MadridWaites: July 28 to Aug 4

For the first time in my life I feel tall. It has been such an interesting experience. I have decided that the average height of a mature woman in Spain and especially in Portugal is about 4 foot 6 inches. I am a good head taller than half the women attending the temple here. I have had a constant backache since I arrived, and I finally figured out why. It is from stooping over to hear these miniature people. But while I am here I am going to enjoy my height, backache and all.

We enjoyed tremendously our trip out of town the weekend before last, and are still reveling in the experience. I published a post on it, so I won't say anything more about it. But it has gotten us more excited about seeing other parts of Spain. We have our map all marked for places we are anxious to see. I hope that some of you will be able to come to Spain and discover this wonderful country. We are so blessed to be here.

We had a little bit of news that we aren't sure how we feel about it yet. The President decided to shake things up a little and mixed up the shifts. We were changed from our group to another, along with another couple, the Hawkins. We are told that this happens maybe once a year. We are very sad to be taken from the people we have known and worked with so closely. The good news is that there are other wonderful people we will get to know better. The best news of all is that we get two weeks in a row of afternoon shift. I can't tell you how much I hate getting up early in the morning. Our first time with the new group will be tomorrow.

We had a really great Temple Missionary Conference today. President Tenney is such a wonderful man and leader. He always seems to be inspired on the topic of his message. Today we studied a talk given by Richard G. Scott, entitled "Trust in the Lord." He gave this talk just a couple of months after his wife died. It is such a beautiful talk treating the topic of adversity. I would like to share one quote from this talk.

"Ask and ye shall receive" does not assure that you will get what you want. It does guarantee that, if worthy, you will get what you need, as judged by a Father that loves you perfectly, who wants your eternal happiness even more than you do.

I felt very blessed to be in this special meeting and was inspired, and certainly felt the love of my Heavenly Father.

OK, now I get to tell you about my very exciting afternoon. A very nice man named Miguel Becerril, who is responsible for handling our residency cards, invited us to go gliding with him. He has a glider and belongs to a gliding club. He picked us up after our conference and drove us about 50 miles out of Madrid. He is a very interesting man and is fun to talk to. He speaks perfect English.