A little local culture with Don Quixote!
On Wednesday, we took our first full day off since arriving in Madrid in order to attend the “Mercado Cervantino” festival which is a local cultural event in the city of Alcalá de Henares, one of the eastern suburbs of Madrid which is also the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes. It is essentially a medieval fair, but celebrating the heritage of the classic Cervantes novel “Don Quixote” is its central theme. Thomas Hamilton, the son of the mission leaders for the Madrid South Mission joined us for the day, which was awesome. The kids all enjoyed the arts, handicrafts and of course booths with all types of traditional Spanish food. Aly wasn’t super excited about eating the roast pig, though!!!
The old center of the town shuts down for about 5 days during the festival and all the streets are blocked off to allow only foot traffic. Fun facts: the city also is home to the University of Alcalá (one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1293) and the national government archives of Spain!
In the open area near the old walled fort portion of the city center the “Torneo Medieval” takes place, reenacting the competitions between gallant (or not so gallant) knights. In this contest, our “Red Knight” ultimately conquered the villainous “White Knight” to claim the victory!
Not surprisingly, the kids insisted on finishing this day of culture with the quintessential medieval Spanish meal – MacDonalds!
This week we also got some real missionary work done as we held our third Missionary Leadership Council, which is a meeting of all the young missionaries that we work with who are responsible for helping us train and mentor the other young missionaries. These 22 elders and sisters are great examples of service and faith. It is an honor to work closely with them!
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