Lleida Zone Conference

¡Hola!

This past week was MUCH better! After several terrible weeks, Elder Plaskett and I finally got back up to our average number of lessons, which is the zone and mission average. Also, Elder Da Silva had to go back to Barrajas (or something like that), where his family lives, to order a new DNI card. Somehow he managed to forget the most important thing- his passport! We had to send it to him. Thus he was gone from Monday morning to Friday evening. So we got a nice break. (that´s terrible to say). Elder Parrish was in a tripanionship with us. It was really fun because Elder Parrish and I get along super well!

Back in December a new zone was created. Lleida is in this zone. We thought it was called the Zaragoza zone because Zaragoza is the largest city in the zone and some papers about transfers said Zaragoza Zone. Well turns out that is actually called the Lleida Zone! This is because Lleida is in the center the center of the zone. This means that we had to host zone conference this week in our capilla. It was nice not having to travel, but at the same time preparing everything is a lot of work. The zone conference, as usual, was amazing. I was talking to Elder Alphin (Tarragona) afterwards and we both agreed that we could listen to President Hinckley speak for hours and hours. The theme of the conference was about lifting our vision higher. President spoke a lot about our potential. He also spoke about recent prophecies about missionary work in Europe and Spain. One thing he pointed out was the average baptisms per year in a South/Latin American mission versus here. He pointed out that we have a ton of immigrants from the Americas in Spain. Thus, with the same people (South/Latin Americans) plus the 10s of thousands of Europians that general authorities have said are being prepared for the gospel, we should be able to do just as well as the missions in the Americas. He then spoke a lot about changing our lives so that we can have the Spirit more and be more obedient. I love the humor of President Hinckley. At one point he said, "What are some small things you all need to repent on. We´re all friends. Go ahead." And elder responded, "I need to stop singing apostate songs when I´m in the streets." At this point one of the sisters who came out to the Spain the same time as me said, "what! we´re not allowed to sing regular music?" and President Hinckley merely responded, "When you are singing youre listening." (we are not supposed to listen to nonchurch music). It was such a great answer. It made me laugh.....i guess you kind of had to be there. This is actually kind of hard for me and Elder Parrish. We LOVE breaking out into random country songs. So now we´re trying to phase out by changing the lyrics to missionary themes. usually it gets to complicated and we give up on singing the song. so it seems to be working. haha. we had a ton of pizza and left over cake that some members made for it. i felt so unhealthy this week. haha. well the zone conference was amazing!

not much else happened this week. And I don´t have any more time. I have to take Elder Plaskett to the foot doctor.
Keep strong in the faith.
¡Hasta Luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich