Transfer #3 Already

¡Hola!

This week is transfers again! I can´t believe I am starting my 3rd transfer in the field already!! At the end of this transfer I will have 6 months in the mission!!! I am remaining in Lleida with Elder Plaskett. Elder Parrish and Elder Da Silva are staying the same too. Thus, we decided to have Pday today like normal, instead of tomorrow. It will be a very interesting six weeks. I think I am going to learn a lot of patience. There is some friction between me and Elder Plaskett. He is very prideful and judgement. Sometimes he doesn´t even realize he is being so and he tries not to be, but it´s wearing on my patience because he can be quite hypocritical. Also he thinks that because he didn´t know much Spanish when he was only a few months in (he still doesnt know too much), that it means I don´t know much Spanish either. During lessons he assumes I don´t know wats going on and often doesn´t include me. One time I tried to answer a question and he flat out told me I didn´t understand. I did. And in fact numerous times I have understand that family more than him. Other than that, we are getting along quite fine and we have a "common enemy" to unite us. Elder Da Silva. He´s a great elder. But he refuses to communicate things to us so it makes us look bad when the members tell him something and he doesn´t tell us and thus we end up being late, missing something, or having to cancel a cita. Also he spends his money on who know what. And then complains that he has no money for food and eats our food. Sometimes he asks, sometimes he doesn´t. Thus, I, being super thrifty (and being sick of buying new food cuz he keeps eating mine), hid my food in my closet. Well another thing Elder Da Silva does, is he doesn´t respect personal space. He likes to sit at my desk and look through my stuff. Today he decided for some reason to look through my closet. And he found my food! We try to explain to him how we feel. But he doesn´t understand. I guess it must be the language/cultural differences since he is from Angola.

Ok well I´m not supposed be negative in my letters or complain about other elders, so we´ll move on. We found out really good news. Tracy gets her cast off today, thus she can be baptized soon! Unfortunately we´re probably going to have to baptize her separately from her mom because we don´t feel that Daisy has a testimony yet and we don´t want her to be baptized for the wrong reasons. Plus, she hasn´t been to church enough times yet.......she´s only been once! However, we are really excited for Tracy!

Last Monday Elder Parrish and I went to the shopping area in Lleida to see the Rabajas sales. Well, they didn´t start until this week. But we still looked around anyway. We were in a store called Sfera, when a man randomly approached us. He asked us if we would pray with him. Now I honestly thought he was some guy trying to make fun of us. So I gave him a funny look and timidly said, "Sí?" Elder Parrish laughed and said, "CLARO!" (of course) And then asked the guy who he wanted to offer the prayer. The man volunteered and to our surprise gave a typical LDS prayer. It turns out his name is Danis. He is a menos activo. He works at Sfera and is going through a difficult time right now. He was excited to see us and gave us his number to call him for a visit.

I went on intercambios this week to Tarragona. The weather was super nice, como Valéncia. I was with Elder Benito, who is from Madrid. He is newer than me in the mission and SUPER SUPER enthusiastic to the point that he scares people during contacts. It was nice serving with him and his excitement kind of spilled over and refueled me some. Tarragona is where the Roman colony in Hispania used to be. So there is a lot of old Roman architecture. We drove past an old Roman aquaduct. Also the inner Drama geek inside me was super excited to walk past a Roman theatre!!!!! YES I have seen a Roman theater in person! It was thrilling and I tried to take a picture. It´s not very good though because the theater is surrounded by tall fencing.

Elder Plaskett and I have noticed that we are running low on investigators. So, we´ve been working really hard to find new people to teach. Yesterday we passed by a few antiguo investigators. We weren´t having much luck and only scheduled one cita. Right as we were leaving the last doorway, a man called to us from across the street and ran over to us. He started talking to us about religion and how he is Catholic but wants to learn about what we have to teach. We set up a cita for today. While we were talking to him, his friend came over. It turns out that his friend is a menos activo member and has a brother in the States who is active. This is a classic example of how when you are working hard, the Lord will put you in the right place to meet those who are looking for the truth!

Well that´s a lot and I´m about out of time.

¡Hasta luego! ¡Feliz Rabajas! (haha)

Love,
Elder Buchkovich