Traveler in Madrid?
This week we prepared for nine missionaries to return home over the next several days and then welcome six new missionaries to take their place! Every six weeks we follow this pattern of missionaries leaving who have completed their service and a new group arriving. We’ll talk more next week about all that this process entails. For now, we are grateful to have had a few minutes on Thursday evening for a late dinner with the Hamiltons at the Madrid version of Chipotle. Aly found her lovely white dream horse in the courtyard of the mall after dinner!
The second week of school for the kids was a little better than the first (but if you ask Aly and Bryson, they will tell you “not by much”). There is still a huge learning curve for them as they navigate through so many things in a foreign language, including classes that have proven to be much more in Spanish than we were originally led to believe. We are proud of them for attacking this challenge with resilience! Here, Bryson is dressed in his “sports” uniform that he wears on days that he has PE, swimming or tennis.
We were saddened that Hermana Wojciechowksi had to return home to Germany for some medical testing. We spent the evening with her on Wednesday and wish her a speedy recovery and quick return to serve with us again in Spain.
Below is one of several whiteboards that Trista and I use in our office. Every day it looks like this (or even more packed) as we make lists of the things that need to get done that day and plan out our upcoming training sessions or conference outlines. This particular day we strategized our mission-wide Zoom training on improving the coordination of efforts between missionaries and members of the local congregations. Fortunately, the training was much more clear and effective than the scribbled notes on the board might suggest . . .
We also bid a fond farewell to Jared Rivas Oballe, one of the two assistants who helped us navigate the most difficult challenges during our first six weeks in Spain while getting the mission up and running and creating the organization, structure and processes that will hopefully guide us through the many months ahead. We are particularly appreciative that he extended his missionary service for an extra six weeks in order to help us during this critical start-up phase. A big shout-out to his mother, who got a wonderful birthday present on Sunday by seeing her son for the first time in over two years when they met us at the mission office to drive him back to their home about an hour south of Madrid. We are so grateful to the entire Rivas Oballe family for their love, support and sacrifice for the work in Spain!
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