Rain :(

Hi Everyone:

It has been raining here all week and my shoes and feet are soaked. I saw some Goretex church shoes in the Corte Ingles the first week I was here and everyday that I have wet feet they get more and more tempting.  The one blessing is that today is clear thank goodness, but I went out and looked on weather.com and it showed that there was another store coming, so if I by happenstance give in today and buy them you can just take it out of my money. It´s not like my shoes aren´t holding up either, it is just that for whatever reason, both pairs that I own are permeable and you would think that for the $150 we paid for the ones in CTR, they would have been water proof. The old ones that I have aren´t waterproof either and to make it all worse I come home with black feet because the coloring on the inside comes off.

This doesn´t mean that we haven´t been blessed for our trials, quite the opposite in fact.  I can´t remember if I told you about the family from Venezuela that the zone leaders found for us.  Well, they couldn´t come to church yesterday and actually I should start from the beginning.  So, we had a bunch of people promise to come to church and we were all like, hey we´ll come and walk with you and they all live really close together. Anyway we went to the first house and they had forgotten about coming and had been up all night drinking and partying ughghghghgh! Then we went to some menos activos, who promised that if it was raining they would come because Manolo, that´s his name has to go to Cadiz every Sunday to sell stuff in a Mercadillo that they have there and it had just stopped raining when we walked in and Teresa said no, I have a headache, we didn´t believe that one for a second and Manolo was all like yeah lets go and Coral their granddaughter was all like yeah.  Then Teresa broke through and told us the real reason that she doesn´t want to go is because she feels embarrassed for not going for such a long time. We tried to give her some animo to go but she was being an aguafiestas (kill joy/wet blanket) and we had to leave without her because we were going to be late.  Then we went to the Venezuelan's and we get to the door and the mom answered she is an evangelical, but really nice and has a ton of faith. Anyway, she answered and she was super sick like the last time we passed by they were sick, but they still let us in.  This time she was standing far away just so that we wouldn´t get sick and she was coughing up a storm, so to make a really long story just a little shorter we went to church alone. When we got there, a girl that we are teaching who is a friend of a member (i love member references) was there. and so we start the meeting and maybe five minutes in Manolo and Coral walk in and in my mind I was doing the mental touch down dance and it didn´t stop there we had a really really good testimony meeting and at the end the girl we are teaching Naura, who is in a wheel chair tells Maria that she wants to go up and bear her testimony, so they took her up there and it wasn´t anything super spiritual, but she did say she felt like she was at home in the capilla and it was only her second time there in the capilla and the last time was two years ago.

Other good things that same day, we had a really good meeting with the Hermanas and the Ward 1 Mission Leader who is a recently returned missionary to discuss some activities we want to do as missionaries and then he drove us out to a cita that we had that would have been thirty minutes in the pouring rain.  We had a great cita with Joanna and Luis.  Luis is a recent convert and they have the cutest little guy, he can´t even talk yet but he is a hoot and they fed us that was nice.  Then we start walking home at like 9:50 to get home on time and the sky just opens up not ten minutes from their house and even worse the wind just starts blowing really hard we could barely even walk forward.  We take cover and we say a prayer and when we finished it is still blowing really hard but it had stopped raining mostly and we started out again and maybe after ten steps after the wind made one final push and broke elder walkers new umbrella he had bought at a chino it calmed down.  It wasn´t the torrent that had only minutes before started and as soon as we got to piso it starts right back up again.

So, for right now I don´t need any new glasses, but thank you for thinking of me

YAAAAAY I am excited for the package, but I won´t get it for a bit.  Transfers are coming up soon, we´ll see if they some how make it to me then, but I really rather doubt it because people have so much to carry for transfers.  Plus basically all of our zone got transfered last time and half of it is new compainions, so I don´t think anything will change, but who knows. President is doing our interviews here soon again, so I might get it then.  That reminds me,  I have to ask for a new temple recommend mine expires next month.

Oh, my comp just reminded me about the cita we had with Naura it was really good.  We invited Juan Hidalgo to the cita with us and he is just a spiritual giant.  So, we get into the cita and we start talking and Juan goes I knew we would talk about this today. COME AGAIN, how the heck would he know what we would be talking about today we didn´t even tell him, not to mention the fact that we had planned something completely different. Anyway, we had to leave because we had something else planned (shouldn´t have left, wasn´t even worth it because we got failed) so Juan was like Elders you can trust me I will not leave this house until she commits to listen to you Elders again. Of course, this is right in front of her and so he stayed and we left (to get failed) and we call him after the cita to find out how it went and he was like elders it was amazing absolutely amazing. I gave her a blessing in the end and now I know everything and it´s true she is suffering a lot but that´s OK,  I know she will get baptized, if not with you elders at some point.............yeah!  Suffice it to say, Juan is a machine.

love braden