Our First Week

We have finished our first week in the Madrid temple. It was a difficult, and an amazing week.  We work seven hour shifts without a break.  This last week we worked mornings which means we get up at 5:30, and you all know I am not a morning person.  However, we managed to get to bed fairly early, which is a real change, and I did amazingly well, especially with jet-lag. We work really hard, as this temple is short handed in the extreme.  The local workers are not known for their promptness, or for letting people know when they cannot be here.   A stake in Portugal was here this last week but they did not bring the assigned workers with them.  I have been so impressed how just a handful of sisters are able to get the work done.  I have struggled because of my lack of language.  Most of the sisters are able to do the ordinances in all four languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian) and some can do it in Russian. I feel pretty inadequate.  I am, however, able now to perform the ordinances in Spanish.  I'm slow, but others say my pronunciation is impeccable. I owe that to Greg.  He has drilled me for months on my pronunciation, and he is extremely picky about it.  I was feeling a little agrivated at him, but now I am so grateful he drilled me so hard.  I just wish he had drilled me as hard on my vocabulary.

The temple work here is so much more complicated. As I said before, we are very short handed.  There have been between 8 and 15 women, at the most.  In Boise we had about 45 women doing the same amount of work.  So we run all day trying to cover all the bases.  The temple is about twice the size of Boise, so that is a lot of running.  It is also mentally exhausting because we can have patrons speaking 4 or more languages in the same sessions.  I am so beat by the end of the day just because I am so tired of trying to communicate with people whose language I don't know. The temple also has to be much more flexible than I am used to.  

This week a large group of people from Portugal came and stayed in the hostel here for the whole week.  Apparently they come one to four times a year.  They go to the temple every day, all day long.  They do one session after another after another, and any other ordinances they can fit in.  There are so many who are in very poor health, and yet they insist on being in the temple every day.  I assisted an elderly lady who had cancer and will surely not live much longer.  She was blind from her chemo, she was bald and looked so tired and weak.  She was the sweetest woman, and it made me feel really bad for not appreciating the temple enough when it was so easy for me to go.  These people do not make excuses.  One woman had to be taken to the hospital after spending 8 hours or more in the temple.  One of the other workers said she thought she was suffering from heart failure.  I'm told many come from so far away and there are many handicapped who continue to serve with all their strength.  I love these people so much.

I have never been kissed by so many people in my whole life.  Most of them are complete strangers, but they are the huggingest, kissingest, people in the world. Almost everyone who enters the temple wants to hug and kiss me when they come and hug and kiss me when they go.  My first Sunday in church a young teenage boy greeted me with a kiss on each cheek.  That's something you don't see at home.

The temple president and his wife are the kindest nicest people I have ever met.  I have never felt so loved and appreciated. I am very sad that they will be going home in October or November. When President Tenney set us apart as ordinance workers he gave us the most beautiful blessings we have ever had.  I felt very overcome, and even Greg was crying.  That alone was worth the trip over.  The other counselors and their wives are also very loving and kind.  One of the couples is French, and the other are Spaniards. The French, the Payas, speak English, and I am very grateful. The Somozas do not speak English. He will be our next temple president. I'm a little worried about the language barrier. 

 I thought I knew enough Spanish to get by, but I was never so wrong.  I can put a few sentences together if I think about it, but I cannot understand a word these people say.  There are so many versions of Spanish, and many of them don't sound the least bit familiar.  Besides that, these people did not read the text book I did, and they don't ask the questions they are supposed to ask so I can give them the correct answer.  They have minds of their own, and never ask the questions I know the answer to.  Go figure!  I thought they would be better prepared for my arrival. (Just kidding.)

The other missionaries are great.  There are 7 American couples.  We work with 3 of them on our shift. The others are on the other shift, so I haven't gotten to know them nearly as well, but they are very friendly and have been quite welcoming to us.  I am so grateful to have a few English speaking people I can turn to when I am really in need.  There is a very sweet single sister in her 80s on our shift.  This is her third mission.  She is amazing and has helped me so much.  Then there is Anna Mancini.  We met on the first day we reported in Salt Lake.  We had been asked to meet her that morning and help her find her way and try to make her feel less stressed.  She is 70 years old, and a very interesting lady.  She speaks 5 languages fluently.  She was born in Italy, and lived there until she was 8 years old.  Then her family moved to Brazil where she learned Portuguese. She also lived in Barcalona studying art, and in Paris, where she learned French and Spanish.  She also lived in Japan for 10 years but did not learn Japanese.  She now lives in San Diego, CA, and speaks very good English.  We have become close friends, and I love her dearly.  She loves to cook and is excellent at it.  She had us over for dinner today and prepared a beautiful meal.  I'm afraid she is going to want to feed us every Sunday, and I feel guilty.  I have not yet learned how to shop for groceries here, and don't have the facilities I'm used to, so our meals are very simple and usually cold.

We have not seen much of the city yet.  We have mostly been trying to get settled into our apartment, and find the things we need to be comfortable. I am having a little trouble with all the walking.  It is so much work to get anywhere that by the time we arrive we are exhausted, especially if we go after a shift.  Most of our outings away from the complex will be on Mondays when the temple is closed.  Tomorrow we plan on taking the hop-on-hop-off bus around the city, and maybe going to the Prado if we are not too tired.  Anna is going with us.  Saturday night the couples that are on our shift went out to dinner together.  They chose TGI Fridays, and I was thrilled to know there was one here.  The area where the restaurant is, was so beautiful that I am anxious to go there on our own with my camera. The architecture here is amazing!  I love the "old world!"  We just don't have this kind of history and architecture in the states.  Everyone has been talking about the trips they took over the two week break when the temple was closed.  They all had amazing trips.  We have a good long list of places we need to see.  I hope we get to at least a few of them.

We miss our family, we are over worked, we don't have the creature comforts we are used to, and I am lost without speaking Spanish, but we have never been happier.  We are so privileged to be here.  We are so grateful for this opportunity and so grateful for the gospel in our lives.  We feel the blessings constantly.  We are so grateful for our family and for our friends who have been so supportive.