This is quite possibly one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire life. It truly is called missionary work for a reason, it takes a lot of work. I know that the Lord will bless me immensely for it as well. The Spanish is hard, all of my teachers speak a little bit of English so they talk mostly in Spanish, it gets really really frustrating at times but I know it is only for my benefit.
My companion is Elder Lloyd, he's from Roy, Utah. He's a pretty good guy, he brushes his teeth a little more than necessary though, that's alright though, things could be a lot worse I suppose. The CCM here is only 3 floors of a 7 floor high rise building here in Madrid. It's cool though, the biggest difference between this CCM and the Provo MTC (besides the size and considerably lesser amount of missionaries in it) is that we have the opportunity to leave the property on P-Days, we have a grocery store across the street that we can go to on P-Days. There isn't much point in that though since they feed us really well here. The food they feed us is a little on the weird sometimes, last night we have ham that looked like crab meat... You get my drift haha :)
BEFORE I keep on informing you I just want to say that I can only email once a week (obviously) so please tell everyone you know to send me letters because we get mail every single day and it would be SSOOOOOOO incredibly nice to hear from everyone. It's always nice to know that someone's thinking about you too :) So please, alert the media and tell them to send me letters! You have my address!
I got pretty homesick last week, but I've rebounded and adjusted pretty well from it, just need to put my faith in the Lord and know that this will benefit my life so much, this is good for me :)
PICTURES.... I can take pictures on P-Day and I'm taking plenty of them, I sat next to Tyler on the plane ride and I had a window seat, it was perfect :) I will send you pictures on the first P-Day I have out in the field, it will be alright :)
9 minutes left!
Everyone can email me, but there is absolutely no way I have the time to email everyone back in the 30 minutes I have on the computer so once again, tell them to write me. I'd really like to stay in touch with Andy Jones throughout my mission.
I just want to tell you Mom that I love you so much... When times are tough there has been no one that I've wanted to talk to more than you, I miss you so much already. Thanks for all you have and do for me, it's nice to always have the support. And no matter how bad of a week I have I know that I can always count on an email from you each and every week, I'm so grateful for that.
Things are tough, but things are great at the same time. We will all be blessed :)
Packages take like 10 days to get here, letters have taken anywhere from 5 to 7.
Again, I love you Mom. Thanks for raising me the way you have, I'm writing in my journal every single day and I'm loving it. I'm happy that you are my eternal Mother.
I LOVE YOU MORE THAN WORDS CAN EXPRESS.
Talk to you soon, send many letters!! Tell others to do so as well :)
Sincerely, Elder Walker Jack Koeven.
PS.... Madrid Temple is remarkable!!