Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Canary Islands!

Bonjour Familia!

Thanks for the emails everyone! Thank you Mom for the long email that describes every one's lives - honestly, I love it! Keep telling me everything - it is fun to hear. I was so glad to hear about to'ona'i! Tell my whole to'ona'i family that I love them all.

Holy Smokes! I can't believe Courtney is going to get her mission call so soon! I almost cried when I read your email, I don't know why really, I think that I am just overwhelmed and feel really blessed and humbled to know that I have so many prayers and thoughts with me to help me out. You are all awesome! Hopefully Courtney gets her mission call to the Tucson mission or something so you don't have too bad of withdrawals with your kids all growing up and leaving home! :)

So, yes! I'm in the Canary Islands but there won't be pictures until next week, sorry. I am only allowed to take pictures on P-Days so we are going out after we send our emails to travel around and take some pictures.

Ok, Mom, I thought of you when I was studying my scriptures the other day - I read 1Nephi 5:8 "...the Lord hath protected my sons... and given them power whereby they could accomplish the thing which the Lord hath commanded them." So don't worry - I'm being protected out here! I am as safe as ever! I actually meant to tell you about that scripture last week but I forgot. Here is another cool scripture - Romans 15:24 - look it up. (I looked it up - I had no idea that the New Testament had a scripture about Spain!)

So here is a little update of my week: I have come to the conclusion that Gran Canaria is kind of a mix between San Diego, Haiti and Madrid. I've never been to Haiti but the apartments here look Haitian. Everybody here smokes so everybody here has terrible breath and not very many people have teeth! It is one of the biggest problems that keeps people from getting baptized - they want to get baptized but they can't stop smoking. We have a little bit different schedule than other missionaries. We wake up at 7:30 and go to bed at 11:30 with mediodia (siesta) from 2 to 4 everyday. Normally missionaries get an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner but we get 2 hours at lunch and no time for dinner.

Ok here is a good experience; about a week ago my companion and I were trying to find a less active member's house somewhere where we were not familiar at all. It was getting pretty late and we couldn't find his apartment. It turned out the address didn't exist and now we were way far away from our home. So we were pretty frustrated and decided to head back. When we started to head back, a guy ran in to us and said he wanted to come back to church and he had just been waiting to run in to some missionaries! He is from Sevilla, Spain and hadn't been to church in years. His name is Antonio and he has been to church with us for two weeks now and we have taught him two lessons. He comes to English classes every week and family night and I love him so much. He feels like an uncle or a grandpa to me. I know that we were guided to find him. He is so awesome and I think he asked to be my friend on facebook mom so friend him and then he can put some pictures on!

My Spanish is going alright. I spent my time in Madrid trying to get comfortable with the theta and now they don't even use it here in the Canary Islands! -__- I'm starting to get a watch tan line that I am pretty proud of. I have a few questions I would like answered please! Is Morgan sleeping in my room? (yes) How is that going? Can you send me some pictures of the family and stuff please? There were a lot of other questions in there that I am not going to put here for everyone to read - he does recognize that I shouldn't! Mom, I trust that you edit these letters please before you send them out to the world right?

I love you lots and pray for all of you! Thank you for everything Mom and Dad - I think about how blessed I am to have such great parents all the time. The mission is great! The church is true! Til next week!

Love, Elder Ridd


2 comments:

  1. I Love reading these!!!! Such an amazing missionary!!! Love you Elder Ridd!!!!!

    ReplyDelete