Happy Easter

¡Hola!

He is risen! Yesterday was Easter! What a great holiday! The day we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ. It is through him and no other that we can attain eternal life. Through faith in Christ and his gospel, we can return to live with our Father in Heaven. We can remain with our families for eternity in happiness. How great is this?! Doesn´t it just make you smile?! Christ suffered in the Garden Gethsemane and died for our sins and sufferings. Then three days later he rose from the tomb. Truly miraculous. A great show of love! I am so grateful for all the Christ did and still does for me!

This week was fantastic! Well the week was normal. The weekend was awesome! Friday we finally baptized Sandra! It was a nice baptismal service. Since it had been rescheduled, not many people attended. But there was still good support from the ward. It was also a nice length, not too short or too long. It was great to be at a baptism again. It helps give you animo and reminds you of the purpose of missionary work! And I love how spiritual baptisms are! We had a small scare on Sunday when Sandra arrived to church late. We walked out to meet her husband and had to run to the capilla in order to get there on time to get her confirmed this Sunday. If she had been late, she would have had to wait two more weeks becuase next week is stake conference and so we won´t have normal church. Oh by the way...I don´t know if I mentioned this before...I met Sandra way back in January when I came here for intercambios. She couldn´t get baptized back then because she wasn´t married to the father of her children, whom she was living with. They finally got married so she could baptized.Thus, since I already knew her, it is really cool that she is my first baptism in Tarragona.

Saturday was by far probably the coolest day of my mission. It was packed full of Cataluñian culture! It was el Dia de Sant Jordi. I explained it a little last week. This year was special. The members told us that never before (in recent years) has Dia de Sant Jordi, Semana Santa (Easter holiday), and a Saturday occured at the same time. There were crowds and crowds of people along the Rambla (the main road/blvd in Tarragona with a small park separating the opposite directions of traffic). If Grandma ever comes to Cataluña during dia de sant jordi, she will be in her glory! The street/park was lined with table after table selling books. Grandma wouldn´t be able to choose which books to look at. There were hundreds! There were also a lot of stands selling roses. There were craft stands and information stands, just like a fair. There were even boy and girl scouts walking around selling baked goods. We set up our table and pancarta (giant picture board thing) at the end of the Rambla, near the beach. We were blessed with great weather. It rained all day Friday and they were calling for rain all weekend. We woke up to rain Saturday, but by the time we got set up, there were clear blue skies. It stayed nice all day, then rained all day Sunday and today. A miracle! Anyway it was really fun handing out copies of the Book of Mormon and talking to people about the church. We made some great contacts. We were set up right next to a stage. It sat empty all day and we didn´t know why it was there. Then in the evening at about 7 pm a band set up on the stage. The band played traditional Cataluñian music and people in the crowd, of all ages, started dancing a traditional Cataluñian dance. The dance was a bit boring, but still cool to watch. A little later we looked down the Rambla in the opposite direction and saw teams making castelles (human towers). It was such a fun day!

Last night we had a noche de pelicula (movie night) for nonmembers to come and watch "The Work and the Glory" to learn more about the history of the church in an interesting, nonpreachy setting. Well, it wasn´t too successful at all. A handful of members and three investigators came. However the 3 that did come came with members and have great potential. It was fun watching the Work and the Glory....a nice change from the Restoration movie and Finding Faith in Christ.

That is all I will write this week so that I can upload some pictures.

¡Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Buchkovich