Curtis, Alex

Feliz Navidad! Everyone here knows about the song Feliz Navidad, which we sing to pretend we speak a little Spanish. I can confirm that it exists here, as a funny little song where you pretend to speak English.  Wild week honestly. Started out in Lanzarote at the beginning, had a great lesson with José and his family. I can't remember if I've talked about him but basically his wife and son are members already and he just opened up to the gospel. We had a great lesson on commandments, Efigenia was there, and they absolutely destroyed us all in dominos. José was really closed off when we met him, but now he's listening, learning, and reading the scriptures. It's a miracle to be honest. Less miraculously, we had to fly to Madrid so I could do some residency stuff, but now I'm a legal resident of Spain for the next year or so. It was cool to see the office elders again, and I got to see my friend Elder Harvath for the first time in a while. Got back to Fuerteventura on ...

The Debate: What should be the main course of Christmas dinner? My own parents are divided on turkey vs ham. On one hand, turkey is amazing, classic, and backed up by Ebenezer Scrooge after he became a nice guy. On the other, Christmas should probably get its own thing instead of robbing Thanksgiving blind like when Black Friday was invented. Plus, ham is my mom's pick and if there's one thing you learn as a missionary it's that your mom was right about everything. As interesting as this debate is, (and I do want to hear any other arguments that y'all have for one side or the other, please shoot me an email) I have actually come to learn that both are missing the truth. The correct Christmas dinner, is of course, a pan of paella so large that it takes two people to lift, has to be delivered to the chapel in a van, and could probably be used as a Frisbee by Goliath. Yeah this was a good week, I'm of course talking about the ward Christmas party which was amazing. Bec...

Nobody panic. No actual murder, but we did get the transfer table and Elder Quintana and I are staying here. This will be his last transfer, so if you've been doing your missionary slang homework, you'll know that means that I'm "killing" him. So after this I'll have "killed" two comps. Events Been a busy week. We started in Lanzarote and had some cool lessons on Tuesday, checking up on Efigenia's friend Margarita and a guy on date for baptism named José. On Wednesday we took the boat again to go back to Fuerteventura. Later in the week we had two back-to-back exchanges in our area, which was cool.  The Vecindario missionaries, Elders Filbrandt and Monteiro, showed up first, and we did some good work. Fuerteventura was really slow and the only teaching appointment we were able to set canceled on us. Elder Filbrandt and I managed to get a videocall lesson set up with someone in their area but he turned out to be a Bible-basher who answers Facebook...

For those of you who remember the Talavera Blitz, once again, the title of my email is actually not related to WW2. Maybe one day. This week we went back to Lanzarote. We got to take a ferry which was more time consuming but a lot cheaper and more interesting than a plane. Check out the photos. Having two areas is a lot of fun but it's a balancing act to cover both equally. For a lot of reasons we spend more time in Fuerteventura and always kind of feel like we're neglecting Lanzarote. Fuerteventura is where we keep most of our stuff, taking only the essentials to Lanzarote. Fuerteventura feels like home base and Lanzarote feels like an extended business trip. Luckily, the work is advancing on both islands. I guess I haven't told you guys about Efigenia yet. Efigenia is a member of the Arrecife Ward on Lanzarote who is very dedicated to missionary work. For this reason, she calls us at least once a day, especially when we're on the other island. I have to admit, it'...