Week 53 - August 10 - Thoughts on ingrown toenails, being an Eagle Scout, and speaking spanish

This is most likely the last time I write from Oviedo - if patterns hold, I´ll be on a train headed to Madrid all day next Monday. I could try and postpone this til Sunday night, seeing as we have maquinas that let us write a little the day before P-day, but I´ll be packing and making phone calls to folks headed home. So may as well do it now. I´m grateful to have missed all the heat in Madrid, and the cold up here apparently - Old Asturian folks say that fall starts right around the middle of August, when the rains come back and the temperature drops again. 

Before I continue, this necessary story about my zone leader. He has been told to wear one flip flop and one church shoe thanks to the very stinky, pus-filled, red and problamatic ingrown toenail he has. He´s got a minor surgery planned for tomorrow to fix it. But anywho,on Sunday, he gave a talk inviting all the members to do more for the missionaries. And to prove his point that missionary life is hard and being on the streets 8hrs a day isn´t effective, he took his foot, lifted it to the side of the pulpit and showed everyone his nasty toe and sandal DURING SACRAMENT MEETING, saying "Yeah, life is hard and I have an ingrown toenail." I got this report from the sister missionaries in his area and I honestly have no idea what to do about it. In all forms, the branch just laughed because Elders can do no wrong in the members´ eyes. 

Yesterday, we had a ward BBQ. (pictures to come). And, nobody here was ever a boy scout so I got really trunky building a fire with 1 match and carefully getting the coals ready to cook some delicious meat. Seriously - the last time I built a fire was really, really long ago. And I still got it! Then we played some soccer as I cooked everyone´s meat and won some brownie points with the ward. Nobody here was ever a boy scout - completely foreign experiences. I said the following sentences at least 30 times (directed to mostly small children)...

"No, don´t throw plastic in the coals!" (actually, that was to a grown man)

"We can´t start a fire with wet leaves..."

"That stick came off a tree? Nope, no good." 

"No, fanning the fire will NOT blow it out."

"Do not throw anything in the fire unless I say so - we´re trying to cook here."

Other than that, we had an intercambio, taught some lessons in the streets, wandered around looking for people, and had excellent sacrament services. We met a man named Nacho who explained that the doctrine of the Catholic Trinity was such a mystery that we could never understand it - and that is a beautiful thing. (Funny note - I had read a talk THE DAY BEFORE saying that beauty and confusion are opposites :)

Oh, and I´ll close with this - Elder Weiss is getting a LOT better at Spanish. It´s been fun to see him grow over the past 4 1/2 months. The other day, I explained the whole origin of the book of mormon - large plates, small plates, zeniff, Words of Mormon, translation, scribing, 116 pages, the whole works (it took us about an hour - he had a lot of questions.) And then, yesterday, we went to a member´s home. And as I helped in the kitchen cleaning and cooking (more on that in the future) he sat on the couch and coherently explaioned for an entire hour what I had explained to him, without entirely losing the attention of his audience or needing to stop every 3 seconds for a translation. It´s fun to look back and see that sort of progress, especially in someone I had the privelege to train. 

Love,

Elder Stew

P.S. Someone stopped me in the grocery store this morning to ask where the Aluminum Foil is. I said I had no idea and went back to selecting my fruits, until I realized, turned around, and explained - "Señora, no trabajamos aquí."

One Year Anniversary