Another Week in Ciudad Real!!

First off, thanks for sending me a ferw pictures this week! I loved that in the picture that dad sent, "I" was eating black olives!!! hahaha I eat so many olives here... mostly green though. And a cool thing is that the olives are starting to turn black on the trees now! it is cool, somtimes you can just see them walking around in the streets!!!

So I will first tell you about my thanksgiving celebrations!! yes, plural! we celebrated thanksgiving twice. I will attach pitures of both celebrations! First, last p-day, we celebrated with all of the missionaries from our district! each missionary companionship was in charge of cooking one dish and bringing it! we had such a great meal! it was like a real thanksgiving... even though we had chicken instead of turkey! (turkey is a little hard to comeby here!). Hermana Sturgess and I made an apple pie and a greenbean casserole! I thought of Meme when I was making the greenbean casserole! It turned out really great even though we had to make it in a pinch because they dont even sell things like cream of mushroom soup here!!! Along with the things we made, other elders made mashed potatoes, a sweet potato casserole, and the cleggs made chickens, stuffing, a pomagranite salad, and a soup! Oh, we even wre able to get cranberry sauce from a specialty store in Malaga!!!!!!! wow!!! it was soooooo good! we had such a great time. After the meal, we all went around and said what we are thankful for. It turned into a really spiritual experience. All of the missionaries in our district are amazing and they are all so grateful for the gospel and so grateful to be missionaries. What a great bonding experience!!

So, our second celebration was on Thanksgiving night at Presidente and Hermana Sanz´s home (president of our branch). They had never celebrated thanksgiving before, but they really made a special night for us!!! We taught the kids how to make handprint turkeys, and told them the story of the first thanksgiving! We then ate! we had little pizzas, salad, and toasts with cream cheese and salmon for appitizers!! then we had chicken and mashed potatoes for our main dish!!! it was soooo nice of them! we even had a candel lit on our dinner table! they really wanted us to feel like we were at home!!! It was so sweet! we have a great branch fmily here!!!

This week i also got to eat at my neighbor, Isabel´s home! Isabel is 91 year old woman, and our friend Myra takes care of her. They invited us over for mediodia, and we had a very spanish dish... Migas!!! Migas are kind of like stuffing, but kind of taste fried! you eat migas usually with some kind of fruit because otherwise they are very dry! you should look it up. they are quite intereting! it was so fun eating a really spanish mediodia with them! isabels son was visiting from Mardid, so he was the one who cooked with us! Isabel is an amazing woman. She lived through the rise and fall of the dicttor, Franco, and was an orphan t the age opf 15. She has seen a lot in her life, and loves it when we come over. She is extremely catholic and tries to convince us that we should pray to the virgin mary.... haha. But she is always willing to let us shre spiritual thought... she thinks the scriptures from the book of mormon re beautiful!

Things are going well here. We are still teaching and working hard. No big news on that front. We through we would have some baptismal dates set this week, but it just hasnt worked out! I heard tht my MTC companion Hna. Crowder had her first baptism in the mission!! thats so exciting for her! She is in Sevilla!.

Anyways, things are going well! I love ciudad real and the members here. Thanks for sending me the pictures and things!