another great letter!

Hello family!! 

How are all of you? Well this week has been hard, but very rewarding.  As I said a little bit ago, we have a fecha.  Antonio, he is around mid 50´s and lives with his cousins who are very good members.  We set up the date for the 21st of April.  The best part about this is that a couple nights before our lesson he said he had a dream about 2 rivers and an angel.  One river was clean the other dirty.  The angel told him to change his ways and get into the clean one and get out of the dirty river.  So he wants to be baptized.  How cool is that!

 Well, as I said this week has been hard, actually really hard.  Spanish is my main challenge.  I am understanding a lot more and speaking more, but I still need to work very hard.  Elder Woodbury helps me out a lot and we read together and study together so I can learn the ins ands outs of Spanish.  He really pushes me and wants me to study harder everyday, so I do! :)  He is a great companion.

Well let me tell you about my other investigators.  First off we, have 3 fechas or dates. (most spanish missionaries use the word fecha as another word for a baptism date) First Antonio, then we have Amanda.  Amanda is a mother of 2 young kids who are members.  After visiting with her we learn her parents and most of her family are good members.  After the first lesson we felt we should ask her to be baptized, so we did and she said she has no problem with that and she wants to be.  Second we have Pamella.  She is harder and has a lot of doubts but we have helped her with those and cleared those up.  The other Elders met her before I got here.  So she has been taking the lessons for about 2 months now.  After that we have Benito.  He will have a fecha soon.  He is a father of 2 young boys (less than 3)  and is living with a less active member.  They aren´t married, but he has stressed that he wants to be soon.  So awesome! We didn´t even need to tell him.  He has talked a lot about all the points we were going to bring up.  So he is on his way!  The sad thing is they are going through some hard times and they need a lot of help.  The sweet thing is that they always have a smile on their faces and want us to come over and help them out.  Their little baby was in the hospital for the past couple of days.  We felt we should go and visit her.  When we did, she was sitting down reading the Book of Mormon.  How awesome is that.  We talked to her for a bit about the chapters she has been reading and she loved it.  I do have more, but I will tell you more about them later on.

Thank you Mom and Dad for the package and Elder Woodbury loved the candy! He says thank you so much!  Thank you also for the letters and the pictures of Bella.  They always make me smile :) 

This week, everything was pretty good.  But, I do have a story.  Well yesterday, we are in a lesson with a less active lady and her daughter.  She is very nice, but has a lot of doubts.  As we are talking, her niece starts acting crazy - like a demon crazy.  She was all over the place, slamming her feet against the door and screaming!! Ohhh the spirit left so fast! I was just praying so hard that she would be silent and that we can get out of this.  Luckily, she calmed down about 15min later.  I tell you what, I thought I heard the Devil in her voice. In the end, the lesson went okay. It was good, but not the best. We taught her and brought the spirit into her home.  We gave her daughter a blessing of comfort because she has been going through some hard times.

Easter was good, but it was not like an American one.  Sunday was normal and everyone talked about Easter and what not.  During this time, Spain does a holy week where everyone takes off work and school to go and play kinda of like a spring break, but for everyone.  We had dinner at a member's house.  It wasn´t like ours, we had a lot of pasta and thin sliced meat.  I wasn´t sure what it was, but it was good.  After, we had some cake.  I finished my cake a little early.... so the daughter takes my plate.  I think she is going to clean it and put it away.  Nope!!! She put on another slice and said here ya go!!! so I ate it :) It was so good, but I was about to gag.  We don´t serve our own food.  Usually, we get a plate, big or small, but usually big.  I say I don´t eat that much and they just laugh at me and give me a big plate.  :(  ahhh good ol Spain, but my weight has been good.  On member meal days I don´t eat breakfast,  just a piece of bread to tide me over till lunch. (most meals are at lunch)

Other than Easter and some awesome lessons, nothing really big happend.  The mission is hard, really hard. When I hit my bed I am out for the night!  But some fun facts about Spain, fanny packs are big here.  Mom you would fit right in! ahahah  Everyone wears one.  Gypsys (think thats how you spell it) wear couch fanny packs.  haha Second, I am very very big here.  Most people stare at me and say.. wow.. you are big! of course in Spanish.  I usually look down. I have only looked up twice :)  Just to let you all know, I am in a part of Spain that has a lot of south americans.  Our part has a lot of people from there.. not Spain :P  That is all that has happend this week.  A lot of really good lessons and people staring at me :)I love you all so much and I hope you all have a great week with everything!

Love your favorite person in Spain,

Elder Lobo

aka.

Elder Laubaugh

latest letter from alex!

Hey family! How are all of you doing??  Thank you all so much for the letters. They are the best and they always keep me in the loop :)  Well Spain is doing good.  We are lighting it up like always!  The past couple days though have been very hard.  People just don't want to listen, but that just means we have to work extra hard to get to them. 

This week has just been a funny one also.  One fashion that I have noticed is mullets.  Yes business in the front, party in the back.  I was in the metro, waiting for the metro.  A family walks by... the 5 year old kid has this nice long mullet! hahahahah yes i did laugh a little bit to myself.  Another time, we are at this place, I forget what the name was, but this guy walks in.. no lie, he has on these red pants, some rock band shirt and yes, a nice mullet. :) 

This week we did get a lot done, but as I said, we had some really hard days.  Yesterday actually was a great day  We contacted all day, buy it wasn´t supposed to be like that.  We had about 3 lessons planned for the afternoon.  In the morning we had District meeting so we were going to go from there, eat some lunch, study, then go to our lessons for the day.  Well everyone didn´t want to hear from us so they just weren´t at home or just said they didn´t want to hear from us.  It was really sad and it hurt, but I hope we get to them.  Yesterday was just a bad day, it was long, rainy, and no one wanted to talk to us.  There are a couple of good things that came from it.  We taught this part member family that haven´t had the lessons for about a month now. We stopped by at around 8:30ish to see if they were home.  They were and we talked to them and they are doing just great and still want us to come over more often and teach the husband.  The wife is the member and I believe the kid is around 6 or 7.  First good thing. Second is my Spanish is getting better.  I can understand my trainer a lot better compared to the first day, and I can understand the members better too :)  I found that out yesterday when I was talking to the wife of our investigator.  She just started talking and I just was responding without a pause.  The other thing is funny i guess.  So here in Spain, people are always in a rush and just don´t want to talk.  Well when you do stop someone you have to wait for an odd reply because that´s what you are going to get.  So i usually start out by saying hi, we are elders blah blah blah.  Then I say, we believe in God and Jesus Christ, Do you believe in them?  The most given reply is... I´m Catholic.  Yes, it is odd but, it is really stupid. So I say... soooo yes?  And then we go on from there.  I have also noticed that a lot of people do not believe in God or anything.  They just say they are this and that.  It is so sad, but I get the chance to talk to them and see why and how this became, so it is really neat to see other people's views. 

So the other day, Spain had a holiday.  It´s called Huelga day (or riot day), where everyone strikes and makes a mess. Yes, I did get a poster and I will be sending it out soon after I get a couple things from here.  It was really strange, but the Metros were very slow and the buses were too. We waited for about 15min. for a bus when it should be about 3min.  It was fine we had a couple of lessons spaced out because of that day and we contacted a lot but it was just strange.  It was a really forward and a lot of people were waving flags and saying "huelga!!!!!!!" over and over again... so I took some videos from our piso :)  hahaha

As you can see, I am doing well, everything is so good here and I love the work, the people, and the Lord.  It is so amazing how He works.  I was having a rough week, it was long and painful, but today was great.  We went to the temple, the best place ever.  I got to rest and think about these past couple of weeks and see how much I have grown.  The Lord is preparing me for a lot.  I am so blessed to be in Madrid in this time.  The people are hard, but with a lot of prayers, and talking, we are getting people who really have been wanting to learn more.  It is awesome to see who the Lord puts in our way to talk to.  We have been setting a goal to talk to everyone this week and for now on.  We play a game called pistol and we have to stop a person for a couple of seconds till it is the next ones turn.  Yes it was my turn for about 10min, but I talked with everyone, literally,  I stopped everyone I saw.  It was amazing on how many people didn´t stop, but also how many people, wanted to listen.  We didn´t get a lot of numbers and lessons, but we did teach a lot about us and the Church.  It was a really good day and week in that.  Yes some days are hard and you just want to stop and rest, but I am telling you what, my planner does a lot of wonders.  I have written on it "light it up!" and whenver I am down, I look at it and I feel so much better :)  I love it!  Everyone does.  A lot of the missionaries use it now because I said it and they saw my planner :)  They love it and also the natives :)  In Spanish it is called  enciéndelo!!  hahah so many people use it :) I love you all so much and I miss you all, I hope this letter was good. :)  I hope and pray that everyone has a good week, always know that i am looking at the stars at night :)

Love,

Elder Alex Laubaugh

               In another email, Alex shared:  Conference was so goooodddd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  it was amazing that all of the talks answered my questions :) the Lord loves me and he loves his missionaries :)  I love Pres. Eyring's talk about challenges and yes, I did pray for one... and yes it was an answer that I already have :) aka... Spanish :P