Tuesday, April 10, 2012

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

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