Felices Ferias de Valladolid

Happy September everyone! I can't believe how fast time is flying. It feels like 2017 just started last week. Anyway, transfers were this week, and my companion Elder Waters and I are both staying here in Valladolid another transfer. There will also be two new missionaries in Valladolid, which will help a lot because the city is huge and there's a lot of work here. They'll get here in a couple of days.

The annual Ferias de Valladolid started last Friday, and the city is going crazy. The holiday was originally supposed to celebrate San Lorenzo, but most of what we've seen is concerts going on around the city, a bunch of stands to buy food and wine, and people drinking even more alcohol and staying up even later than usual. The festival lasts for 10 days, so this upcoming week will be interesting.

Elder Bridger Allan and his trainer Elder Dávalos came down for intercambios on Thursday! I spent the day with Elder Dávalos, but the 4 of us went to a pizza place for lunch. Good old Elder Allan and I talked a lot about all the greatest things that had happened in the grand ward of Castaic while we were growing up. Viva Castaic!

We found out some big news for our mission last week: starting this month, we will start using social media to proselyte, which includes stuff like Facebook and Instagram. We also will be one of the first missions in the world to start using smartphones. I know missionaries in New York are using them already, but I'm not sure where else they have them. There's a texting app called Whatsapp that everyone in Spain uses. So that will make getting in contact with people about 47 times easier, because some people have Whatsapp and don't even have a calling plan. It'll be crazy to see how this all works out.

We're meeting with an old lady from Bulgaria named Veselka, who speaks Spanish alright. Her problem is understanding us when we speak. We've met with her for the second time yesterday, and the time before, we had given her a Book of Mormon in her language (she had tried reading it in Spanish but didn't understand it), and when we asked her how much she had read, she said 1 Nephi. When people say they've read from the Book of Mormon, it usually means that they read a chapter or two. We asked her how many chapters she had read, to see if she had any questions, and she said 22 chapters. I've never seen anyone read that much from the Book of Mormon after they first received it. We talked about the Plan of Salvation, because her husband died a few months ago, but I don't think she understood a ton of what was going on. She has a pamphlet in Bulgarian which will hopefully help her understand it, but it was really cool to see how people are prepared to learn about the gospel!

Other cool miracle of the week: on Saturday night, we were waiting for a bus, and this guy comes up and starts talking to us. At first he said he had gone to our church a couple times, but as we got on the bus with him and started talking to him more, he told us he was a member who hadn't gone to church in years. He told us that his finding us made him want to come to church again, and he came the next morning! In sacrament meeting, he got up to share his testimony, and said that after years of not coming, he got here and felt the peace he needed. I love it when the Lord puts us in the path of his children so that we can help them.

I hope you all have a great week! Felices Ferias de Valladolid!

-Elder Dobbs

the Rio Pisuerga, which is right next to our piso

the plaza mayor on Sunday night as we walked by

an angry letter we found in our elevator, which basically said that whoever let their dog pee in the elevator needs to clean it up