Firstly, we were contacting in the morning last Friday (I think) and we met a woman named Alicia, a Spaniard woman in her late 40's early 50's. To our surprise, she was interested in listening and agreed to meet later that very same day. She's been taught twice now and she really likes the gospel, the Book of Mormon, and the Church in general. We set a baptismal date in the first visit, and she's doing great! She has apparently worked in marketing a lot of her life, but she is now studying civil law (derecho) and wants to try and get in to that. We bumped into her last night in the street and she expressed her desire to have a bigger perspective than just the worldly and material. Today at 3:30 we'll be teaching her about the Plan of Salvation. I'm excited because I know it's just what she's looking for.
Another cool experience that ought to tickle Stephanie Raymond's fancy: When I was on exchanges with Elder Ottesen the Monday before last, we contacted a man named Isaac. At first he was unresponsive to our words, but finally saw us and motioned that he was deaf. A lot of people who we approach on the street pretend that they're deaf, so at first we didn't believe him, but we were soon convinced. We used a pamphlet of the Restoration to explain to him, using words and sentences written in it, what it was that we were there to do, and I wrote him a message asking if he would be interested in having us come by later. He agreed and wrote down his name and phone number. We communicated for the next few days via text messaging, and then visited with him on Saturday.
When we went there, we met his wife, Andrea, who is also deaf. They are both from Chile, and we had a nice visit, communicating through gestures, things written to each other in a notebook that I had brought with me, and some Spanish Sign Language that they taught me. I learned how to say prophet, give, receive, God, Jesus Christ, family, friend, child, brother, the same, more, less, best, love, want, thank you, you're welcome, teach, witness, Saturday, Sunday, intelligent, all, see you later, and several other things. It was a nice visit but we weren't able to share much of our message because of the difficulty of communication. To be prepared for the next visit, I asked a member of the ward to do a little research and print out some gospel terminology in sign language for us. Remember how I included that request in the last email for advice from Stephanie? I would have really liked to have gotten that today! There are so many aspects of the gospel that I do not know how to apply to a deaf person, for instance, how do they pray? How do they enjoy church if everything is spoken or sung? They are both really great people and I feel that they would be interested in learning more about the gospel, but my knowledge is lacking in this area. We'll have our next visit before I can get a response from you, but if you could send me a bit of information in the next email, that would be fantastic. Thank you!Other than that, there's not much going on. We taught a Russian the other day, and we'll be teaching a man from Pakistan today. He speaks Urdu, but he said that he understands English well enough to read and understand, so we won't have to try to find a Book of Mormon in Urdu for him to read. Whew! :) I've had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world here in Spain, but boy would I just love to meet more Spaniards! :\ We'll see.
In other news, I'm planning on making Hidden Valley Ranch Crispy Chicken today. It seems to be a worthy alternative to my specialty fried chicken, but it's baked instead so it's much healthier. We'll see how it turns out. Now that I'm a free-range missionary again, I have time to cook and eat good food, so I'm going to try and sharpen my cooking repertoire in the meantime.
I went on exchanges to Segovia two days ago, something that was very nice. We visited a lot of recent converts and less-active members that I had known and taught them doctrines to try and get them to go back to church and endure to the end. It was nice to see those people and to have a positive influence in their lives again.
Sounds like everything's going well back in Utah, with family and friends and the like. Thanksgiving Dinner will be somewhat tragic this year. We're going to eat lunchmeat turkey with mashed potatoes. We haven't been able to think of a substitute for turkey gravy yet, so we're more or less at a standstill in that regard. As for stuffing, we haven't the slightest clue how to start, so we'll probably leave that untouched. It definitely won't measure up to last year's glorious thanksgiving dinner, but it'll be alright. I have lots to be thankful for, in any case. Maybe I'll make fried chicken.
Well, that's about all I've got this week. It was fun. Thanks for the emails, love, packages, prayers, letters and thoughts. I love you! Happy Thanksgiving.-Elder Knorr
