Welcoming Our New missionaries

We LOVED welcoming our 9 new missionaries. We drove them to Montjuic where President gave an inspiring message of their calling, telling the history of Spain and what they can expect in this wonderful country. We enjoyed lunch at the Mission Home and then the new missionaries were given the opportunity to go on splits with our seasoned missionaries.

The following day we said good-bye to 16 marvelous missionaries. We have learned that this is the hardest part of the mission. That afternoon we announced the first companions (trainers) our new missionaries would have for the first 12 weeks of their missions. As you can see--some of our trainers were way excited!

We enjoy a leisure Sunday with our Assistants, Elders Skousen & Dunn. Our schedule is absolutely hectic with one month being interview month with 180 missionaries, one month being Zone Conference which is a 6 hour training session for 8 different zones, the third month being Specialty Training month where we do 4 hours of training in 8 different zones. Then the cycle repeats. We travel extensively with many of our cities being 7 and 8 hours from Barcelona. Every 6 weeks there is a major transfer with missionaries finishing their mission and leaving and new missionaries coming in at the same time. We find it is a challenge to keep things organized and working smoothly along with that, we get somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 phone calls with them coming from sick missionaries, doctrinal questions, questions about who qualifies for baptisms, calls from the representative of the 70 (the IFR- In-Field Representative). We write weekly messages for our newsletter and give frequent firesides and talks in church. We also go to a different ward or branch every single week, there is not a lot of discretionary time but we love it and have never been happier and more fulfilled.