Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

This week was black and white. I had great days, not so great days, wonderful investigators, and frustrating investigators. Like we got to teach the guy who works at Starbucks the Word of Wisdom. I thought it was going to be quite the lesson. Turns out, he doesn´t like or drink coffee! Woot. But he does love tea--but he straight up accepted the Word of Wisdom. We finally got the address of the guy who keeps failing our lessons at the church! Now he will never fail! We were getting pretty sick of that. He´d come sometimes. Other times, he´d call us desperately wanting to meet in an hour so we´d get to the church then. Right when we travel all the way across our area to the church, he cancels the lesson he sets up. But no more! We have some pretty golden investigators and some that just need to read or pray or go to church. I don´t want to get into that because I´ll get frustrated. Anyways, I´m really excited for the lessons this week!

No, gypsies aren´t Africans.* Gypsies are nomads from India who spread across Europe a while back. They are a distinct race, and everything. You learn the physical differences and they do look quite a bit Indian sometimes Ya, they´re called "Gitanos". My experience with them is that they generally have parties on the street, drink, smoke, yell at people, and sing loudly in public. But now they hibernate for the winter so we´re safe. There´s quite the cultural mixing pot here. We give out half our books in Spanish but the other have have been Arabic, Romanian, French, African dialects, and whatnot. It´s all very interesting. We are now teaching this Romanian guy and he was so excited that we had a Book of Mormon in Romanian (Cartea lui Mormon). He said he´d read it all!

We have our own little washing machine in the kitchen. We have drying racks that we fold up and hang dry everything. If you don´t have fabric softener things are really stiff. I will never take for granted the beauty of our wonderful dryer again. So many other simple things too: Shower heads that stay on the wall, beds that fit Americans, normal sized elevators that don´t feel like death is at hand, etc. I got my hair cut at a haircutter. Apparently they are mostly Morroccan men. It looks pretty dang European/Russian. It´s hard to describe. The other guys in my piso** are Elder Miles and Elder Anderson. In my district are Hermana Hansen, Hermana Thunborg, Hermana Clay, Hermana O´Keeffe, Elder Quesne, and Elder Alpblanalp and the guys in my piso and my comp Elder Shumway.

Random stuff. I finally had the infamous Choco Flakes cereal. It was pretty good. It´s practically cookies in a bowl of milk. It´s Portuguese I believe. We have a game like slugbug but instead of VW Bugs we have Nuns and Priests. Nuns are one punch and Priests are two. We yell, "Monja!" and punch. Monja is a nun. And there is actually a guy who sells chestnuts roasting on an open fire! I´m so excited to get that when it get´s cold. So excited. That and hot chocolate (which is literally just like melted chocolate) and warm churros. Yum!

Sorry if I didn´t respond to much. Hopefully I have news of a baptism soon! Love you all loads!

-Elder Morgan the Younger

*Our home teacher served his mission in Madrid and he told us the gypsies come from Morocco and other parts of Africa.
**apartment

Some random pictures Elder Morgan sent with his letter.

MTC Group and Teacher

MTC Fun

"Sweet Building" in Downtown Madrid

View from their Madrid Apartment