Hello again to our dearly beloved family. We’ve had a couple of Skype calls this week – 1 with Danette and 1 with Heidi. From those calls we think we can conclude that things are going pretty well in their families and hope the same is true of all the rest of you. This week we want to pass along birthday wishes to Alisa and Angela – ¡feliz cumpleaños! And we got a letter from Blair telling us Kason has remembered he has family so we’re much relieved at that news.
The announcement that I alluded to last week and about which we’re now free to communicate is that they’re closing our mission. The Spain Bilbao Mission will be merged into the Barcelona & Madrid missions effective July 1st. Our president, Pte Clegg, will become president of the Spain Málaga Mission (Pte Miller returns home after his 3-year term). The boundaries of the three remaining missions will be altered significantly with things like the Canary Islands moving to the Madrid mission, some of the Barcelona mission moving to Málaga and our mission being split with the Vitoria Stake going to Barcelona and our two districts going to Madrid. Of course the first question that popped up for us was ‘where do we go’. There was discussion about going with the Cleggs to Málaga, possibly going to Madrid to work in the temple or whether or not there’s need in either of the other missions. On Friday, Elder Joseph Wirthlin (son of the late Joseph B.), who’s currently serving as Director of Facilities in Europe, came to the office with the Cleggs to try to evaluate what it’ll take to close the office. He didn’t have many answers to specifics but suggested maybe they’d move us to Germany to serve in the distribution center in Frankfurt. Friday night and early Saturday, Elder Caussé (counselor in the Area Presidency) came to town to meet with Pte Clegg and went thru a long list of questions that he’d been asked to address. His decision relative to us is, unless going to Barcelona presents a financial hardship for us (we’re told it’s significantly more expensive), that’s where we should go. Pte Clark Hinckley (Barcelona) has told Pte Clegg that he’d be happy to put us to work in the office there so it appears there’s something to do. We’ve spent a little time thinking about the issue and, based on what we now know, think we can afford the difference and would enjoy the experience there. Pte Clegg has mentioned a couple of times that they might need us to stay here for a while after the mission termination to help with the closing so we’re thinking we’ll propose that we stay thru July. That will allow us to complete the terms of our piso lease (we sure don’t want to forfeit a $1200 security deposit) then move to Barcelona for our final 6 months. If they’d let us use one of the mission cars for the move, it’d make things simpler for us empty our piso and would be a way to get one of the cars to that mission. Of course, most of this is our speculation so we’ll have to see what develops as time passes and plans become more solid.
We were at our zone conference 10 days ago when Pte Clegg got the phone call telling him of the plans to close our mission and move him to Málaga. He told the office staff the next day and asked that no one talk about the announcement until he’d had the opportunity to meet face to face with all our missionaries to tell them. A day later he got an email from a young man in the US with a call to the Bilbao mission asking what it meant to him to have our mission being dissolved. Someone did some investigative work and discovered that a Málaga missionary, on receiving the announcement, had immediately sent email to family to tell them, who in turn had told a friend, who told a friend who is president of the called missionary’s stake. The president told the young elder who wrote to Pte Clegg even before the Pte could tell all the missionaries who are here. We can’t get much home teaching done in the church but we sure can spread faith promoting rumors! We were told the church will officially announce the changes – similar things are happening in Germany and Italy and maybe other countries here – on the 13th. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s anything new in the announcement. Pte Clegg has meetings in Germany in the upcoming week so if anything new develops, we’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, there still are pisos to clean in our mission. Elder Hansen came with me to Sestau to finish some repair work we wanted to make before vacating that piso and that afternoon the landlady came to the office happy about the condition of the piso and to return the security deposit. We cleaned two more in Vitoria last Tuesday and spent 2-3 hours in each working mainly in the kitchen and making repairs to door hinges. We have a chronic problem with doors falling off cupboards and closets – the screws work loose, no one is paying attention to it and soon the door falls off stripping screw holes. And most of the screws we see in these problem areas are slot-head screws so it’s difficult to work with them and get them tightened down like they should be. We go to Logroño Monday morning to clean two pisos there – it’s about 4 hours of driving and 2-4 hours in each piso so it’s going to be a long day for us. Then we begin visits to the pisos in the western part of our mission – most of those we’ll do a couple of pisos, stay overnight and do a couple more the following day before returning home. I’m easily able to contain my enthusiasm for this project, especially given the inputs we’ve had in the planning. We’ve really enjoyed meeting and working with the missionaries to improve their living conditions – they’ve all been very willing to help but haven’t thought about what it takes to get things really clean. And when we’ve finished, they’re very grateful for what’s been accomplished. If, on any given Monday morning, you don’t have our letter in your inbox, rest assured that it probably has been written but we might not have internet access to send it.
The weather has changed quite a bit for the better (except there was heavy frost the morning we had to be in Vitoria) and we’ve been able to do a little walking again. We’re still having quite a bit of rain but not as much wind, skies are sometimes blue and the temperatures get up to 50-60 degrees. We walked Friday evening and, as we came by the fruit/vegetable shop 3 doors from us, Marcelo waved us into his place, gave Flo half a melon he had and told us he’s closing down – Monday will be his last day. He told us his heart had been racing leaving him light headed and unable to function very well. He’s been very kind to us, has tried to help us with our Spanish and has learned a few English words in the months we’ve been here – we’ll miss having him so close-by.
Thursday, Flo had her first evening with the Young Women in our branch – she said it went pretty well. She baked a batch of brownies before going then made a batch with them for the activity. Apparently the Young Men came by to help as much as they could so it was a fun evening for them. One unusual thing about their mutual is that it doesn’t start until 8:30pm – we’re not sure whether that’s related to tradition or if leaders or YW aren’t able, because of work, to be there any sooner. I’ve needed/wanted some screws & washers for the piso repairs so Saturday, after my cleaning, I walked around looking for a hardware store. I’d been to one right after we got here but didn’t find it so I asked a man on the street and think he told me there wasn’t one that was open. I saw a parking cop so I asked him, he gave me a set of directions and I left trying to go where I thought he’d sent me. After going up and down the streets in the area he’d pointed to, I ran into him again and he led me nearly to the store before returning to his work. Turns out the store is on the same street in the same block as the office (it’s not the one I’d been to before) but I didn’t realize what they had (some of these stores are a little deceiving) – I was able to get most of the things I needed.
This morning (Sunday) we got up at 6:00, got ready for church and met most of our branch near the chapel to take a bus to the stake center in Vitoria. The announcement was ‘be here at 8:00; the bus will leave at 8:05’ but the bus didn’t leave till 8:35 and some had to run to catch it even then. But we arrived in Vitoria in plenty of time, had an opening conducted by a counselor in the Stake Presidency who announced the changes coming to our mission and the conference was a broadcast from SLC. The conference featured Elder Russell M Nelson who was preceded by three other speakers and, for some unknown reason, we couldn’t get the Spanish audio to work. Thru the first talk there was much noise and activity trying to solve the problem but that didn’t happen so one of the Assistants translated the second talk and the other translated the third. We were just fine with the broadcast but did feel a bit bad for the members who’d come but couldn’t understand what was being said. When Elder Nelson began, suddenly we had the Spanish translation and everyone settled in and heard his talk. We were told after the meeting that they had a room set up with the broadcast only in English but I wanted to hear the Spanish and think I understood most of what Elder Nelson taught. Maybe just maybe we’re going to get this language after all – at least enough to understand and give more meaning to our hand signals.
That’s all I can think of to tell you for this week. Where possible, always move into the lane farthest away when passing emergency vehicles. We love you all very much, appreciate your love and support for us and pray for God’s choicest blessings to always be with you. Love, E&H Belnap
Monday, February 15, 2010
Logrono Trip - 2-12-10
Here is a beautiful farm house on a hill. Very typical to the homes here in Spain. There isn't much flat land for them to build their homes. But I think it is so very pretty.
Dad took these pictures, and I'm not sure if this is another view of the top picture or just another farm house. Still very picturesque.
Here is a mountain that is all rock. We are not sure if this is a stone crusher or just what it is. But it is amazing the mountains of just rock.
Here is a picture of us after we had cleaned 2 piso. Not really pretty. First the Elder with the hamburger in his mouth is Elder Harris. He will be going home in March. A really good Elder. Next to him going left is Hermana Huntsman. She has been out only a few months and is really becoming a great teacher. Her Spanish is really doing well. Next to her is, Hermana Rudder. Note the Idaho State sweat shirt. Her brother plays football for Idaho. She is from Nampa, ID. Then our great Elder Anderson, one of our secretaries for a couple more weeks. He is looking forward in getting out in the field. Any thing to get away from cleaning these pisos. Dad is cleaning his mouth. and then Elder Crocker. He too, has only been out about 7 months. Doing really a great job. Wish my Spanish was as good as his. He came here just 2 days before we did.
I have found someone else who can tough their nose with their tongue. Hermana Rudder. We sure don't look very cute, but we were having a lot of fun being crazy. Fun trip to Logrono.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Trip to Vitoria and Zone Conference
This is our trip to Victoria. I am spelling it right. It was hard for me to type it at first and leave the r out. We wanted you to see that we also have snow. It was pretty cold that day.
Here is a hill in the back ground covered a little more with snow. Sorry there are so many pictures out of the car window, but that is because we seem to be in a hurry all the times.
Here we are in Vitoria cleaning the pisos. This is Hermana Sieverts, and Hermana Bell. We just got through cleaning their piso. They had done a good job, but we worked on some places and cleaned their oven. Dad did quite a few fixing job too. This morning they called and wondered why their oven didn't work! I don't know what happened. I felt so bad. Hermana Sieverts is in Tauna Childers Ward. They had to call their owner on the oven. We went through everything we knew and it still didn't work.
We are trying to get a picture of a cathedral in Vitoria. We couldn't get it all in one shot. We looked pretty bad after cleaning. But their piso is clean.
Here is a better shot of the top. They are all pretty amazing building. One good thing about them, they have parking garages under them. That gives us a place to park. You wouldn't believe the parking here, there is none.
Here we are in Zone Conference. I wanted a picture of my girls. They are Hermana Sandoval, from Spain, Me, Hermana Fitches, Hermana Johns, Hermana Stosich, Hermana Miskin and Hermana Clegg. Hermana Fitches and Johns are in our Bilbao Ward. They are so sweet to me. I love them. Hermana Sandoval is also there. I wish I could speak to her and really get to know her better. She is new in the mission and they are all doing such a great job. They just had a baptism a couple weeks ago.
This is Hermana Johns, She calls me her mission mom. I love her. She is from Blackfoot. Maybe that is why we hit it off. She is pretty tall. Makes me look even shorter. How do you like my hair. Pretty short. No perm in it either. But now that it has been a couple of weeks, it doesn't look so bad. Maybe I am just getting use to it.
We had Chicken burros. The Elders make really big one and were really going at it. They were good. I had a salad. I'm really having a hard time with the weight here since it is so cold and we can't do our walks in the rain. Oh well, Hope I do better when it is a little warmer. For dessert we had brownies and coconut blondies. Boy were the coconut Blondies a hit.
Here are my sweet Hermanas again. They are so dare cute and nice. I love them so much. They are a bit neater than the Elders when it comes to eating. The Elders love to act for us, too.
I got this picture backwards. It should have been at the top. But they are digging in here. Everyone is really hungry by the time lunch is served. We eat at 2:00 here. That is why I don't eat any supper. Elder Anderson is looking at us. He is one of our Secretaries and will be leaving us next transfer. He does a really good job in the office. We will miss him. You can't see their faces very well. In the very back, the tall one in the gray suit is Elder Corbridge from Malad, Idaho. He is extending a transfer so he can help teach new missionaries. Most of our leaders are going home in June and July so we have two Traveling Teachers, Elder Moore and Elder Corbridge, to go around to each set of missionaries and help them with some of their skills.
We are on our way to the Bilbao Hermana piso to help clean. After we got off the Metro, we had to walk through this really pretty and neat park. Usually, it is full of people walking around. To cold for the natives also. You can see Elder C. Hansen and dad walking up front. Dad is pushing his cart full of supplies.
The Hermanas Piso is the tall brown building in the middle. You can see the big tower in front of it. It is a really old piso. We are trying to get them into something newer and nicer. It is so old and the Owners don't seem to want to keep it up while people are living in it. They just want the rent. Most of the buildings have hard wood all around. Even the doors, floor boards, furniture, most everything. They don't refinish them, and after many, many years of people living in them, they get run down pretty bad. The sinks are loose from the walls, the floors are so rough that I wouldn't walk on them bare footed for fear I'd get a sliver in my foot. They all need painted really, really bad. I can't explain how run down they are. And Missionaries don't do all they need to do to keep them up. That is why we are going into the piso, to teach them how to clean them. The Hermanas do a pretty good job. The Elders also, for what they have to work with. Like one Elder said. We know how to clean, we just don't take the time. They want to play on P day. I told them now that they need to take just a couple of hours a week and it would stay nice.
This is one of dads war wounds. He hit his finger with the hammer. When he is fixing things in the piso, he doesn't get a straight shot at anything he is working on. He missed the nail. That was really sore for quite a while. After a few days, he soaked it and was able to get most of the blood out so the pressure is gone, but still pretty sore. He will lose the finger nail though.
Monday, February 1, 2010
January 31, 2010 - Update from Delwyn
It’s Sunday afternoon in Spain and time again to report the activities of our week. And just to whet the appetite a little for next week, we were given some important and exciting news this week with an accompanying directive that we’re not to discuss it with anyone until next week - that’ll give me at least one thing to write about. The weather here has been very wet this last week – we walked to the office and the chapel this morning in the rain but it hasn’t rained very much since we came home after church. But most of the days this last week have seen a lot of rain – it normally doesn’t come down in sheets but sometimes it rains for hours at a time and, when the wind blows, it’s cold and very uncomfortable. I’m liking Arizona weather better and better all the time.
After getting past some internet problems and working in the office for an hour we went to Bilbao to clean another pair of pisos on Monday – one for Elders and one for Hermanas. Neither of them was filthy but neither was they clean. We spent a couple of hours with the Elders first – Flo with a crew in the kitchen and me in the rest of the piso doing cleaning and fixing. One of the Elders was living in the Sestau piso when we cleaned it prior to vacating it so he already had a good idea of what to look for and he was one of the best workers in a bathroom. He’d removed a glass shelf from mounting brackets to clean it, had dropped it and it shattered on the floor – we’re still working on a temporary fix so they have a shelf until they find a glass shop where they can get a replacement. We moved from there to the Hermanas’ piso and they’d been working pretty hard at getting it cleaned up. But the place is so old and has been so neglected by the landlord that, the next day, I recommended to Pte Clegg that they find a new place to live. His response was to get it done. The neighbor below them (they’re on the third floor of about 12) has complained of water coming from above so they thought they had a leak somewhere. But one of the problems they pointed out to me is a ‘crack’ in the living room wall (opposite the kitchen). When I looked at it, it’s apparent that it’s because of water damage coming from somewhere above their sink level – I’m pretty sure it’s from a piso above them and how many floors, I don’t know. They’ve complained since we got here of a cockroach problem (I’ve mentioned that before) so we’d made plans and brought supplies to address what they considered the primary source of the traffic – a hole thru the wall under the kitchen sink. I cut a rough form to fit on the inside and around pipes, Elder Holmes held it in place and I squirted expanding insulation into the hole from the outside. At first it didn’t want to stay against the form but finally did build up to fill the cavity. We left it to dry as we went outside and got a couple of pizzas and other supplies we’d found we needed and, when we came back, I could see why the instructions said it’d expand to about 3 times the original size. The little door I’d worked thru was partially blocked and I couldn’t even see the wall let alone the hole I was trying to fill. If a cockroach can get thru that, he’s going to need attributes of a burrowing rodent! We tried to treat the sink drain for better drainage, repair a faucet stem so they’d have hot water in one of the bathrooms and could only suggest they try to scrape off the peeling paint from a bathroom ceiling. I checked carefully for any wet spots under the sink – it’s dry there even though the faucet just sits loosely on the back of the sink – there are only parts of a mounting ring left on the underside of the faucet. We got back into the office Monday evening shortly before 5:00 and worked till 8:00 trying to get our usual Monday work done and also get ready for our zone conference on Wednesday then came home and Flo made desserts for our zone conference – it was a long day for us.
Tuesday afternoon I began charging the batteries for the microphone and headsets of our translation system and they took it to our zone conference in Bilbao the next day. When we arrived, the first thing they said was that the system wasn’t working. I did some checking and, the sets we checked work okay if they’re only 3-5 feet from the translator but, beyond that, they get nothing. So they ended up grouping the Spanish-only speakers on the back row and one of the Assistants translated for them the few parts that were done in English. It was a good conference and all seemed to come away more excited about missionary work – especially the challenging task of contacting new people. When we got home, Flo baked again this time doing the desserts (brownies & coconut blondies) for the next two zone conferences.
Thursday morning we got a report from Elder Holmes (financial secretary trainee) whose father had undergone kidney transplant surgery the day before – things went very well and, barring rejection, his Dad expects to be released to return home on the weekend. And it was Thursday that Pte Clegg made his announcement that had us all talking but only among ourselves. The leadership left with a large load of supplies for the two zones in the western part of our mission and when we got home, Flo got to bake brownies. This time it was for the branch where she’s been asked to provide the treats for the next ‘n’ months for our monthly ‘night of the branch’ – the last Friday night of the month.
My electric shaver ate a hole in the screen early this week and I did some pricing of some here – they’re very expensive and appear to work only on 220V so I’m thinking I’ll try to get parts sent and use the old one. The Cleggs brought a couple of vacuum cleaners to the office that have been in the mission home but don’t work ‘they run but there’s no suction’. One appears to be quite new and I looked at it for a little bit and didn’t see the problem but Flo suggested we check the hose for blockage. That was the problem so we worked to clean it out and have at least one vacuum cleaner we can give to some missionaries with carpet on the floors (not many pisos do – they have hardwood floors and throw rugs). The other one reminded us of a couple of filthy pisos we’ve seen so we worked to clean it up and, after we’d cleaned some filters and thrown away the bag, it works pretty well. In the process we created a cloud of dust a couple of times that we hope doesn’t give us cancer right away. I’m certainly not going to be accused of being a visionary because I had no clue we’d be doing some of the things we are. I hope someone’s keeping track for us because, when it comes to books & judgment, I’ll probably need some extra credit.
Our Saturday was like a lot of others – we cleaned the piso, Flo baked for a zone conference next week, we did some shopping and some laundry and tried to stay dry. I’d bought an electric tooth brush that lasted less than two weeks so I returned it to Makro but was told I’d have to take it to a place in Bilbao that handles their returns of electrical stuff. If I’d had a little more Spanish ability I might have tried to argue the point but I’ll probably enlist some help and see if I can get a resolution of the issue. We went to Bilbao Saturday evening for a baptism service for a boy in our branch – parents aren’t members but a couple of older sisters are and he was excited to be baptized. After the service, Soiarxe (counselor in the branch presidency) asked us if we’d like a ride home and told us he’d take us by his shoe shop and give Flo a pair of shoes if she found some she liked. We went; he has a small shop in a suburb between Bilbao & Las Arenas but didn’t have shoes that Flo liked in her size 38. He promised that he’d remember and, when they make their next buy (they apparently travel to southern Spain to buy their supply of shoes), he’ll have her back again. They brought us home – it was a fun evening for us because we could try our Spanish while they tried their English. Soiarxe and his girlfriend (also a branch member) have offered to meet with us to help us with Spanish and we plan to do that – we just haven’t been able to find a time to do it.
In Sacrament meeting today, Flo was sustained as a counselor in the YW Presidency and I got to pass the sacrament for the first time. The ‘speak & understand Spanish’ learning curve doesn’t seem to have changed but we’re still making progress. We read D&C 63 last night and the language is becoming more familiar to us. Flo’s still 80 pages ahead of me in our BM reading project and we’re both ahead of the 6 pages/day schedule suggested to us by Pte Clegg when he gave us the assignment – we clearly read faster in English than in Spanish.
We love each of you and appreciate very much your support for us. And we cling to the hope that, even if you don’t write to us, you still love us. Stay faithful – it is God’s work. We pray for His choicest blessings to always be with you. Love, E&H Belnap
After getting past some internet problems and working in the office for an hour we went to Bilbao to clean another pair of pisos on Monday – one for Elders and one for Hermanas. Neither of them was filthy but neither was they clean. We spent a couple of hours with the Elders first – Flo with a crew in the kitchen and me in the rest of the piso doing cleaning and fixing. One of the Elders was living in the Sestau piso when we cleaned it prior to vacating it so he already had a good idea of what to look for and he was one of the best workers in a bathroom. He’d removed a glass shelf from mounting brackets to clean it, had dropped it and it shattered on the floor – we’re still working on a temporary fix so they have a shelf until they find a glass shop where they can get a replacement. We moved from there to the Hermanas’ piso and they’d been working pretty hard at getting it cleaned up. But the place is so old and has been so neglected by the landlord that, the next day, I recommended to Pte Clegg that they find a new place to live. His response was to get it done. The neighbor below them (they’re on the third floor of about 12) has complained of water coming from above so they thought they had a leak somewhere. But one of the problems they pointed out to me is a ‘crack’ in the living room wall (opposite the kitchen). When I looked at it, it’s apparent that it’s because of water damage coming from somewhere above their sink level – I’m pretty sure it’s from a piso above them and how many floors, I don’t know. They’ve complained since we got here of a cockroach problem (I’ve mentioned that before) so we’d made plans and brought supplies to address what they considered the primary source of the traffic – a hole thru the wall under the kitchen sink. I cut a rough form to fit on the inside and around pipes, Elder Holmes held it in place and I squirted expanding insulation into the hole from the outside. At first it didn’t want to stay against the form but finally did build up to fill the cavity. We left it to dry as we went outside and got a couple of pizzas and other supplies we’d found we needed and, when we came back, I could see why the instructions said it’d expand to about 3 times the original size. The little door I’d worked thru was partially blocked and I couldn’t even see the wall let alone the hole I was trying to fill. If a cockroach can get thru that, he’s going to need attributes of a burrowing rodent! We tried to treat the sink drain for better drainage, repair a faucet stem so they’d have hot water in one of the bathrooms and could only suggest they try to scrape off the peeling paint from a bathroom ceiling. I checked carefully for any wet spots under the sink – it’s dry there even though the faucet just sits loosely on the back of the sink – there are only parts of a mounting ring left on the underside of the faucet. We got back into the office Monday evening shortly before 5:00 and worked till 8:00 trying to get our usual Monday work done and also get ready for our zone conference on Wednesday then came home and Flo made desserts for our zone conference – it was a long day for us.
Tuesday afternoon I began charging the batteries for the microphone and headsets of our translation system and they took it to our zone conference in Bilbao the next day. When we arrived, the first thing they said was that the system wasn’t working. I did some checking and, the sets we checked work okay if they’re only 3-5 feet from the translator but, beyond that, they get nothing. So they ended up grouping the Spanish-only speakers on the back row and one of the Assistants translated for them the few parts that were done in English. It was a good conference and all seemed to come away more excited about missionary work – especially the challenging task of contacting new people. When we got home, Flo baked again this time doing the desserts (brownies & coconut blondies) for the next two zone conferences.
Thursday morning we got a report from Elder Holmes (financial secretary trainee) whose father had undergone kidney transplant surgery the day before – things went very well and, barring rejection, his Dad expects to be released to return home on the weekend. And it was Thursday that Pte Clegg made his announcement that had us all talking but only among ourselves. The leadership left with a large load of supplies for the two zones in the western part of our mission and when we got home, Flo got to bake brownies. This time it was for the branch where she’s been asked to provide the treats for the next ‘n’ months for our monthly ‘night of the branch’ – the last Friday night of the month.
My electric shaver ate a hole in the screen early this week and I did some pricing of some here – they’re very expensive and appear to work only on 220V so I’m thinking I’ll try to get parts sent and use the old one. The Cleggs brought a couple of vacuum cleaners to the office that have been in the mission home but don’t work ‘they run but there’s no suction’. One appears to be quite new and I looked at it for a little bit and didn’t see the problem but Flo suggested we check the hose for blockage. That was the problem so we worked to clean it out and have at least one vacuum cleaner we can give to some missionaries with carpet on the floors (not many pisos do – they have hardwood floors and throw rugs). The other one reminded us of a couple of filthy pisos we’ve seen so we worked to clean it up and, after we’d cleaned some filters and thrown away the bag, it works pretty well. In the process we created a cloud of dust a couple of times that we hope doesn’t give us cancer right away. I’m certainly not going to be accused of being a visionary because I had no clue we’d be doing some of the things we are. I hope someone’s keeping track for us because, when it comes to books & judgment, I’ll probably need some extra credit.
Our Saturday was like a lot of others – we cleaned the piso, Flo baked for a zone conference next week, we did some shopping and some laundry and tried to stay dry. I’d bought an electric tooth brush that lasted less than two weeks so I returned it to Makro but was told I’d have to take it to a place in Bilbao that handles their returns of electrical stuff. If I’d had a little more Spanish ability I might have tried to argue the point but I’ll probably enlist some help and see if I can get a resolution of the issue. We went to Bilbao Saturday evening for a baptism service for a boy in our branch – parents aren’t members but a couple of older sisters are and he was excited to be baptized. After the service, Soiarxe (counselor in the branch presidency) asked us if we’d like a ride home and told us he’d take us by his shoe shop and give Flo a pair of shoes if she found some she liked. We went; he has a small shop in a suburb between Bilbao & Las Arenas but didn’t have shoes that Flo liked in her size 38. He promised that he’d remember and, when they make their next buy (they apparently travel to southern Spain to buy their supply of shoes), he’ll have her back again. They brought us home – it was a fun evening for us because we could try our Spanish while they tried their English. Soiarxe and his girlfriend (also a branch member) have offered to meet with us to help us with Spanish and we plan to do that – we just haven’t been able to find a time to do it.
In Sacrament meeting today, Flo was sustained as a counselor in the YW Presidency and I got to pass the sacrament for the first time. The ‘speak & understand Spanish’ learning curve doesn’t seem to have changed but we’re still making progress. We read D&C 63 last night and the language is becoming more familiar to us. Flo’s still 80 pages ahead of me in our BM reading project and we’re both ahead of the 6 pages/day schedule suggested to us by Pte Clegg when he gave us the assignment – we clearly read faster in English than in Spanish.
We love each of you and appreciate very much your support for us. And we cling to the hope that, even if you don’t write to us, you still love us. Stay faithful – it is God’s work. We pray for His choicest blessings to always be with you. Love, E&H Belnap
January 24, 2010 - Update from Delwyn
Hello again to our dear loved ones. Another week has slipped by and I’ll try to report how we spent it.
On the near-consuming piso project – we went Monday across the river to Sestau to work with the Elders there to get that piso ready to vacate. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, large living room and 2-3 times larger kitchen than ours is and probably costs less to rent but it’s a lot farther from the office and we’re in a lease or I’d consider moving. They’d worked very hard trying to get it cleaned but trying to determine what to keep, what to discard and what had to be moved wasn’t easy. We repaired beds, drawers, door hinging, moved a lot of furniture (makes me wonder why missionaries have to move so much stuff) and cleaned a lot of floors, walls, mop boards and kitchen cupboards. It was nearly 2:00 when we finished the work (about 4.5 hours of cleaning & fixing), the Secretaries dropped us off at our piso and left to get themselves ready to go to the office. I showered & dressed while Flo worked on dinner - we had roast pork, potatoes & gravy, corn and fruit salad, did the dishes and went to the office for the rest of the day (that’s when we finally got the letters sent). The wireless internet system in the office has been down all week so anyone needing to have internet access had to use one of the two Ethernet lines that bypass the firewall that protects the church computers from outside access or contamination making competition pretty keen sometimes. I was just relinquishing my claim to one of the lines when Heidi called on Skype and we talked only long enough to set up a call for later in the day. I tried to get thru my Monday work and then we called her about 6:00. Many of you know the great news she had to share – they’re expecting a baby next August – and by now, a good part of Spain knows as well.
Tuesday started the missionary transfer movement – Elder Strickland, who arrived in the mission office the day before we did last August, left for León and the office was buzzing all that day and the next with calls about tickets and a few problems encountered during travels. On Wednesday, we got up at 6:00, got ready and left just after 7:00 for Pamplona. We drove in the dark thru heavy rain for much of the way and, although it was fully light when we arrived, we hadn’t been able to see much of the scenery that we’d hoped to see going thru the mountain range. The new GPS worked well but the Elder had entered the street name wrong and we ended up at an address different than the piso. Via the telephone, we got that fixed and made it to the piso with our tools and cleaning stuff. The piso is next to a plaza that someone said is the place they hold the bulls during the ‘running of the bulls’ in the summertime. The Elders there had done an excellent job of cleaning their piso. There were a number of things that required some repair work – a broken table leg, broken slats in a bed frame (requires replacement) and a baseboard pulling off. While trying to nail the baseboard back in place I nailed my middle finger with the hammer so it’s a mixture of purple & black in color and has been pretty sore but is improving. One of the Elders there had finished his mission time so we took him (and enough luggage to make some airline profitable) to the bus station for the trip to the mission home for his final night in the mission then we drove about two hours to Burgos with an Elders’ piso and a Hermanas’ piso. The transfer included moving the Hermanas out of their piso to other cities, moving the Elders to that piso and vacating the Elders’ piso – the Hermanas had left last night. We found the apartment okay but finding a parking space was another matter. With Elders Hansen & Anderson checking parking garages on foot and the Elders in the piso watching from their 7th story piso, we circled the block several times until we found an open spot and got into it. The parking situation is so bad there, we were told that cars can double park with the first row at & pointed toward the sidewalk and a second row parked behind them parallel to the street. Those parked behind must, by law, leave the car in neutral with no brake set so that, if an inside car wants to get out, he can push the car(s) behind him out of the way and back out – we saw that happening. The elders had done a lot of cleaning – except for the kitchen – in the visible areas. So Flo went to work, with some help, in the kitchen and I worked on the other areas. There were 15-20 spots of sticky-putty on the living room wall, bypass doors off the closets, bed frame damage, un-cleaned stains on the floor and lots of dirty lint wherever I’d move something. The living room sofa & chairs are totally trashed – I do not know how furniture can get to that condition. Each piece had 12-18” of torn/missing fabric along the front that allowed the cushions to pop open (like a popcorn kernel) and someone had put a few strips of duct tape at intervals along the front to keep it from being worse. The elders there said it had been stored in an extra room and they’d just moved it into the living room because that’s where it belonged as we vacate the piso (it ‘belongs’ in a landfill) – that’ll have to be negotiated with the landlord. As we’ve seen before, keeping the Elders on task isn’t simple but we finally had everything but the kitchen as clean and orderly as we could get it so we focused on that. Flo says the accumulation of filth in the kitchen rivaled that of San Se but, after about 4.5 hours of hard work, it was fit for habitation again. We moved to the Hermanas’ piso and were pleasantly surprised to find it very clean – we checked on a couple of reported problems, it’s missing several light bulbs and there are messages on the mirrors for the incoming Elders. The Elders’ move-in made it difficult to move any furniture to see if there’s hidden stuff but we were very happy that we weren’t facing another four hour cleaning task. While we still were cleaning they’d picked up a missionary coming to Burgos, loaded all of Elder Holmes (coming to the office to train as financial secretary) stuff into our van and we finally were ready to leave for home – another trip in the dark but without rain. So our tour of the mission - as this was labeled - has given us neither time nor opportunity to see any of the interesting stuff – we hope it changes for the better.
The rest of our week has been a mixture of routine and other – we’ve been hampered by the lack of internet on our computer systems but have been able to get most of our internet stuff done during the time we had an Ethernet line. Elder Hansen called us Friday night to tell us they’d gotten a new piece of hardware that allowed them to get the system working again so we think next week will be better. On Tuesday we put a load of laundry in the washer, started it and left for the office. When we got home it was not running but it hadn’t washed the clothes and Flo couldn’t get it to start. Since we were gone Wednesday, we couldn’t get a repairman to look at it and, when we got home Wednesday night, I played a little with the button and it finished washing our batch of clothes. The Elders had called our landlord about the problem and Thursday, while we were home for mediodía, we got a call saying the repairman would be by in 15 minutes. He came, we tried to give him a sense of our experience thru the problem, he worked on it and explained (I’m pretty sure that’s what he was doing) what had failed and that we should call again if we had any more problem with it. It was working then and it worked okay on Saturday when we washed a load of clothes so we’re hoping it’s fixed – when you wash 2-3 times a week there’s a dependency on the equipment.
When the repairman left I went back to the office to work but Flo stayed home to make cinnamon rolls and potato salad for the mission council meetings tomorrow – she worked till about 11:00 on that. And because of those meetings, we were the only ones in the office Friday until about 4:30 when the meetings finished – then there was a lot of activity. After we’d cleaned our piso Saturday we drove to the nearby mall to do some shopping – mostly for things we’ve found we need to clean and repair pisos. I’m getting a little smarter about looking up the Spanish words for things I need but usually forget something and then it’s an adventure trying to communicate what I want and what a sales person responds with.
Our weather has been several degrees warmer this week but we’ve still had a lot of rain – I don’t think we got to walk a single night. Our reading of the D&C is progressing pretty well – we’re in the low 50’s – and we’re doing okay with our assignment to read the BM – I’m a little ahead of schedule and Flo is nearly 100 pages ahead of me. Between the time we spend reading scriptures and our Spanish study time, it puts a strain on old brains - there are times when we’re more mentally than physically tired.
In Sacrament meeting today, they asked me to offer the opening prayer (hey, I still need prep time; but I gave them something) and, as they began presenting people to be sustained, we expected Flo’s name to be presented per the call she’d received last week to serve as a counselor in the YW Presidency – it didn’t happen. So after the meeting we asked the branch president and he explained that the person being released had not come today so they didn’t make the change – probably next week. I scheduled times with missionaries in Bilbao to go thru a couple of pisos tomorrow and we had a fairly typical Sunday – I love our Sundays.
Guess that’s enough narrative for one week. Please keep the country free while we’re gone. We love you all very much, appreciate your love and support for us and pray for God’s choicest blessings to always be with you. Love, E&H Belnap
On the near-consuming piso project – we went Monday across the river to Sestau to work with the Elders there to get that piso ready to vacate. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, large living room and 2-3 times larger kitchen than ours is and probably costs less to rent but it’s a lot farther from the office and we’re in a lease or I’d consider moving. They’d worked very hard trying to get it cleaned but trying to determine what to keep, what to discard and what had to be moved wasn’t easy. We repaired beds, drawers, door hinging, moved a lot of furniture (makes me wonder why missionaries have to move so much stuff) and cleaned a lot of floors, walls, mop boards and kitchen cupboards. It was nearly 2:00 when we finished the work (about 4.5 hours of cleaning & fixing), the Secretaries dropped us off at our piso and left to get themselves ready to go to the office. I showered & dressed while Flo worked on dinner - we had roast pork, potatoes & gravy, corn and fruit salad, did the dishes and went to the office for the rest of the day (that’s when we finally got the letters sent). The wireless internet system in the office has been down all week so anyone needing to have internet access had to use one of the two Ethernet lines that bypass the firewall that protects the church computers from outside access or contamination making competition pretty keen sometimes. I was just relinquishing my claim to one of the lines when Heidi called on Skype and we talked only long enough to set up a call for later in the day. I tried to get thru my Monday work and then we called her about 6:00. Many of you know the great news she had to share – they’re expecting a baby next August – and by now, a good part of Spain knows as well.
Tuesday started the missionary transfer movement – Elder Strickland, who arrived in the mission office the day before we did last August, left for León and the office was buzzing all that day and the next with calls about tickets and a few problems encountered during travels. On Wednesday, we got up at 6:00, got ready and left just after 7:00 for Pamplona. We drove in the dark thru heavy rain for much of the way and, although it was fully light when we arrived, we hadn’t been able to see much of the scenery that we’d hoped to see going thru the mountain range. The new GPS worked well but the Elder had entered the street name wrong and we ended up at an address different than the piso. Via the telephone, we got that fixed and made it to the piso with our tools and cleaning stuff. The piso is next to a plaza that someone said is the place they hold the bulls during the ‘running of the bulls’ in the summertime. The Elders there had done an excellent job of cleaning their piso. There were a number of things that required some repair work – a broken table leg, broken slats in a bed frame (requires replacement) and a baseboard pulling off. While trying to nail the baseboard back in place I nailed my middle finger with the hammer so it’s a mixture of purple & black in color and has been pretty sore but is improving. One of the Elders there had finished his mission time so we took him (and enough luggage to make some airline profitable) to the bus station for the trip to the mission home for his final night in the mission then we drove about two hours to Burgos with an Elders’ piso and a Hermanas’ piso. The transfer included moving the Hermanas out of their piso to other cities, moving the Elders to that piso and vacating the Elders’ piso – the Hermanas had left last night. We found the apartment okay but finding a parking space was another matter. With Elders Hansen & Anderson checking parking garages on foot and the Elders in the piso watching from their 7th story piso, we circled the block several times until we found an open spot and got into it. The parking situation is so bad there, we were told that cars can double park with the first row at & pointed toward the sidewalk and a second row parked behind them parallel to the street. Those parked behind must, by law, leave the car in neutral with no brake set so that, if an inside car wants to get out, he can push the car(s) behind him out of the way and back out – we saw that happening. The elders had done a lot of cleaning – except for the kitchen – in the visible areas. So Flo went to work, with some help, in the kitchen and I worked on the other areas. There were 15-20 spots of sticky-putty on the living room wall, bypass doors off the closets, bed frame damage, un-cleaned stains on the floor and lots of dirty lint wherever I’d move something. The living room sofa & chairs are totally trashed – I do not know how furniture can get to that condition. Each piece had 12-18” of torn/missing fabric along the front that allowed the cushions to pop open (like a popcorn kernel) and someone had put a few strips of duct tape at intervals along the front to keep it from being worse. The elders there said it had been stored in an extra room and they’d just moved it into the living room because that’s where it belonged as we vacate the piso (it ‘belongs’ in a landfill) – that’ll have to be negotiated with the landlord. As we’ve seen before, keeping the Elders on task isn’t simple but we finally had everything but the kitchen as clean and orderly as we could get it so we focused on that. Flo says the accumulation of filth in the kitchen rivaled that of San Se but, after about 4.5 hours of hard work, it was fit for habitation again. We moved to the Hermanas’ piso and were pleasantly surprised to find it very clean – we checked on a couple of reported problems, it’s missing several light bulbs and there are messages on the mirrors for the incoming Elders. The Elders’ move-in made it difficult to move any furniture to see if there’s hidden stuff but we were very happy that we weren’t facing another four hour cleaning task. While we still were cleaning they’d picked up a missionary coming to Burgos, loaded all of Elder Holmes (coming to the office to train as financial secretary) stuff into our van and we finally were ready to leave for home – another trip in the dark but without rain. So our tour of the mission - as this was labeled - has given us neither time nor opportunity to see any of the interesting stuff – we hope it changes for the better.
The rest of our week has been a mixture of routine and other – we’ve been hampered by the lack of internet on our computer systems but have been able to get most of our internet stuff done during the time we had an Ethernet line. Elder Hansen called us Friday night to tell us they’d gotten a new piece of hardware that allowed them to get the system working again so we think next week will be better. On Tuesday we put a load of laundry in the washer, started it and left for the office. When we got home it was not running but it hadn’t washed the clothes and Flo couldn’t get it to start. Since we were gone Wednesday, we couldn’t get a repairman to look at it and, when we got home Wednesday night, I played a little with the button and it finished washing our batch of clothes. The Elders had called our landlord about the problem and Thursday, while we were home for mediodía, we got a call saying the repairman would be by in 15 minutes. He came, we tried to give him a sense of our experience thru the problem, he worked on it and explained (I’m pretty sure that’s what he was doing) what had failed and that we should call again if we had any more problem with it. It was working then and it worked okay on Saturday when we washed a load of clothes so we’re hoping it’s fixed – when you wash 2-3 times a week there’s a dependency on the equipment.
When the repairman left I went back to the office to work but Flo stayed home to make cinnamon rolls and potato salad for the mission council meetings tomorrow – she worked till about 11:00 on that. And because of those meetings, we were the only ones in the office Friday until about 4:30 when the meetings finished – then there was a lot of activity. After we’d cleaned our piso Saturday we drove to the nearby mall to do some shopping – mostly for things we’ve found we need to clean and repair pisos. I’m getting a little smarter about looking up the Spanish words for things I need but usually forget something and then it’s an adventure trying to communicate what I want and what a sales person responds with.
Our weather has been several degrees warmer this week but we’ve still had a lot of rain – I don’t think we got to walk a single night. Our reading of the D&C is progressing pretty well – we’re in the low 50’s – and we’re doing okay with our assignment to read the BM – I’m a little ahead of schedule and Flo is nearly 100 pages ahead of me. Between the time we spend reading scriptures and our Spanish study time, it puts a strain on old brains - there are times when we’re more mentally than physically tired.
In Sacrament meeting today, they asked me to offer the opening prayer (hey, I still need prep time; but I gave them something) and, as they began presenting people to be sustained, we expected Flo’s name to be presented per the call she’d received last week to serve as a counselor in the YW Presidency – it didn’t happen. So after the meeting we asked the branch president and he explained that the person being released had not come today so they didn’t make the change – probably next week. I scheduled times with missionaries in Bilbao to go thru a couple of pisos tomorrow and we had a fairly typical Sunday – I love our Sundays.
Guess that’s enough narrative for one week. Please keep the country free while we’re gone. We love you all very much, appreciate your love and support for us and pray for God’s choicest blessings to always be with you. Love, E&H Belnap
January 17, 2010 - Update from Delwyn
It’s been another fast week for us here – it’s warmed up a little and we’ve had a couple of days with very little rain during the day so we even got to take a walk one evening. I did a little searching with Google Earth to find our elevation – on the street at our piso it says we’re 7-meters, at the office we’re 15-meters and out at the mission home where we experienced the snow first hand, it’s 102-meters. With all that climbing necessary to get from our piso to the office twice a day, it’s no wonder we’re tired at night, huh?
The project to clean and repair stuff in the pisos of the mission appears to be taking on a life of its own. Hna Clegg has planned the secretaries into the crews and they’re all excited because they’ll get to visit (and maybe stay overnight in) cities where they’ve served as missionaries. We’ve had three secretaries (one in training) for the last six weeks and will have three for the next six weeks so, if we get into serious cleaning situations, we’ll have a little more manpower. On Wednesday Pte & Hna Clegg took Flo & me to a Chinese buffet for mediodía to discuss a proposed schedule (he describes it as an opportunity to tour the mission; when I tour I don’t want it to be in the dead of winter), the new travel secretary got involved that afternoon and proposed some major schedule changes and soon was calling missionaries telling them to have their pisos clean when we come (i.e. pass the Hna Belnap ‘white glove’ test) or they’d be sent home (hopefully that was just in fun). We went Tuesday to the piso here in Las Arenas that houses the Assistants and secretaries as our first inhabited piso. The visit had been planned so they’d spent a good amount of time the preceding Saturday trying to get their place ready for our visit and they’d done a pretty good job. Flo managed a small crew in the kitchen – the big job was cleaning the refrigerator - and got that looking good. I went thru the rest of the piso with Elders and we cleaned floors (that’s entire floors, not just the middle), walls, listed burned out lights, a toilet seat that must be replaced and some things in the bathrooms that have to be cleaned. The 7 of us worked pretty hard for a couple of hours and all agreed that it’s a much nicer place to live than it was. Next week we’ve got another piso close to us but across the river then a trip to cover three more – in Pamplona (bulls aren’t running now) and Burgos (we’re vacating a piso there) – and will tell you how that goes.
It’s transfer time again in our mission so this was the most exciting week for the missionaries – they got the telephone calls Thursday telling them where they’ll be and who new companions are. We have two missionaries going home and two of our best elders (one of whom extended his mission by 6-weeks to fill the assignment) are being given a special assignment to be ‘traveling trainers’. They’ll spend 2-3 days at a time in each city working with the missionaries to try to help them be more effective in their work – I guess it’s a bit like the zone leaders we had in my German mission who had a car and purported to work with the elders throughout the zone. Anyway it’ll be a busy week next week for some who have to get ready to move to a new city but have to thoroughly clean a piso before they go.
And it was another week of working issues with our translation system. After a couple of phone conversations with the church purchasing agent in Madrid, she found a source for the batteries we need and asked us to determine if there are problems other than the batteries, identify those headsets and she’ll take them for repair in the next few weeks. So I went thru each of the 20 headsets, cleaned the batteries where needed (several of them were badly corroded) and cleaned the terminals for the charger positions and finally got all but one (no battery in that one) to show light as if the battery were charging. I left it plugged in (per instructions) for the weekend to see if we can get a good charge on the batteries, determine which sets are functional with good batteries and proceed from there. If I get some of that stuff to work I may count it as a ‘confirmation’ if not a baptism.
We got the final car in our 5-car fleet cycled thru the dealer service shop for an annual maintenance inspection and service. Only Pte Clegg’s van gets enough miles on it each year to meet the mileage requirement for 15K-KM service intervals – the others we take for service as per the church policy for vehicle maintenance. And I assume it’s symptomatic of new bishops in our stake coming up to speed that they’ve sent, via the missionaries, requests for lists of the convert baptisms in their wards during the last year+. It hasn’t been too bad but I’ve had to go back thru records that I didn’t keep and find the names of those in a given area. I’m hoping it serves a good purpose and we can keep new converts progressing or re-activate them if they’d dropped off the radar screen.
Saturday we went out to the mission home for a farewell breakfast for Elder Strickland (Kearns Elder that Carla knows), had a nice meal around French toast, did some clean up and I went thru the offering of tools in their garage and a closet looking for help with repairs – it’s pretty grim. We then did a major shopping stop at Makro (mostly food) and to Carrefour where we got a new GPS system that we hope will guide us from home to pisos and back. We got our piso cleaned for the week, Flo baked a batch of bread and we studied and rested during what little time was left in the day. After our meeting block, our former branch president asked me if we’d like to come home with them for dinner today. Flo was with a branch counselor receiving a call to serve as 2nd counselor in the YW presidency so, when she came out, we had a very short discussion and accepted the invitation. It’s the same family that had invited us 2-3 months ago for paella so I was a little apprehensive that we might see more of those bug-eyed critters from the ocean. We rode the Metro to their stop, went to their 6th floor piso (the elevator installation has been completed so we didn’t have to walk this time), had vegetable soup, meatballs in a sauce that I liked very much and fresh fruit for course #3 – it was excellent. Since they speak virtually no English and the gift of tongues was not present, we spent most of the time trying to determine what the others were saying. When they spoke slowly (Hno Hidalgo has almost no teeth so he’s especially hard for us to understand) we got the gist of what they were saying (there were still some words that we don’t know and we’d get lost) and, with their help in guessing what we wanted to say, there were a lot of questions and answers – it was a delightful time for us. We came home to write letters and study then made some preparations for the cleaning trip tomorrow morning – we expect a busy week ahead.
We love each of you and truly want you to know how we appreciate your love and support. This work called life is not always easy but hopefully each of us gets enough of it done to qualify ourselves to return to our Father in Heaven. We pray for the Lord’s choicest blessings always to be with you.
Love, E&H Belnap
The project to clean and repair stuff in the pisos of the mission appears to be taking on a life of its own. Hna Clegg has planned the secretaries into the crews and they’re all excited because they’ll get to visit (and maybe stay overnight in) cities where they’ve served as missionaries. We’ve had three secretaries (one in training) for the last six weeks and will have three for the next six weeks so, if we get into serious cleaning situations, we’ll have a little more manpower. On Wednesday Pte & Hna Clegg took Flo & me to a Chinese buffet for mediodía to discuss a proposed schedule (he describes it as an opportunity to tour the mission; when I tour I don’t want it to be in the dead of winter), the new travel secretary got involved that afternoon and proposed some major schedule changes and soon was calling missionaries telling them to have their pisos clean when we come (i.e. pass the Hna Belnap ‘white glove’ test) or they’d be sent home (hopefully that was just in fun). We went Tuesday to the piso here in Las Arenas that houses the Assistants and secretaries as our first inhabited piso. The visit had been planned so they’d spent a good amount of time the preceding Saturday trying to get their place ready for our visit and they’d done a pretty good job. Flo managed a small crew in the kitchen – the big job was cleaning the refrigerator - and got that looking good. I went thru the rest of the piso with Elders and we cleaned floors (that’s entire floors, not just the middle), walls, listed burned out lights, a toilet seat that must be replaced and some things in the bathrooms that have to be cleaned. The 7 of us worked pretty hard for a couple of hours and all agreed that it’s a much nicer place to live than it was. Next week we’ve got another piso close to us but across the river then a trip to cover three more – in Pamplona (bulls aren’t running now) and Burgos (we’re vacating a piso there) – and will tell you how that goes.
It’s transfer time again in our mission so this was the most exciting week for the missionaries – they got the telephone calls Thursday telling them where they’ll be and who new companions are. We have two missionaries going home and two of our best elders (one of whom extended his mission by 6-weeks to fill the assignment) are being given a special assignment to be ‘traveling trainers’. They’ll spend 2-3 days at a time in each city working with the missionaries to try to help them be more effective in their work – I guess it’s a bit like the zone leaders we had in my German mission who had a car and purported to work with the elders throughout the zone. Anyway it’ll be a busy week next week for some who have to get ready to move to a new city but have to thoroughly clean a piso before they go.
And it was another week of working issues with our translation system. After a couple of phone conversations with the church purchasing agent in Madrid, she found a source for the batteries we need and asked us to determine if there are problems other than the batteries, identify those headsets and she’ll take them for repair in the next few weeks. So I went thru each of the 20 headsets, cleaned the batteries where needed (several of them were badly corroded) and cleaned the terminals for the charger positions and finally got all but one (no battery in that one) to show light as if the battery were charging. I left it plugged in (per instructions) for the weekend to see if we can get a good charge on the batteries, determine which sets are functional with good batteries and proceed from there. If I get some of that stuff to work I may count it as a ‘confirmation’ if not a baptism.
We got the final car in our 5-car fleet cycled thru the dealer service shop for an annual maintenance inspection and service. Only Pte Clegg’s van gets enough miles on it each year to meet the mileage requirement for 15K-KM service intervals – the others we take for service as per the church policy for vehicle maintenance. And I assume it’s symptomatic of new bishops in our stake coming up to speed that they’ve sent, via the missionaries, requests for lists of the convert baptisms in their wards during the last year+. It hasn’t been too bad but I’ve had to go back thru records that I didn’t keep and find the names of those in a given area. I’m hoping it serves a good purpose and we can keep new converts progressing or re-activate them if they’d dropped off the radar screen.
Saturday we went out to the mission home for a farewell breakfast for Elder Strickland (Kearns Elder that Carla knows), had a nice meal around French toast, did some clean up and I went thru the offering of tools in their garage and a closet looking for help with repairs – it’s pretty grim. We then did a major shopping stop at Makro (mostly food) and to Carrefour where we got a new GPS system that we hope will guide us from home to pisos and back. We got our piso cleaned for the week, Flo baked a batch of bread and we studied and rested during what little time was left in the day. After our meeting block, our former branch president asked me if we’d like to come home with them for dinner today. Flo was with a branch counselor receiving a call to serve as 2nd counselor in the YW presidency so, when she came out, we had a very short discussion and accepted the invitation. It’s the same family that had invited us 2-3 months ago for paella so I was a little apprehensive that we might see more of those bug-eyed critters from the ocean. We rode the Metro to their stop, went to their 6th floor piso (the elevator installation has been completed so we didn’t have to walk this time), had vegetable soup, meatballs in a sauce that I liked very much and fresh fruit for course #3 – it was excellent. Since they speak virtually no English and the gift of tongues was not present, we spent most of the time trying to determine what the others were saying. When they spoke slowly (Hno Hidalgo has almost no teeth so he’s especially hard for us to understand) we got the gist of what they were saying (there were still some words that we don’t know and we’d get lost) and, with their help in guessing what we wanted to say, there were a lot of questions and answers – it was a delightful time for us. We came home to write letters and study then made some preparations for the cleaning trip tomorrow morning – we expect a busy week ahead.
We love each of you and truly want you to know how we appreciate your love and support. This work called life is not always easy but hopefully each of us gets enough of it done to qualify ourselves to return to our Father in Heaven. We pray for the Lord’s choicest blessings always to be with you.
Love, E&H Belnap
Friday, January 22, 2010
Travel to Pamplona and Burgos
This is on our way. I took this picture because it reminded us of I 10 on the way to California.Thousands of trucks. We didn't see any Knight Transportation or Swift Trucks. But heavy traffic and most of it was trucks. They are important here also.
The pictures were all taken from the car because we didn't have time to stop. Nothing exciting, but it is our trip to Pamplona and Burgos. This is a small farming community. Everything is so clean and well kept
A pretty picture of a farming area. See how nice everything is kept.
Just last week, this was covered with snow. I was glad it was clear today.
I think it is so pretty. Everything is so green here even in December after a freeze and snow storm.
Along side of the road was this steel statue of a bull. Interesting. The Elders said they are all over the place. I don't know what for, but I'm going to try and find out.
Here, they love to build tunnels. They don't go around the mountain, they go through it. Even in town here. When you go through the tunnels, you have to turn your lights on or you could get a ticket. The tunnels are even lit up and not very long.
More pretty communities. Danette thinks I like these because I am from Montana. The hills in Montana are mountains. These are just rolling hills.
Poor Elder Anderson. He was tired. We will be losing him next transfer. He has been a great help for Elder Belnap in the office. He has helped me, also. Great Elder. He will do well in the field.
This is Elder C. Hansen. He is one of our new Secretaries who just replaced Elder Strickland. We enjoy him. He has helped me a lot on the computer. Mucho patience. Which I need.
Picture of the strip farming here. I don't know what they call it hear.
Just a picture of the clouds. It rained really hard when we left at 7:00am in the morning and our windshield wipers didn't work well at all. But, Elder Anderson got us there safely. We didn't have rain the rest of the day. We were happy about that because of the wipers. Most of our trip was in the dark. We left in the dark and we got home in the dark. Sunday, January 17, 2010
January 10, 2010 - Update from Delwyn
As with past weeks, this one has passed rapidly – a noteworthy experience for us has been the change in the weather. The entire week has been cold and rainy but Friday, Mother Nature got pretty serious with showing us what winter can be like. It was cold to be outside and it rained or hailed most of the day. We had to make a trip to the car dealership to pick up a car we had there for service (not the gas-infected van; we’d already gotten that). When we left the office it was not raining and appeared to be clearing but in the five minutes it took to get to the parking area, the hail blew in, we were caught without umbrellas and paid the price. It hailed enough in a very short time to cover the ground and make the roads a little slick. I’d already committed to one of the elders that he could drive so there was some pay-close-attention time for our short trip, he did a parallel parking job that looked more like he’d run off the road and left it there than actually tried to park it - I mentioned to him in a very tactful way that he might want to work on those skills. The forecast for Friday night was 0°C and, with the wind blowing, it very much felt like it’d freeze. Saturday morning we could again see the snow in the hills just off the river but hadn’t seen any snow in town where our piso is. On Saturday morning as we cleaned the piso we could see rain, hail and finally snow out the window. The snow, however, was a lot like Phoenix snow - it melted as soon as it hit the ground so we didn’t have any accumulation at all. This morning (Sunday), we got a call about 9:45 from Pte Clegg inviting us to come for dinner at their house this afternoon. They were scheduled to attend and speak in Gijón so they’d left about 6:00 this morning and within an hour the roads were so bad they could tell there was no way they’d reach Gijón in time for the meetings so they called the Elders to fill their speaking assignments, turned around and came home. A member of the stake presidency was in our branch to speak and told us that most of the members in Burgos and Logroño were snowed in so they couldn’t get to church today. Our branch president lives in mountains an hour away from here and his train was canceled for snow so he wasn’t in the branch today. Blair has asked about our elevation here – when we walk the 2-3 blocks from our piso to the waterfront, we’re 10-15 feet above the water level and the water level changes with the ocean tides. As the tide comes in, the water in the river runs upstream and as the tide goes out, so does the water in the river. The latitude here is just slightly north of Blackfoot so I guess it’s our low elevation and the effects the ocean has on the climate that keeps it from being even colder than it is. We went to a mall yesterday and did some shopping for sweaters, scarves and gloves – we’re determined to survive (maybe that’s why we had blizzards the last two winters we’ve been to Utah, sort of a prep schooling). We did a little ‘touring’ on our way home – I’d followed the tow truck on the road earlier this week and thought we’d taken a road that’d get us back to where we wanted to go but it didn’t (“…all these things shall give thee experience”).
Along with our usual office work we’ve been doing the things necessary to move to a new month and a new year. Virtually all the files I have for tracking convert baptisms, piso inspections, proselyting indicators and vehicle records are done on a monthly basis in files covering a year. So I’ve been making files for this year and have been changing some of them to try to make them easier to keep and use. As we were getting ready to leave the office Friday evening, I was extracting some data for Pte Clegg and the power went off leaving us in the dark – something had blown our main breaker. When we discovered and reset the breaker, things seemed to be back to normal and I finished getting the needed data. But yesterday, the elders reported that our wireless internet system at the office is down and I don’t know if there’s a relationship between the power outage and that problem – I’m hoping it is back up tomorrow.
We’ve done some planning this past week for Flo & I to make a scheduled visit to each of the pisos in the mission and work with the missionaries to get things cleaned up, repaired and in the condition we think the Lord expects. Our first stop is to be Tuesday at the piso for the missionaries here in Las Arenas – the secretaries and Assistants live there. As Elders arrive and leave the mission and as they come for conferences or other assignments, they usually stay at that piso so it’s big and has a lot of extra mattresses. The permanent missionaries don’t cook very much there and our sense has been that they don’t get very concerned about how well they keep up the piso. When we announced last week that they’d be our first visit, they immediately scheduled their Saturday P-day as a major cleaning day and are telling us today that they have the place looking good – we’ll see. But if the announcement has the affect of motivating missionaries to clean their pisos, that’s great – it’ll make our task a lot easier and more enjoyable.
Many of the things we do have now become quite routine – we still study a lot of Spanish (and I assure you we’re making progress, just not very fast), spend a lot of time reading scripture (we’re ahead of schedule with our BM reading) and the Lord may sigh when he sees us fall to our knees (he knows he’s in for a pretty lengthy session and may need to listen carefully to know what we’re thankful for and what we’re asking for – maybe that’s why Spaniards talk so fast). Although we greatly miss family and friends, we’re grateful to be here and considered worthy to serve missions. We sure hope things went well for Kason and Blair’s family as he entered the MTC. Send us his email address and we’ll plan to send a periodic note to him. We love and appreciate each of you and the many things you do for us – we could not have better families. May the Lord’s choicest blessings be with you always.
Love, E&H Belnap
Along with our usual office work we’ve been doing the things necessary to move to a new month and a new year. Virtually all the files I have for tracking convert baptisms, piso inspections, proselyting indicators and vehicle records are done on a monthly basis in files covering a year. So I’ve been making files for this year and have been changing some of them to try to make them easier to keep and use. As we were getting ready to leave the office Friday evening, I was extracting some data for Pte Clegg and the power went off leaving us in the dark – something had blown our main breaker. When we discovered and reset the breaker, things seemed to be back to normal and I finished getting the needed data. But yesterday, the elders reported that our wireless internet system at the office is down and I don’t know if there’s a relationship between the power outage and that problem – I’m hoping it is back up tomorrow.
We’ve done some planning this past week for Flo & I to make a scheduled visit to each of the pisos in the mission and work with the missionaries to get things cleaned up, repaired and in the condition we think the Lord expects. Our first stop is to be Tuesday at the piso for the missionaries here in Las Arenas – the secretaries and Assistants live there. As Elders arrive and leave the mission and as they come for conferences or other assignments, they usually stay at that piso so it’s big and has a lot of extra mattresses. The permanent missionaries don’t cook very much there and our sense has been that they don’t get very concerned about how well they keep up the piso. When we announced last week that they’d be our first visit, they immediately scheduled their Saturday P-day as a major cleaning day and are telling us today that they have the place looking good – we’ll see. But if the announcement has the affect of motivating missionaries to clean their pisos, that’s great – it’ll make our task a lot easier and more enjoyable.
Many of the things we do have now become quite routine – we still study a lot of Spanish (and I assure you we’re making progress, just not very fast), spend a lot of time reading scripture (we’re ahead of schedule with our BM reading) and the Lord may sigh when he sees us fall to our knees (he knows he’s in for a pretty lengthy session and may need to listen carefully to know what we’re thankful for and what we’re asking for – maybe that’s why Spaniards talk so fast). Although we greatly miss family and friends, we’re grateful to be here and considered worthy to serve missions. We sure hope things went well for Kason and Blair’s family as he entered the MTC. Send us his email address and we’ll plan to send a periodic note to him. We love and appreciate each of you and the many things you do for us – we could not have better families. May the Lord’s choicest blessings be with you always.
Love, E&H Belnap
Monday, January 11, 2010
January 3, 2010 - Weekly Update from Delwyn
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!!!
It’s been another fast but good week for us here in Spain – we now have the holidays (at least those that we celebrate) behind us, we’ve have a couple more Skype conversations and had some accomplishments in our work as missionaries. When we’d finished last Sunday with our letter and card writing the weather was nice enough to take a walk so we walked for about 50 minutes along our usual paths – it’s cool enough outside to wake us up. Having finished reading the Book of Mormon we started the D&C thinking that’s be a little easier for us to cope with – it’s actually been harder for us. There’s an entirely new set of vocabulary words in the Spanish D&C so it’s going to push us for a while (at least) to learn that language and understand the meaning of the scripture as we read it.
Monday was a fairly typical day in the office and it’s often our busiest day of the week there. We do quite a bit of end-of-week stuff where Sunday in the last day of the week (even the calendars here are printed that way) so we try to get as much of that stuff done as we can. I’ve been working on a couple of things with church administrators in Madrid and it appears that they’re on an extended holiday vacation – I get either no response or an out-of-office response to my email messages. We’ve been told that the biggest holiday of the season occurs Wednesday of this week – I’m not sure what it’s called but think it’s a celebration of the visit of the 3 Wise Men to the young Jesus. If it turns out to be something spectacular, I’ll tell you about it next week.
On Tuesday, I went with three of the elders in the office to meet with the landlord of the piso we’d vacated in San Sebastián. We’re not officially out of the piso since we’re paying rent thru January but we had to try to resolve some concerns about the conditions in the apartment. I’d seen the apartment when we moved the elders last month but was trying to hurry and attributed most of the mess to the fact that they were still packing and moving but was shocked at the state of the piso after they supposedly moved all their stuff – it was a filthy mess. The combination of total neglect on the part of both landlord and missionaries had created a dreadful sight. We went thru the piso room by room trying to assess what had to be done to make it livable – he accepted responsibility for painting and possibly refinishing the floors (they appear to have had nothing done to them but sweeping for a very long time) and we agreed to clean and try to restore furniture and furnishings as they were when missionaries had moved in 5 years ago. With that understanding we returned to Las Arenas and began making plans to buy some things needing replacement and return to clean. On Friday, Flo & I and 3 elders from the office drove back to San Se, met the two missionaries there (they’d had four in San Se until 3 weeks ago) at 10:00 and went to work. Flo tackled the cleaning of the kitchen which she says was absolutely the filthiest place she’s ever tried to clean while the rest of us worked on the other tasks. One of the major problems was that elders had turned a wall unit from one wall to the opposite wall of the living room – the problem was that the wall unit is longer than the room is wide. We got the base turned by lifting one end enough to make the turn but the top of the unit was too tall to allow that. We took it to the stairwell outside the piso and tried to turn it there – too much unit for available space. We tried disassembly but couldn’t move some of the screws to do that. We finally took one end down a hall and were able, by removing a door, to turn the unit like we needed it – we had to have spent two hours getting that task done. Elders had removed light covers and replaced bulbs to provide more light so we had to disassemble light fixtures to get the covers back on. One of the elders rewired a light as we reassembled, hit the switch and power went out in the entire piso – we’d blown the main breaker. I worked on one of the lights, got side-tracked for a while and, when I resumed work on it, got buzzed because someone had come along and turned the switch on hoping for light – at least it worked when I was finished. We spent over 6 hours working straight thru the day – hauled uncounted bags of trash to the dumpster, swept & mopped over & over and Flo turned the kitchen into a place that you could prepare food without endangering life. We’ve still got a couple of repair problems to address but the place now looks like humans could inhabit it.
We’d planned with Chad & Trisha to do a Skype call on Wednesday – we didn’t have info about how he was going to do it but we finally made a guess and called Angela’s userid. That was a good guess and we got to talk with them, say hi to their kids, hear about their Christmas and have a very enjoyable visit with them. I’m hoping any others who might want to do a Skype call will read into this the need to exchange userid information before waiting to answer a call from our end.
Blair, Brian & Jackie had prepared for a Skype call with Mom on her birthday Saturday – that was very enjoyable for us because we got to talk to Mom, Brian & Jackie, Blair & Vicky and Lynda and say hi to most of the kids who were there. We were on for about an hour & 15 minutes and the time sure flew by for us – we had a great evening and thank all of you for taking the time to talk with us.
I think I’ve mentioned before the concern here about using our US drivers licenses for driving in Spain. The mission presidents have basically agreed to take the drivers-ed courses to obtain a Spanish license – since they’re here for 3 years and do a lot of traveling, they’ve agreed to pay the costs ($1000+; everyone fails the first time because the schools charge based on the time a student spends in school). But for those in our situation, it’s hard to swallow the time and expense of a driver’s license when we do so little driving and our mission would be half over before we got the license. So this week I applied for an International Driver Permit which is good for a year and am hoping that’s sufficient for my needs thru the remainder of our mission.
We didn’t have anything to do (one can only study so long before the brain is fried) or anyplace to go on New Year’s Eve so we had a quiet evening in the piso. That is until the fireworks started in earnest about 11:00. They went for about 2 hours, hitting a crescendo around midnight – I’ve never experienced anything like that. It really sounded like bombs were falling all around us and even with everything closed & shutters down, it was impossible to sleep. The next morning our street was lined with drunks, streamers, glitter and other trash and there were occasional explosions going off around us all thru the day. I don’t know whether it was private parties, individuals, governments or who actually provided the fireworks but next year we might plan our evening to be in a protected spot with a better view to see what we could only hear.
On Saturday when I’d finished my cleaning and had run a couple of errands, I got a call from the office Elders that started with “Elder Belnap, we’ve just done something awfully stupid”. I sat down and they rehearsed that they’d taken the office van to a store for groceries, gasoline and to find new windshield wiper blades. The problem was they’d filled the tank with regular gasoline and it’s a diesel engine. They hadn’t driven it far but it was far enough for them to recognize something was wrong in the way it ran so they shut it down. I told them we’d better leave it there, call the dealership for advice and deal with the problem Monday. I drove out to pick them up, delivered them at the office (that’s where they eat and keep their food) and had just parked the car when Pte Clegg called (from Vigo) to talk about the piso cleanup we’d done. After that we talked about gasoline & diesel engines and a few other things before I could go home and prepare for Fast Sunday. He mentioned how interesting it is that, while observing the missionaries working with investigators and members, how totally awesome they are and 30 minutes later you’re led to question whether or not they have a brain. I guess these missionaries are transformed from kids to awesome and back to kids until, for most of them, they reach a point of maturity that we see in them when they return home.
After reading each day in the D&C we’re starting to become more familiar with the Spanish there so that’s helping us to grow and we started an assignment this week to read the Book of Mormon (in English for all whose first language is English) by April 1st and mark all the references relating to Christ. For me it’s been an interesting exercise these first 2-3 days but it’s going to add a little more study time for us each day – we’ll report how things go.
Well, that wraps up the report for this week. We’ve sure enjoyed the opportunity to see and talk to many of you and appreciate your efforts to set it up and adjust to our schedule. We love all of you, thank you very much for your love and support and pray the Lord’s choicest blessings on each of you. We’re grateful for the opportunity to be involved in the missionary work here – we’re getting better at what we’re supposed to be doing – and bear witness of its divinity.
All our love, E&H Belnap
It’s been another fast but good week for us here in Spain – we now have the holidays (at least those that we celebrate) behind us, we’ve have a couple more Skype conversations and had some accomplishments in our work as missionaries. When we’d finished last Sunday with our letter and card writing the weather was nice enough to take a walk so we walked for about 50 minutes along our usual paths – it’s cool enough outside to wake us up. Having finished reading the Book of Mormon we started the D&C thinking that’s be a little easier for us to cope with – it’s actually been harder for us. There’s an entirely new set of vocabulary words in the Spanish D&C so it’s going to push us for a while (at least) to learn that language and understand the meaning of the scripture as we read it.
Monday was a fairly typical day in the office and it’s often our busiest day of the week there. We do quite a bit of end-of-week stuff where Sunday in the last day of the week (even the calendars here are printed that way) so we try to get as much of that stuff done as we can. I’ve been working on a couple of things with church administrators in Madrid and it appears that they’re on an extended holiday vacation – I get either no response or an out-of-office response to my email messages. We’ve been told that the biggest holiday of the season occurs Wednesday of this week – I’m not sure what it’s called but think it’s a celebration of the visit of the 3 Wise Men to the young Jesus. If it turns out to be something spectacular, I’ll tell you about it next week.
On Tuesday, I went with three of the elders in the office to meet with the landlord of the piso we’d vacated in San Sebastián. We’re not officially out of the piso since we’re paying rent thru January but we had to try to resolve some concerns about the conditions in the apartment. I’d seen the apartment when we moved the elders last month but was trying to hurry and attributed most of the mess to the fact that they were still packing and moving but was shocked at the state of the piso after they supposedly moved all their stuff – it was a filthy mess. The combination of total neglect on the part of both landlord and missionaries had created a dreadful sight. We went thru the piso room by room trying to assess what had to be done to make it livable – he accepted responsibility for painting and possibly refinishing the floors (they appear to have had nothing done to them but sweeping for a very long time) and we agreed to clean and try to restore furniture and furnishings as they were when missionaries had moved in 5 years ago. With that understanding we returned to Las Arenas and began making plans to buy some things needing replacement and return to clean. On Friday, Flo & I and 3 elders from the office drove back to San Se, met the two missionaries there (they’d had four in San Se until 3 weeks ago) at 10:00 and went to work. Flo tackled the cleaning of the kitchen which she says was absolutely the filthiest place she’s ever tried to clean while the rest of us worked on the other tasks. One of the major problems was that elders had turned a wall unit from one wall to the opposite wall of the living room – the problem was that the wall unit is longer than the room is wide. We got the base turned by lifting one end enough to make the turn but the top of the unit was too tall to allow that. We took it to the stairwell outside the piso and tried to turn it there – too much unit for available space. We tried disassembly but couldn’t move some of the screws to do that. We finally took one end down a hall and were able, by removing a door, to turn the unit like we needed it – we had to have spent two hours getting that task done. Elders had removed light covers and replaced bulbs to provide more light so we had to disassemble light fixtures to get the covers back on. One of the elders rewired a light as we reassembled, hit the switch and power went out in the entire piso – we’d blown the main breaker. I worked on one of the lights, got side-tracked for a while and, when I resumed work on it, got buzzed because someone had come along and turned the switch on hoping for light – at least it worked when I was finished. We spent over 6 hours working straight thru the day – hauled uncounted bags of trash to the dumpster, swept & mopped over & over and Flo turned the kitchen into a place that you could prepare food without endangering life. We’ve still got a couple of repair problems to address but the place now looks like humans could inhabit it.
We’d planned with Chad & Trisha to do a Skype call on Wednesday – we didn’t have info about how he was going to do it but we finally made a guess and called Angela’s userid. That was a good guess and we got to talk with them, say hi to their kids, hear about their Christmas and have a very enjoyable visit with them. I’m hoping any others who might want to do a Skype call will read into this the need to exchange userid information before waiting to answer a call from our end.
Blair, Brian & Jackie had prepared for a Skype call with Mom on her birthday Saturday – that was very enjoyable for us because we got to talk to Mom, Brian & Jackie, Blair & Vicky and Lynda and say hi to most of the kids who were there. We were on for about an hour & 15 minutes and the time sure flew by for us – we had a great evening and thank all of you for taking the time to talk with us.
I think I’ve mentioned before the concern here about using our US drivers licenses for driving in Spain. The mission presidents have basically agreed to take the drivers-ed courses to obtain a Spanish license – since they’re here for 3 years and do a lot of traveling, they’ve agreed to pay the costs ($1000+; everyone fails the first time because the schools charge based on the time a student spends in school). But for those in our situation, it’s hard to swallow the time and expense of a driver’s license when we do so little driving and our mission would be half over before we got the license. So this week I applied for an International Driver Permit which is good for a year and am hoping that’s sufficient for my needs thru the remainder of our mission.
We didn’t have anything to do (one can only study so long before the brain is fried) or anyplace to go on New Year’s Eve so we had a quiet evening in the piso. That is until the fireworks started in earnest about 11:00. They went for about 2 hours, hitting a crescendo around midnight – I’ve never experienced anything like that. It really sounded like bombs were falling all around us and even with everything closed & shutters down, it was impossible to sleep. The next morning our street was lined with drunks, streamers, glitter and other trash and there were occasional explosions going off around us all thru the day. I don’t know whether it was private parties, individuals, governments or who actually provided the fireworks but next year we might plan our evening to be in a protected spot with a better view to see what we could only hear.
On Saturday when I’d finished my cleaning and had run a couple of errands, I got a call from the office Elders that started with “Elder Belnap, we’ve just done something awfully stupid”. I sat down and they rehearsed that they’d taken the office van to a store for groceries, gasoline and to find new windshield wiper blades. The problem was they’d filled the tank with regular gasoline and it’s a diesel engine. They hadn’t driven it far but it was far enough for them to recognize something was wrong in the way it ran so they shut it down. I told them we’d better leave it there, call the dealership for advice and deal with the problem Monday. I drove out to pick them up, delivered them at the office (that’s where they eat and keep their food) and had just parked the car when Pte Clegg called (from Vigo) to talk about the piso cleanup we’d done. After that we talked about gasoline & diesel engines and a few other things before I could go home and prepare for Fast Sunday. He mentioned how interesting it is that, while observing the missionaries working with investigators and members, how totally awesome they are and 30 minutes later you’re led to question whether or not they have a brain. I guess these missionaries are transformed from kids to awesome and back to kids until, for most of them, they reach a point of maturity that we see in them when they return home.
After reading each day in the D&C we’re starting to become more familiar with the Spanish there so that’s helping us to grow and we started an assignment this week to read the Book of Mormon (in English for all whose first language is English) by April 1st and mark all the references relating to Christ. For me it’s been an interesting exercise these first 2-3 days but it’s going to add a little more study time for us each day – we’ll report how things go.
Well, that wraps up the report for this week. We’ve sure enjoyed the opportunity to see and talk to many of you and appreciate your efforts to set it up and adjust to our schedule. We love all of you, thank you very much for your love and support and pray the Lord’s choicest blessings on each of you. We’re grateful for the opportunity to be involved in the missionary work here – we’re getting better at what we’re supposed to be doing – and bear witness of its divinity.
All our love, E&H Belnap
12-27-09 - Weekly Report from Delwyn
Well, it seems like the most important and exciting thing this week was Christmas and the opportunity to talk to nearly the entire family. We didn’t have a lot of gift-giving here – things are expensive and we’re pretty conscious of the need to send or carry with us anything that’s treasured. There was enough investigation done to let us get Skype set up on our computers so we could talk free for as long as we wanted to or could stand it. We’d had a couple of test runs earlier that gave us a working knowledge of what had to be done to connect to each other and we’d set up to talk to Heidi’s family first so, on Christmas day, we went to the office about 5:30, set up the laptop and made the call to Heidi. We have the ability to do a 1-to-1 video call so we got to talk to Sam, Heidi, Carlee & Preston for a few minutes then dropped that call and made a group call to all the other kids but Chad (no Skype at his place yet). It was apparent early that, with that many people, each wanting to talk and ask questions, that wouldn’t work very well so we decided on an order for calling each family based loosely on their schedules. We talked to Meyers then Collins then Thorntons and then a group at Needlers. Travis had his laptop set up there so we got to talk to him then Angela then all the Needlers and then with Travis again. It became apparent at the first call that we weren’t going to be able to stay within the 15-minutes we’d planned for each call so we got further and further behind the schedule as we went along. At the end we were asking callee A to telephone callee B to tell them to answer the computer call that was coming. For us it was a great experience and so good to see and talk to each of them and we’re grateful to Skype for coming up with the idea and technology to allow it to happen for us. We’re still exploring ideas to get hooked up with Chad & Trisha and hope it happens sooner than later.
Our Christmas activities started Wednesday evening with an open house at the mission offices. We’d invited the people of the branch, the missionaries had invited their investigators, the Hnas had decorated and prepared lots of food & goodies – only 2 sisters from the branch came. That was disappointing but, on the upside, there was plenty to snack on in the office for that evening and following day. On Christmas Eve we were invited to the mission home for dinner with Pte & Hna Clegg and the 5 Elders in the office – had an excellent roast beef dinner. The Cleggs had put a jigsaw puzzle on a coffee table that that occupied the Elders before and for a long time after dinner – we don’t know how long. After we’d done some clean up we excused ourselves, drove to Las Arenas and spent the obligatory 30-45 minutes looking for a place to park – it was even worse than usual. We declined a breakfast invitation for Christmas morning so we could sleep in and relax a little more. Flo roasted our gold-plated turkey, made dressing using a loaf of ‘pan’ she’d left out overnight and added some other traditional Christmas dinner dishes – it was absolutely great. It was a bright sunny day and while the turkey & dressing were in the oven we rode the transporter across the Bilbao River and walked for over an hour on that side of the river. It was an interesting walk for us and we saw other things we want to visit and explore in the future so we’ll go back. When we returned we both were hungry (don’t seem to get that way very often) so digging into Christmas dinner was great.
As for the rest of the week, last Sunday, after studying much of the afternoon, we got ready and per an invitation, took the Metro to Bilbao for their ward’s Christmas musical program. The chapel was full of people and that didn’t count the many people who depicted the birth and mission of the Savior thru narration, song and costumed portrayal – it really was well done. Before and as it started, some were taking pictures and Flo asked me to snap a picture of an early scene but no sooner had I taken the picture than someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me that no flash photography was allowed – we put away the camera. They used the missionaries in the chorus and for special music and the wife of our branch president sang a medley of songs – she has a beautiful voice and performed very well. They gave each of us a small bag of sweets and we visited for a few minutes then came home
Monday morning we left our piso a few minutes earlier than normal, went next door to Marcelo’s store and bought tomatoes for the meal today, caught the Metro and went to the Bilbao chapel for our zone conference. From the windows of our train I could see snow covered hills close-by - it’s an interesting contrast of bright green grass just below the blanket of snow on the hills. We’d all been asked to come fasting with the objective of setting mission goals for next year. We got seats on the back row, Flo helped get the meat for the taco salad warming and the morning session (to 1:00) was devoted to teaching principles of goal setting, exercising faith and getting the Lord’s work done. Pte Clegg told us we’ll have 39 missionaries go home in the April – August period of 2010 and we’ll go from 72 to 60 in that time period. But we’re still going to try to do as well with teaching and baptizing as we’ve done with more missionaries and will need to keep doing it to get our work done. There was significant follow-up on principles taught by Elder Caussé and some musical talents displayed between segments; we had taco salad, cookies & pumpkin bread to eat, did a game to exchange white elephant gifts (we ended up with our own peanut butter and a different bag of candy), they distributed laminated pages of the mission theme and each got a gift bag with a card from the First Presidency, a Book of Mormon (read it by April 1 and mark all passages referencing the Savior), a cookbook and some treats - we finished about 3:15. I started trying to remember zone conferences in my Germany mission – I’m not sure we had them. We had a few mission conferences but there was much less contact between missionaries and our mission president in that mission. We had group pictures (I think Flo put one on her blog), Flo & I helped with dishes (I dropped & broke a plate), we gathered our stuff and returned to the piso. Flo hung up a load of laundry, we took some things and went to the office where I connected to the internet, processed some email, sent the family letter and we started Skype. We had some trial and error experiences but talked with Heidi, Danette & Monika and firmed up plans to try to talk with everyone together for a few minutes on Christmas day.
On Tuesday we had a busy day mostly trying to catch up our Monday work, Flo fixed fried chicken and the obligatory array of dishes that go with it to feed the secretaries and I think they got enough to eat. We’ve been trying to get our cars serviced at the dealership but the schedule has been hectic enough that we sometime have them there longer than necessary just because we don’t get an exchange made. Pte Clegg has asked me to get a system worked out on his laptop that allows the missionaries to send their weekly letter by email rather than snail mail so I spent several hours on Wednesday trying to get that done. All the missionaries email addresses are on Hna Clegg’s laptop but not on the president’s and the only way I knew to move them was to send an email to the missionaries, copy the president then add each of the addresses to his contact list. Then I tried to make a distribution list and use that in a rule definition that will segregate incoming letters into a folder for his use. I didn’t get all the set up work done yet so if any of you have advice for me on things to do or not do, please pass it along.
The rest of the week has been down-time for the holidays – we’ve had a chance to relax, do some reading and studying and reflect on the reason for the season. We’re thankful and excited to be here involved in share the message of His gospel with the people of Spain. We finished reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish lst night and will start reading the Doctrine & Covenants today (Sunday) – we’re understanding enough that it’s becoming more like reading scripture rather than just reading words. We’ve pondered and discussed things from the Book of Mormon that never occurred to us while reading it in English. We love you all very much and want especially to wish my dear Madre a very happy birthday. If you get your computer set up with Skype, let us know and we’ll make a video call to you. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and we wish you a Happy & Prosperous New Year. Love from Spain, E&H Belnap
Our Christmas activities started Wednesday evening with an open house at the mission offices. We’d invited the people of the branch, the missionaries had invited their investigators, the Hnas had decorated and prepared lots of food & goodies – only 2 sisters from the branch came. That was disappointing but, on the upside, there was plenty to snack on in the office for that evening and following day. On Christmas Eve we were invited to the mission home for dinner with Pte & Hna Clegg and the 5 Elders in the office – had an excellent roast beef dinner. The Cleggs had put a jigsaw puzzle on a coffee table that that occupied the Elders before and for a long time after dinner – we don’t know how long. After we’d done some clean up we excused ourselves, drove to Las Arenas and spent the obligatory 30-45 minutes looking for a place to park – it was even worse than usual. We declined a breakfast invitation for Christmas morning so we could sleep in and relax a little more. Flo roasted our gold-plated turkey, made dressing using a loaf of ‘pan’ she’d left out overnight and added some other traditional Christmas dinner dishes – it was absolutely great. It was a bright sunny day and while the turkey & dressing were in the oven we rode the transporter across the Bilbao River and walked for over an hour on that side of the river. It was an interesting walk for us and we saw other things we want to visit and explore in the future so we’ll go back. When we returned we both were hungry (don’t seem to get that way very often) so digging into Christmas dinner was great.
As for the rest of the week, last Sunday, after studying much of the afternoon, we got ready and per an invitation, took the Metro to Bilbao for their ward’s Christmas musical program. The chapel was full of people and that didn’t count the many people who depicted the birth and mission of the Savior thru narration, song and costumed portrayal – it really was well done. Before and as it started, some were taking pictures and Flo asked me to snap a picture of an early scene but no sooner had I taken the picture than someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me that no flash photography was allowed – we put away the camera. They used the missionaries in the chorus and for special music and the wife of our branch president sang a medley of songs – she has a beautiful voice and performed very well. They gave each of us a small bag of sweets and we visited for a few minutes then came home
Monday morning we left our piso a few minutes earlier than normal, went next door to Marcelo’s store and bought tomatoes for the meal today, caught the Metro and went to the Bilbao chapel for our zone conference. From the windows of our train I could see snow covered hills close-by - it’s an interesting contrast of bright green grass just below the blanket of snow on the hills. We’d all been asked to come fasting with the objective of setting mission goals for next year. We got seats on the back row, Flo helped get the meat for the taco salad warming and the morning session (to 1:00) was devoted to teaching principles of goal setting, exercising faith and getting the Lord’s work done. Pte Clegg told us we’ll have 39 missionaries go home in the April – August period of 2010 and we’ll go from 72 to 60 in that time period. But we’re still going to try to do as well with teaching and baptizing as we’ve done with more missionaries and will need to keep doing it to get our work done. There was significant follow-up on principles taught by Elder Caussé and some musical talents displayed between segments; we had taco salad, cookies & pumpkin bread to eat, did a game to exchange white elephant gifts (we ended up with our own peanut butter and a different bag of candy), they distributed laminated pages of the mission theme and each got a gift bag with a card from the First Presidency, a Book of Mormon (read it by April 1 and mark all passages referencing the Savior), a cookbook and some treats - we finished about 3:15. I started trying to remember zone conferences in my Germany mission – I’m not sure we had them. We had a few mission conferences but there was much less contact between missionaries and our mission president in that mission. We had group pictures (I think Flo put one on her blog), Flo & I helped with dishes (I dropped & broke a plate), we gathered our stuff and returned to the piso. Flo hung up a load of laundry, we took some things and went to the office where I connected to the internet, processed some email, sent the family letter and we started Skype. We had some trial and error experiences but talked with Heidi, Danette & Monika and firmed up plans to try to talk with everyone together for a few minutes on Christmas day.
On Tuesday we had a busy day mostly trying to catch up our Monday work, Flo fixed fried chicken and the obligatory array of dishes that go with it to feed the secretaries and I think they got enough to eat. We’ve been trying to get our cars serviced at the dealership but the schedule has been hectic enough that we sometime have them there longer than necessary just because we don’t get an exchange made. Pte Clegg has asked me to get a system worked out on his laptop that allows the missionaries to send their weekly letter by email rather than snail mail so I spent several hours on Wednesday trying to get that done. All the missionaries email addresses are on Hna Clegg’s laptop but not on the president’s and the only way I knew to move them was to send an email to the missionaries, copy the president then add each of the addresses to his contact list. Then I tried to make a distribution list and use that in a rule definition that will segregate incoming letters into a folder for his use. I didn’t get all the set up work done yet so if any of you have advice for me on things to do or not do, please pass it along.
The rest of the week has been down-time for the holidays – we’ve had a chance to relax, do some reading and studying and reflect on the reason for the season. We’re thankful and excited to be here involved in share the message of His gospel with the people of Spain. We finished reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish lst night and will start reading the Doctrine & Covenants today (Sunday) – we’re understanding enough that it’s becoming more like reading scripture rather than just reading words. We’ve pondered and discussed things from the Book of Mormon that never occurred to us while reading it in English. We love you all very much and want especially to wish my dear Madre a very happy birthday. If you get your computer set up with Skype, let us know and we’ll make a video call to you. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and we wish you a Happy & Prosperous New Year. Love from Spain, E&H Belnap
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Merry Christmas from Spain
Merry Christmas to all of you. We pray you had many blessing given to you. We sure did.Our Christmas Eve dinner at the Mission Home. President and Hermana Clegg are always great hosts. They make every thing very nice and they are so loving and kind. Just before we dug in.
While they were waiting, Hermana Clegg got a puzzle. They were really having fun. They did get the border in before we ate. From top going left. Elders Anderson, Hansen, Dredge, President Clegg, Elder Strickland, and Elder Ashby.
Elder Dredge is looking up this time. Boy we have good looking Elders. They were really hard at the puzzle here.
Do we look ready to dig in. Everything was really good. Everything was supper good, as the Elders would say. We had a huge turkey that Hermana Clegg bought. But she paid a lot less then I did for our Christmas turkey. Live and learn. We are still eating from it. I plan on using every morsel of it. 
No one went hungery. Plenty food and we eat just about everything. Hermana did send some stuff home with me and so the Elders came to our piso on Sunday and we finished it off. Elder Ashby in the back with the gravey.
Do we look like we are enjoying this or what. The salad was like our spinich salad but she also put some lettuce. Way good.
We took a picture of our Christmas tree and presents before we opened them. We had a great time. The white thing on the left is our Refrigerator. We got it early, and love it, but we say we got it for Christmas also.
This is another Christmas tree on our shelf. The lights were from a battery. They went out real soon and they use C batteries and we can't get them here. But it was really pretty.
I got a new table cloth for Christmas. I think it is really nice. It sure makes our table look better. How do you like our Christmas breakfast? I believe it is Special K. The Rio is our milk. Which we don't have to refrigerate until we open it. They last in the box for 3-4 months. The other box is Juice. That too doesn't need refrigeration until it is opened. Quite convenient. The milk isn't all that great. Not bad when you put it in things. And in the cereal it is ok too, porbably because of the sugar. I don't mind it. Not good just to drink though. So Delwyn always has juice instead of milk for breakfast.
On Christmas day, Dad and I went for our walk. This time we crossed the river. You can see the bridge at dads head. We got to ride the tram. First time. Now we are looking towards our piso instead of away from it. It was such a beautiful day. Many people were out, also.
This looks like the same picture with out Delwyn.
When we got back, our turkey was done. So we finished cooking and getting things ready. Doesn't look like much. But for 2 people, there was more than enough. 2 rolls, dressing, (Which I made out of their pan here, it was probably the best I've ever made) corn, gravey and turkey plus mashed potatoes. At the end of the day, we got to go to the office and talk to our kids on Skype. Ohhhhhh so fun. We were going to talk 20 min. a family. Ended up way longer than that. I loved every minute of it. Then, the next Wednesday, we got to talk to Chad and his family. On Saturday Jan, 2, we got to talk to Delwyns mom on her 92nd birthday. Also, Lynda Belnap, Gene was sick, Brian and Jackie, Rey and Deaun, and Blair and Vicky plus a few of the kids. Way fun. I love this Skype.
Here is a picture of our present Danette gave us. Two aprons. Mine says, "Boss of the Kitchen" and Delwyns says, "Assistant of the Kitchen". I think it is very appropriate. This picture was at the end of the day. I really look bad, it must have been a busy day or just a bad hair day. My hair is getting better. I still don't look great. I think this mission is making me old or something. I guess I can't blame the mission, it is great.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)