Hospitalet

Familia,

I love it here. I love the members. I love the area. I love the heat. I love that I sweat so much and that I can't shower and night. I love that we can´t control how cold or hot the water is. I love that none of us know how to cook so we eat peanut butter and corn flakes (like the cereal) for our sandwiches. I love that we don't have a dryer and that my clothes get rock hard in the sun. I love that we walk everywhere and take the metro. I love that the members feed us, ALL THE TIME. I love that I´ll probably get fat. I love getting called Jehovahs Witnesses and politely correcting people. I love speaking Spanish. I just love it.
L´Hospitalet is a little city right outside of Barcelona. The members are all so great. A lot of them are from Ecuador or South America. There are a few Spaniards in the ward, but not many. Everyone is so nice. On Sunday, I tried to introduce myself to everyone. People smile, they try and talk to me in Spanish, and it´s so hard to understand them, but I just smile big and try to answer them back. They love me all the more for that, at least I hope so. All the Brothers love giving the missionaries hugs, and all the sisters love giving handshakes. I swear, I´ve shaken more hands and learned more names and faces already than in my whole life before. I simply love it here.
So my companions are Elder Awerkamp and Elder Atkin. Both are from St George. Elder Awerkamp is 6´3 and went to the same high school as Andrew my room mate. He did a year at BYU too. Elder Atkin played basketball at Dixie State college in Southern Utah, and he´s about 6¨5 Both of them are great Elders. They are very impressed with me, and said that I´m one of the best missionaries they´ve ever been with. I´m humbled by that. I hope that you got my letter to the President. I tried to include a lot of the stories in there, so read that.
So, you can send mail to the mission office, which is the Barcelona address. That´s easier than sending it to me in my piso, because who knows how long I´ll be here. I hope it´s for quite some time, because I love it here. It´s pretty much a small city here. It´s awesome. We should have a baptism by my birthday, which will be awesome. I´m also excited for general conference.
So like I said, we don´t have time to shower at night. We go out at 11:30 and we usually don´t get back at 10:30 at night, so it´s pretty much a super long day. It´s good though, cause we get home, plan, I wash my face, write a few things in my journal, pray, and pass out. I fall asleep so fast here in the field. I wake up tired, I go throughout the day tired but excited, and I come home at night pretty much ready to pass out. It´s awesome though, I feel like we get so much done and we teach and preach. The food here is great. We´ve had a lot of different things. We´re going to have to do some shopping today, because we literally have no food at the piso. And the water here tastes like chlorine. This definitely isn´t the states.
So, in Spain there´s a problem of people living together. Like everyone lives together and isn´t married. We have to fix that.
So the other day we went to a members house, and I cooked hamburgers. That´s right, me and my companions cooked hamburgers. The woman wanted to teach us. It was fun, and I learned new words. People like talking to me, and I just try and smile and pray that I´ll understand what they´re saying. There´s a boy in our ward, named Walter, and he´s from Ecuador and he´s about 18 and a total stud, and we get along great. He speaks so fast to me, and I catch a few words every now and then, and he loves teaching me spanish. He´ll make a great missionary.
My testimony for this week is that we are products of the Restoration. Because of Joseph Smith´s question to God, and because God loves us, we have the fulness of the gospel. We live in an exciting time, and I´m lucky to be a missionary. I´m lucky to have the chance to share this with people. It doesn´t make sense to why people won´t join the church, but that´s something that I have to figure out and to help them with. We have a prophet on the earth today, and supposedly General Conference is Christmas on the mission, so I´m extremely excited for it. I love the mission work, I love everything. Life is hard, but life is great. I love wearing my black name tag with pride. Time to go. Continue to fight the good fight, because that´s what I´m going to do.

Mucho amor y un abrazo fuerte,
Elder Pericle