I love Spain

 I love Spain. This place is quite literally the coolest place in the whole world. I haven´t been able to see a whole lot of it yet because we are in classes for most of the day but we go play soccer every day so we get to see a little of the area then. We also get to go proselyte in the park every Saturday which is an amazing experience but more about that later. The sun here is beautiful. The sunrises in the morning sitting in class is always one of the best parts of the day, and every evening on our way to dinner we get to see the sun set right over the beautiful temple that we live next door to. That’s probably the best part of my day.

 When I was told before I left that a mission was going to be hard I had no idea what they were talking about. I understand now. Never have I had days where I´ve been so discouraged or sad or frustrated in my life, but rarely have I ever had days where I have been so happy, so uplifted and so excited to be doing what I am doing. I love it here. It is only because of these hard things that the sweet days are so sweet.

My companion and my District are amazing. My companion is Elder Armstrong he´s from Idaho. He is a solid guy with a great testimony of the gospel. It has been great having him by my side as we have had to do some hard things like teach 30 min lessons in Spanish, a language that neither of us knows well, but the Gift of Tongues, the ability to speak and the ability to understand a foreign language far before normally possible is real. I know that there have been times when I have been lost for words and I´ll know what I need to say next and how to say it even if I haven´t studied those words since I last took Spanish freshman year. Our District is amazing we have six Elders and 3 Hermanas. They´re all really great missionaries. During district meeting on Sunday we talked about why we had decided to serve a mission. It was probably the coolest and most spiritual experience I´ve had so far. Everyone bore their testimony of Jesus Christ and his role in their lives. It was amazing.

I feel like the time here is going by so slow and yet so fast at the same time. It’s an odd experience. On  Saturday we got to go proselyte in the park which was amazing. Having only been here for three days really and no language training we had to go talk to people in a foreign country about what we believed. It was really neat that as we exercised faith and then went and did the Lord helped us to communicate. It was at the same time hard because we really didn´t have any of the language skills to communicate. I am really excited for this Saturday though because we get to go again and take our language training, and our past experience with us.

It is amazing being here. I love this gospel and I am excited to be able to learn the language as a tool to help me share my thoughts and my feelings about it with the people here. I know that Christ is our Redeemer who wants us to return to live with him.

I love you all,

Elder Gustafson