The harder the work, the greater the reward

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great week. This week in Guadalajara has been crazy as they celebrated the Fiesta de la Virgen de la Antigua. People in Spain love fiestas, and some of them are super crazy. This week it wasn't uncommon for people to be out in the streets all night long, and some nights they had concerts literally the entire night. We could hear some of them from our piso. On Saturday there was a big fancy lunch in the park across the street from our piso (apartment) where we saw people cooking three giant pans of paella. Also as a part of the celebration, each morning from Thursday through Sunday they had bulls run in the street from a bullpen to the city bullfighting stadium. They set up fences along the route and every morning at 8:00am there was a gunshot and a minute later there would be bulls running by our apartment building. The crazy thing was that as a part of the festivities, people would run with the bulls. They'd wait somewhere along the route until the bulls got near, then they'd run for as long as they could until the bulls got too close, then they'd go to the edge and jump over the fence. It was really cool to see that every morning but at the same time all the festivities made missionary work hard because half the people were drunk and the other half are less willing to talk to you because there are so many other interesting things going on.
Last Wednesday a member got his mission call to the Spain Málaga Mission. He's really excited, and he reports to the MTC in Spain on October 25th. He's going to be a great missionary. Whenever he can, he comes with us to lessons and he helps a lot.
On Saturday a member invited us and some other members of the ward to play soccer with a group of his friends from work so that morning after the bulls ran, we walked to the church where we got a ride to the soccer field. It was pretty fun, and even though I was definitely the worst player there one of the members said I was better than most missionaries from the United States, which I took as a compliment. The member who invited us said that we could talk to his work friends afterwards and that it would be a good way to introduce them to the church and even though I think they just wanted more players there, it was good because afterwards we talked about why we're here and such.
Last Tuesday we had a zone conference in Madrid where we talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon. He emphasized how important it is in our lives and how we can learn so much from it. The Book of Mormon is an inspired work and it can bless our lives in so many ways. When we read it sincerely and with a prayer or question in mind, it can give us guidance and answers. Then they had some other speakers there visiting who were some of the first missionaries to come to Spain and the first convert in Spain which was really cool. They talked about how hard the work was but in the end, it pays off. The harder the work, the greater the reward. We all have hard things that we need to do in life but those are the things that bless us the most when it's over.
I hope you all have an awesome week. Next week our preparation day is going to be on Wednesday instead of Monday because we're going to the temple that day, so it'll be a little longer before I email home again. I love you all and hope you have a good day today.
Elder Corey Dobbs

Picture with Isidora, Martín's sister

The giant paella

Waiting for the bulls from our window