We are in the Canary Islands!!!!  Yes, that is us!! If you are wondering why we are in pants, well it is our P-day and we thought that we were going on a hike in the mountains with the Elders and Sisters.  But we went to the the cathedral in Las Palmas instead.  Yes, Dad is talking on the phone as usual (hahahaha).  We climbed the cathedral's stairs up to the top and this is where we are.  It was quite the climb!  Also check out my new "island hair doo"!  Yes, that is about as good as my hair is going to get while I am here.  With the humidity it goes absolutely crazy!!

Here a little look at a part of what Las Palmas looks like!!  It is a pretty populated city and is beautiful!! The cathedral that we are standing on was started around the time Columbus set sail.  He stopped here and lived on Gran Canaria on his way to and from the Americas.

This is Sister Zitting and Sister Marshal.  Sister Zitting is from Tennessee and came over to Spain with us and then was transfered with us to Gran Canaria.  Sister Marshal is from Utah and has been here for six months.  They are both great missionaries!!

Here I am in front of the main alter in the Cathedral!





Dad at his "professional music directing" again!!  You know he still thinks that he is good at it!  Too bad he doesn't read music!!










This is our JAS (Young Adult Center) in Las Palmas.  This is where we spend a lot of our time!    Institute, Family Home Evening, activities and the english class that we teach are all held here.  We also have district meetings and meetings with our JAS president here also.  It is a basic meeting place for many things.  I will take pictures of the inside for my next blog.

This is our chapel in Las Palmas.  There are three branches here on Gran Canaria.  One in Las Palmas (the biggest), one in Telde (about 15 minutes away) and one at the south end of the Island (that is about 1/2 hour away).  We will be in all three branches.  They all start at 10:00 a.m. so we will switch off each sunday attending one of them.  We have young adults in all three branches.






Check out the name of this calle (street)!  It is Calle del Espiritu Santo or in english, The Holy Ghost Street!  This street is right next to the Cathedral.  We would love to live on this street!

This is Christopher Columbus's house.  It is right next to the Cathedral.  It is now a museum all about Gran Canaria.  Christopher Columbus lived here in different times of his life.  He stopped here on his way to the Americas.

This is what the inside of Christopher Columbus's house looks like.  Pretty nice!  I wouldn't mind living here!!

Flamingo Dancers in Madrid!!

Last saturday night our MTC President suggested that we go to this flamingo dinner and show.  So the Sullivans (another senior couple), Sister Smally and us went to this famous flamingo dancing show and dinner.  It was really good!  In fact the two flamingo dancers in this picture are the two best in Spain!  Wow, they could really dance!!  Also the classical Spanish guitar players were the best I have ever heard!!

I know that this guy playing the guitar looks like he is asleep, but really he is not.  I don't think that I have ever heard anyone play the guitar as well as he did!!  In fact there were times that you thought that there must be two guitarists playing at the same time but no, it was just him playing!!  He always looked like he was playing with his eyes shut, but obviously he can do that well!

These are our Italian Elders and Sisters with their two teachers singing their national anthem.  Sunday night, in the MTC in Madrid.  We had a farewell fireside.  Every country that was represented, their national anthem was sung.  It was such a cool thing to see and hear!  The Italians were the biggest group and by far the most fun!!  They were always so animated and loved everyone!  We will really miss them!!

These are our Russian Elders and Sisters with their teachers.  There were a few more Elders and Sisters that also spoke Russian but they were from Khatazastan, Lithaenia, Latvia and the United States.  All of these people were much more reserved than the Italians but just as wonderful!!  We loved them too!  Infact, we will miss them.

These are some of the Russian speakers singing a russian musical number in our talent show in the MTC.  They were so good and very humores!  The two sisters were very good!!  The one sister on the left is from the United States.  She speaks russian because she lived in Russia for 8 years.  The other sister is from Khatazastan.  They were companions and were so much fun to talk to!!

This is our MTC President Sitterud and his wife Sister Sitterud.  They are from Utah and are awesome!!  They are singing a number in our talent show.  They are so good to and for the Elders and Sisters in the MTC.  They are coming to the Canary Islands on the 19th of February to do a missionary seminar to the youth on our island.  We can't wait to see them again!

This is us with the Sullivans on our last night in the MTC in Madrid.  We left early the next morning for the Canary Islands!!!  The Sullivans were in the MTC in Provo with us and flew over to Spain with us too.  We really miss and love them.  They are in charge of the Young Adults Center in Madrid.  They will do a fantastic job!!  They both sang in the Tabernacle Choir for many years!  Wow, they have beautiful voices!  If you are wondering if Dad and I sung in the talent show.......the answer is NO!!   Everyone knows that we are not talented in this area!!

Do you remember where this is?  This question is for our children.  We had a lot of great memories here!

Does this table setting bring back memories of breakfast?

What about this lobby?  Does the words "white trash" come to mind?

Yes, Dad and I went to the Palace Hotel and ate lunch!  We went to the Prado Museum and since the Palace Hotel is just across the street we went and had lunch there.  It was so much fun and so many memories came back from when our family stayed there 11 years ago.  It still looks the same and we felt like all of our kids would suddenly appear and have lunch with us!  Hopefully we look a little better than we did 11 years ago (Katie suggested in her email that we wear old jeans and pajama tops to relive our experiences!).  The food and service are still as good as we remember!  

This is the Prado Museum.  Wow, we had so much fun spending the afternoon there!  We managed to see all of the rooms of paintings and sculptures!  Yes it took a few hours and we even managed to slip in a 5 minute nap on one of the benches to give us more energy to continue on!  We loved every minute of it!  They even had a special exhibition of Van Dyke and Rico.  Wow, they were absolutely amazing.  The collection of Van Dyke was probably the best I have ever seen of his work!  We were introduced to Rico, who was a landscape painter and painted a lot in Spain and inVenice.  His paintings were so good they looked like photographs!

The picture that is sideways (sorry, I am still learning how to put pictures in this blog) is Saint Jerome's Cathedral.  It is right behind the Prado.  Wow, it was so beautiful!!  We didn't have a chance to go in it because we had to get back to the MTC for the devotional but I thought you would enjoy seeing it.  The picture below it is just the street next to the Prado.  I love this part of Madrid, I think that it is the most beautiful part of the city!  We loved walking around in the streets on our way back to the metro.  I know that it looks like all we do it sight see, and yes that is partly true, but our little vacation will end on monday morning, February 5th, because we fly to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria where we will be serving our mission working with the Young Single Adults in the center there.  We are so excited!!  We have had one day of training here in the MTC with the couple that is in charge of all the CES missionaries.  We have also been to the Madrid Temple twice.  Once with the Madrid Mission missionaries and once with the whole MTC missionaries.  We will also attend another session tomorrow, saturday with the MTC missionaries.  The Madrid Temple is the most beautiful Temple that I have ever been to!  It is full of marble, gold, and the most beautiful rugs and fabrics!!  Yes, we are going to really try to and twist Katie's arm to consider getting married in the Madrid Temple so everyone can see it!!  Being with the young Elders and Sisters in the Temple has been such a wonderful experience.  Yesterday, four Elders and one Sister took out their own endowments.   This was usually the second time for many of the Elders and Sisters also, so we felt really needed in helping all enjoy the Temple.  The Temple President's wife took all of us for a tour of the Temple after our session and shared a few stories about the building of the Temple.  It was an amazing time!  Wednesday afternoon we had to file our residential papers at the immigration office in our barrio here in Madrid.  We were told that it would take about 3 hours, but we were lucky and only took 1/2 an hour.  We then taught the Russian and Italian MTC missionaries how to play kick ball.  We had bought a soft playground type ball and we invited them to play with us during their exercise time.  There is one American Sister here going to Russia (she knows russian because she lived in Russia for eight years when she was young.  Her Dad is an international lawyer.) and she was able to translate and explain to the Russians how to play.  Another missionary who speaks both english and italian translated for the italians.  It was so much fun!!  They all caught on pretty fast and wow, can the Italians play kick ball!!  They are so good at soccer so it was an easy fix.  The Russians really enjoyed it too.  The Sisters were very competitive and loved getting the Elders out!  We had so much fun and they want to play again on saturday afternoon again!  One Russian Elder said that we need to teach him how to be a "true American" and not just a "fake American".  They all love to ask about the United States and our culture.  They all have watched a lot of American movies and they love to speak english with us.  We will miss all of them because we have grown pretty close to them this past week.

This is where we live, in the Madrid MTC.  We live on the 5th floor (see our room in the last post) and have a beautiful view of Madrid.  We love watching the sunrises (the sun does not rise until around 8:15 a.m.) and sunsets.  The training classrooms are on the 4th floor and the cafeteria is on the 6th floor.    The temple missionaries live on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors in apartments.  The MTC starts on the 4th floor.  You can only enter the 4th floor if you are in the MTC and have an access key.  

The Temple is only 60 steps away from the MTC building.  The Madrid Temple is absolutely beautiful!!  We attended the temple this morning with our Mission President and all of the missionaries that are currently serving in the Madrid area.  It was my first time being in a session that was in spanish!  The inside of the Temple is full of marble and beautiful spanish fabrics!  We loved every minute of it!

We get to sight see a lot because we are just waiting for our residency papers.  So here we are at the Royal Palace.  We take the metro every day to get around Madrid.  It is a beautiful metro and we were so confident about finding our way around that is after we finally found our metro stop on the map. We couldn't find it for a while and one of the cashiers in the ticket booth at our stop was laughing at us and finally came out and showed us where we were on the big metro map.  When we came back that night we thanked her and she gave us high fives that we actually made it back!  I don't think she had much faith in us making it back home!  

We found this very little smart car that said "rent me and love me" but I guess the reflection of the sun didn't let the sign come out in the picture.  We thought the car was so cute!

Here I am in front of the Royal Palace at the big fountain.  I was rather excited to finally have arrived in Madrid, so I am showing my enthusiasm!

We finally made it to Madrid!!  We arrived Saturday morning and here we are right after we arrived with our mission president, President Jackson and his wife Sister Jackson.  We are at the mission home after a long night on the plane (I promise we will try and look better on future photos!).   President Jackson and his wife are so wonderful!!  They have made us feel right at home, fed us a delicious lunch, orientated us and then took us to the big main park in Madrid to watch the missionaries sing and contact people.

Here the missionaries are singing in the park.  These set of missionaries that are in the MTC this week are native speakers from Russia and Italy.  They were all singing in their own languages the same hymn.  Two Sister missionaries that flew over with us were also singing in spanish.  It was pretty impressive to hear all of the languages being sung!  

We are now living in the MTC.  Here is a picture of our room.  Yes, these are two sets of bunk beds!  We each sleep on a bottom bunk.  I guess we are true missionaries!!  We are here for only a little more than a week.  We leave next monday, February 4th for the Canary Islands.  We have to stay here and get our residency papers before we can go to the Canary Islands.  The MTC has been the best experience!!  The MTC President and his wife are great to all of the missionaries.  The Elders and Sisters from Russia and Italy are the best!!  English is the common language but there is a lot of translating going on in all of the meetings.  They have made us feel so welcomed!  The spirit is so strong here and you realize that this is a world wide church!!  Also, they Elders from Italy can really play soccer!!  It is so much fun to watch them play!!

I need to go to dinner now but I will post more later tonight.  Hasta Luego!

This is Edward one of our teachers at the MTC.  He is from Honduras and is awesome!!

The second picture is of our scheduling coordinator and she was so much fun and made our life in spanish immersion great!  The third picture is of our teacher Sister Keller, the Sullivans and Sister Smalley who were all in one of my spanish classes.

TODAY I RECEIVED MY VISA TO SPAIN!!!  This is a monumental day!!  Reed received his visa from the Spanish Consolate last Tuesday, but my visa was not processed at the same time so today I met with the Spanish Consolate.  Here I am with the Spanish Consolate with my visa!!  He works at UVU and we are in the lobby to his office.  He was the nicest man!!  We fly to Madrid first thing in the morning!  Can you tell that we are excited?  We are a little worried about the Salt Lake City airport being closed.  Today we received freezing rain and the airport closed for a while because a jet landed and then proceeded to slide off the runway.  Tonight they said that 2 out of the 3 runways were already opened so we hope that we have a plane and a runway to take off on!  We are flying through Atlanta and then on to Madrid.  We are flying with another senior couple, the Sullivans.  They are the medical couple for our mission and are so much fun!  There will also be two young sisters flying with us.  We were able to meet them today at the office of the consolate.  One of the sisters was temporarily assigned to the Pocatello Spanish Mission and the other sister was temporarily assigned to the Provo Spanish Mission while they were waiting for their visas.  One sister has never been outside of the United States, so she is excited but nervous.  The consolate explained to us that we will have to spend a few days in Madrid while our residential papers are obtained.  Then we will be off to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria!  We are all packed and ready to go.  All of our suitcases weigh exactly 50 pounds (according to the luggage scale that we have) so we hope the airline scale gives us the same number!  I can't believe that we are finally on our way!!  Our eternal mission call is finally happening!!  Hasta luego en Madrid!!