Sunday Update

May 1st – Day 3 and 4 mission update:

As most of you know, our original mission assignment was to work with the Young Adults in the Barcelona Mission. This will be the case for us for 18 months, but it appears that we will do all of our work out on the Balearic Islands. We will formally attend the first branch in Palma de Mallorca, but there are seven branches on these three islands: Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza. We anticipate visiting each of the seven branches, presumably traveling between these three islands. The largest group of young adults is here in Palma. I’ll let you look at a map to make sense of this geography. This is only our third day on the island and we’ve had numerous adventures already; I will try to describe a few of these.

First of all, Sister Taylor and I are very excited to be here on Mallorca. This is an amazing place and is a frequent vacation destination for many Europeans. Even though we live on an island, Palma is a very densely concentrated city and we live right smack in the middle of it. Our apartment building is probably 80 to 100 years old. Our apartment, called “pisos” here in Spain, is on the fourth floor of a five story building. It is a very large apartment square footage wise, but has some unique challenges due to its age.

Our bedroom literally hangs out over the street. There are three bedrooms and two bathrooms in this Piso. It will take some time for Sister Taylor and I to make this Piso comfortable and fully functional. That perhaps, is sufficient information about our current challenges.

There are small markets and businesses everywhere up and down the streets. The people are very nice and speak very rapidly. We are trying our best to enhance our Spanish speaking skills. We feel very safe walking up and down the street as we have done several times already. The church building is about a seven minute walk away. We are blessed to have a car, which will certainly make visiting and occasional sightseeing very possible. However, the roads in Palma are minuscule, there are numerous one -ways, and finding our way is so far, tricky. There are grocery stores within a two minute walk, several Panaderias and Fruterias very close by. Prices are all of course in Euros, but appear to be very reasonable. The exception, being gas which is between 8 to $10 per gallon when translated from liters. We feel we are off to a great start and have much to learn and experience. We are excited to spend the next 18 months of our life here.

At this point, we will have a young adult activity every Friday night. Let me share a bit of our experience from last night, our first activity with these great young adults. We had 26 attend, which we understand is the most that have come since the pre-pandemic period. (they must’ve heard the Taylor‘s were coming!) Interestingly, these individuals come from numerous different countries: Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, El Salvador, Columbia, Bulgaria, Chile. I think we had individuals from nine or 10 different countries. Five of the 26 were non-members and had a great experience. These are amazing young people. They have had and maintain a totally different lifestyle than what we are used to. Sister Taylor and I anticipate that the attendance will grow as we reach out to some of these young people and develop personal relationships with them. We started the activity with an English class at 7 PM, starting our activity at 8 PM, and we didn’t leave until well after 11 PM. The young people were still playing soccer in the small concrete parking lot of the church when we left. It only took us one night to develop profound love and appreciation for these young people. Our desire is that this next year and a half that we spend with them will see spiritual and temporal growth for them. We want to learn and remember their names as quickly as possible. As I said, they are amazing and have so many talents and such zest for life. It is an incredible blessing for Sister Taylor and I to mingle and interact with them. We pray that we may be able to teach and serve and minister to them in every way possible. At first, I felt a little sad about not being able to spend significant time in Barcelona and on the mainland of Spain, but this is exactly where we need to be. We know that, the Spirit has confirmed that, and we are thrilled. I’m even getting a little teary sharing these thoughts. We trust the Lord and submit ourselves to his will and to do this work, which is grand, marvelous, and everlasting! 1 Nephi 14:7: grande, maravillosa y sempiterna.” It doesn’t get much better than that!

There is another senior couple, who have been here for about five weeks. We are so blessed to be able to work with them. They are Elder and sister Dyer, from Reno, Nevada. They have been extremely helpful in getting us acclimated and worked on our piso for multiple weeks to get it ready for us. They are an incredible couple and will be here in Palma with us for the next year. Their piso is a short drive away. We anticipate spending a lot of time with them in church activities as well as in visiting the islands. In our short time, we have found that many of the senior missionary couples have already previously served as Mission Leaders. Élder Dyer and his wife served about eight years ago as Mission President in Bolivia. He was called last week to be a Counselor in the Mission Presidency. And it is amazing for us to learn how many of these couples have served multiple missions. At this point, that is what Sister Taylor and I would like to do.

Day 4: Sunday, May 1st, Mother’s Day in Spain
Our first Sunday in the mission:

There are three branches that meet in the chapel that is about a seven minute walk from our piso. We are assigned to Rama Uno, or Branch 1, but we attended all three branches today, as we may typically do. The other two branches are called Rama 2 and Marratxí. This third branch is an area on the outside of the city of Palma and is pronounced marachi. We have learned quickly that the Spanish spoken here is not like the Spanish we learned in Latin America. It is a combination of Espanol, Catalan and other Spanish dialects. During our first experience in these branches today, I shared my testimony in two of the testimony meetings and said a prayer in the third. Sister Taylor has already been asked to play the piano in our branch and then play the piano for the branch choir, which practiced tonight. Our day ended at the church at about 9 PM. This appears like this will be a normal Sunday. We will also be at the church every Wednesday night starting at 8 o’clock for Institue and every Friday night starting at 7 o’clock for an English class and then our Young Adult activity starting at 8 o’clock. Our young adult group is known as “hass” or JAS, short for Jóvenes Adultos Solos. I believe the Church is slowly moving away from the “s” and going to just JA. We even have a young married couple in our JA group – they were sealed last month in the Madrid Temple and he is a member of the Branch Presidency.

We have also learned already that there are many activities, including church activities, which begin at 7 or 8 PM. There is clearly an evening culture here. It will not be unusual for us to get home after 11 PM on numerous nights.

OK, that is enough exciting updates from Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Sister Taylor and I love you all and we appreciate your love and prayers. They are most welcomed and appreciated. We are exhausted – time for bed!

Con Amor,
Elder and Sister Taylor
Carretera De Valldemossa,
Palma de Mallorca, España