I´m serving in the province of La Mancha so Don Quixote is everywhere. Pretty cool stuff. 

 Me after just flying for about 12 hours with President and Sister Deere (who are the best              mission presidents in the world! Like really they are.)

 Elder Butler bought a Jamón earlier and this is it. Looks delicious, right? It is, I promise.

 Another picture of the Jamón, just so you get the idea :)

 This is the view from our piso (apartment). Pretty legit, right? 

This is our competition down the street. A huge cathedral that always has pigeons flying around it in a huge courtyard. But we have the true church, so we win :) 

Hola from España!
Hello my family. I am in Spain right now. CRAZY! You all are probably just getting ready for bed and stuff, but it´s like 12 here. Weird right? So you want to hear something weird? Everything here is in Spanish! Crazy right? I´m loving it we have had some amazing miracles already and things are going well. So to answer the question that is on all your minds, I really haven´t had that much legit Spanish food yet. I have had jamón. Jamón is basically ham that is not cooked, but cured. So they soak it in salt water for like a month and then they eat it. It´s super delicious. It has the texture of undercooked bacon but tastes great. Other than that I havne´t really eaten anything that cool and Spanish. To be honest we have no money so I haven´t really eaten much at all :) We´re surviving off of cereal and rice for the time being. For some reason no money is on my card right now and my comp is out because he had to pay for a lot of travel this month. And none of the banks will exchange my US money for Euros. But such is life. We will survive until we get more money next month. So other than jamón I´ve had various Spanish dulces (cookies and stuff) and some interesting Spanish milk (you don´t have to refrigerate it. It can sit out for weeks and weeks). So I don´t think I´m in Kansas anymore. There is no carpet here. Anywhere. I was not expecting that. The people are great though. The Spaniards are an interesting set of people. They are very introverted. They don´t usually say hello in the streets and kinda give you a startled, strange look when you do (I say hello to everyone I pass). But the craziest thing is how diverse the people are. I´m in a city called Valdepeñas (aka the city of wine. Woohoo!) and there are tons and tons of people from all over Europe and South America here. We are teaching some Colombians (pretty sweet, right dad?) and some Romanians, and there are people from Argentina in our rama and we just contacted a man from Africa (we think he´s muslim, but I´ll tell you more about him later). The Spanish people are great, but a lot are not super receptive. Some are, and we try to talk to everyone we can, but usually we have had more success with those from outside España. But it´s good stuff. My companion is awesome. His name is E Butler and he is from Idaho. He´s been out since about June, so he´s still pretty green. So we are having a party trying to teach in Spanish and understand it together. He´s better than E Barney was so that´s good. It´s been a lot of fun. We walk everywhere. EVERYWHERE. It´s a little bit exhausting to say that least, and I may or may not have fallen asleep on the toilet once (or twice) but I wouldn´t be doing anything else right now. I´m excited to keep going. So a little bit more about our investigators. We have a handful. We have some twins from Romania; Dennis and Daniel, and their friend from Holland, Martinus. They´re all teenagers and Daniel actually just got baptized. They are awesome, and we´re hoping that they will continue to progress. We have some investigators from Colombia, Patricia and MIlton. They are practically already members. They would be members, but they aren´t married. And they would be married if the Spanish government would let them. For some reason a person from outside Spain can´t get married inside Spain without some kind of crazy permission. So they would have to go to either Italy or Colombia to get married. So they are trying to save up to do that and they have a goal to get married and baptized this year. But really they are as involved in the rama as is anyone. We also have a few more Spanish investigators and last night we have my favorite miracle of the week. We had about 15 minutes until 9:45 when we go home (our schedule is pushed back half an hour) and we decided to contact people in the streets for the last little while. I was pretty tired but decided that I wouldn´t complain and follow my awesome companion. As we walked I prayed that we would be able to find someone to teach. I prayed that the Lord would guide us to someone. So as we walked we saw a woman walking towards us and E Butler said Tu toca or you´re turn. So I thought, maybe this is the moment. So I went up to talk to her and...she didn´t even stop. So I was kinda bummed. But we kept on going. We turned a corner and there was no one there. So we turned another corner and we on our trail back home when we saw one more guy. He looked young and the younger generation aren´t usually that receptive, but we thought we would try. We stopped him and talked to him and...he was interested. Like quite interested. His name is Achmed and he´s from some country in Africa that I don´t remember. South of Morocco though. And we think he is Muslim. He looks like he could be Arabian, but he was receptive, which is different because usually Muslims don´t listen to us. So that was my favorite miracle story of the week. We found a new investigator who is Muslim in the last few minutes of our day. SUPER AWESOME! Well I hope everything is going awesome for you all. It was nice getting to talk to all you in the airport and stuff and hopefully I´ll get to again during mother´s day. They actually are able to skype here so we will be able to do that. It will be great. I´m going to send you some pictures of jamón and stuff. My camera was almost dead so I haven´t taken a ton of pictures yet, but I will take more I promise. And you can always look on the blog. Well love you lots, and miss you all.
Con amor,
Elder Flint


P.P.S This is my address here in Valdepeñas:

Elder Charles Dale Flint
C. Seis de Junio 44, 3ºB
13300 Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real)
ESPAÑA
Love you!

¡Hello there mia familia!

Guess where I am? I´ll tell you, I´m in Spain! It´s absolutely gorgeous here, I´ll have to take some pictures. Well we are all safe and sound. We´ve been flying for a long long time. Like 12 hours. But we´re here and we´re safe and sound. The mission home is like the coolest house ever. I want to live here. Everything is just super super awesome! I´m so excited for this! Well love you all. It was fun talking to you yesterday/today. Love you. 

Elder Flint

Just a quick spiritual thought. 
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about attitude and how it affects us. I have a few investigators right now who really just seem to put up with us and not care about our message. And it's really hard. It's hard to know what we have to offer and to see them just not take advantage of it. And really it's all about attitude. They don't want to listen because they feel that what they are doing now is more fun. It takes less effort, less responsibility and it's more pleasing. Two aren't married and all three like to drink and party with friends. Now I don't want to judge them as people, because I love them all and they are great, but there comes a time when this life and the things in it, should take a back seat to what we will have forever. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 13 something like this, when I was a child, I thought like a child. I acted like a child. But now that I am a man, I act as a man and have put away childish things. There comes a time in all our lives where our attitude needs to change. When we need to think about, not what we have now, but what we will have forever. We are told all the time to live in the moment. To seize the day. And I agree we do. We are also told to focus on the future, to always look forward. I agree with this too. But how can we do both? I submit this. We need to live like right now is the future. We need to live in a way that all heaven and hell hangs on our immediate actions. We need to focus on the future, right now. When we can do this, when we can have an eternal perspective and put it into action immediately, we can become the people that our Heavenly Father needs us to be, right now. Love you all so much. Keep praying and reading your scriptures and doing all you can to make our Father in Heaven proud. 
With all my love,
Elder Flint

Here is what Charlie has to say from New Mexico!

 

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:40 PM

Hello my wonderful family!

So here I am, on my first P-day in the field! Pretty crazy. So yes P-days are Mondays. And with you all I'm just going to stick with the email, because it's easier and I have a lot more time :) First off, happy belated birthday Sophie! That's so exciting! I hope you had a wonderful day. I'm glad you found that dolphin ring too, that's good. So my first few days here in the field have been interesting to say the least. My companion is Elder Barney from Washington and he's about 6'2'' and probably 225.  A pretty big guy. He's kinda hard to read. Like I don't know when he's happy or sad or angry or pretty much anything, but he's a hard worker and that's what really counts. New Mexico is not at all what I expected. It's not bad, just different. Not quite Spain I suppose, but I'm happy to be out here doing the Lords work to the best of my abilities. We have I think 6 or 7 investigators we are working with right now. Most come from part member families. Many listen, but I'm not sure how much they are really picking up. I guess we will see in this next week if they have kept their committments and whatnot. We do have one investigator that is progressing very well. Her name is Gabi. She's a college student and is ready to get baptized. The only problem is that she's going off to college :/ Rats! But we are in touch with the missionaries up there on the campus and they will take good care of her. She does want to get baptized down here though and E. Barney says that I'll ge to do it if she does! So excited! Well we spend most of our days either going to appointments that we have set up earlier or checking up and sharing very brief messages with less-actives and investigators throughout the day. Sometimes we will go to a member's house too, just to share a message (kinda a practice thing our mission president suggests) and get referrals. For the most part everything is in Spanish. There are English missionaries in our area too (Tome South is our area) so if we ever run into somebody that doesn't speak spanish we hand them off. But often we come across people that speak both English and Spanish, so sometimes we teach with a mix of the two. It's good though. It's hard to tell if my Spanish is really improving that much, but I'm on the same level as Elder Barney and he's been out for about 14 months now, so that makes me feel pretty good. That gift of tongues thing is real, that's for sure. So things are going well. Sometimes it's hard, but that's the way it's supposed to be. We've just got to keep moving forward. The greatest help throughout this time is definitely prayer. I testify of the power of prayer. It can bring tremendous amounts of comfort into our lives and direction. I know that as we prayer we truly do come closer to our Heavenly Father. It's an amazing thing when you feel like your only friend is your Father in Heaven. You truly have amazing prayers when that happens. Well love you all, I hope you having a fantastic day and are all doing well. Good luck with basketball and UTA and everything else that you are doing. Love you all so much, and I miss you too.

Elder Flint

P.S. my apartment address is

Elder Charles Dale Flint

1020 West Aragon #D52

Belen, NM 87002

We only get the mail from the mission home once a month, and that one time for this month was this last Friday, so I didn't get any mail :( And if you sent any mail, I won't get it until February. So if you send anything, send it to my apartment. Love you all :)

P.P.S Just to let you know about the wierdest thing I ate so far. It's called Menudo. It's basically a soup made of tripe (I think) and a meat that is either the skin or intestines of a cow. It's actually not too bad :) Just thought you all would enjoy that. Love you lots and I'll talk to you again next monday. Or if you see this I could answer any questions you have right now, I'll be emailing Sarah. Love you lots and lots!

P.P.P.S: I did not get sick at the MTC and hopefully I do not. And we cover just one branch of about 35 people. It's super different. The chapel is the same layout as ours and we take up just a few rows. Pretty crazy stuff! But it's very cool and everyone is very friendly. I'm having a wonderful time, even if it is hard at times. The Lord is always with us, we just need to be able to reach out and receive his help. Love you!