary graduation and dance.  After our modesty class last week, President helped our three sweet, new Dominican sisters get some skirts so that they could attend.  They were more than thrilled and it was so important that they have the opportunity to interact with a big group of youth from three stakes to experience the church on a much grander scale than our tiny branch.  He got home long after midnight, so he was a bit drowsy in church today.

Dominican Sisters~ Arianny, Daiana and Dariana

The highlight of this week for us was the opportunity to watch two of our newly returning members, both of which have been less active for many years, give talks in church today. Jordi discussed the critical role of fathers and our Heavenly Father. Anita spoke of the gift of the Holy Ghost in our lives. We were in awe of her understanding of the doctrine and the depth of their preparation. We felt like proud parents as we were taught by their renewed light and faith.  God is at the helm and is the master of all we do.

Happy Fathers' Day to all the amazing men in our lives!

Con Mucho Amor,

Elder and Hermana Fowers