Saludos desde las Islas!

Hello everybody! Another week has passed by. Kind of a long one, and I'll tell you why!
The weather has been scorching hot out here! Super humid of course. They say it has been hotter than the peninsula, which is unusual. How this missionary is feeling: a little overwhelmed haha. I guess when I imagined Menorca before I pictured a meeting of two missionaries and like 3 people in somebody's house for church. After getting here and seeing the church and list of members, I had higher hopes! Then Sunday finally comes around: It was two missionaries and like 3 people in a large chapel haha. By the end of the meeting we had around 8 though =) Then for the classes it slowly dwindled back down to 3 again. We had the wonderful opportunity of preparing talks, doing the sacrament and music, and Elder Judd teaching one of the classes. Haven't had to do any of those in a while! It was an interesting experience however. I appreciated some of President's comments to me in response to my weekly letter. I now understand a little better about what he said of the members needing love, support, and encouragement! It seems like almost everyone is going less active, moving off the island soon, or living in sin (with regards to the law of chastity...not so popular here [yet]). I think about all the work to be done, what needs to happen. I see my goals of wanting to reactivate members, baptize new converts, and seeing at least a half full chapel, and then to think of everything that will need to happen and the time it will take, and then the discouragement just hits you across the face. So, I figure I will start to study patience, faith, and charity in my studies and think about how I can develop these more strongly. I have thought of numerous examples of missionaries in the scriptures who demonstrated these and had abundant success (and trials! The Sunday school lesson was on those. Great for my first week here =)) I feel that a great amount of trust and investment has been placed in me, both from the President and from the Lord. I know the Lord knows everything here, and from what it sounds like a lot of the members have met the president and it's a branch so I assume he knows a lot about the situation. I also got the refined "don't get too discouraged here because I've seen it before" talk by the branch president. He's a good guy, but also a little discouraged =)

 We did see a few neat miracles. One, we got into a man's home knocking doors. We shared a brief message about the Book of Mormon, left him a copy, and invited him to read it. Downside is he will be leaving for Madrid this week and won't return until September. Hopefully he reads and there will be potential there. Another miracle, a member Steve (from Utah, returned missionary. He went to Utah State! Graduated with a few degrees in Spanish. He's fun, just waiting here for the painstakingly huge process of getting married with a girl here. It's a long story with lots of rants of the governmental procedures haha.) was going to drive us back up to Maó and he couldn't remember where he had put his car for the life of him. We saw the bus come and so we just got onto it instead, and lo and behold we saw a potential investigator whom Elder Judd hadn't remembered! So that was neat to see.

I feel that I have been able to bond with a lot of people here so far, so I hope that that trust can grow into miracles soon. We'll just keep working and leave the Lord the rest!
To answer some questions: it is super pretty! And filled with tourists, mostly from England who always come up to us and ask us for directions in English haha. We had to take the train up to Barcelona, then drop my larger bag off at the office, which they keep in their storage downstairs, and then off to the airport there and we flew straight to Menorca. About 40 min or so. We live in Maó, one of the bigger cities central to buses and everything. The huge port is really pretty too, and there's usually a cruise ship or two in it.

Congrats on getting all of those Eagle projects out of the way! Sounds like a lot of work that will hopefully pay off =) And a little earlier too, how great =)
Sounds exciting about the house. I liked the great ariel view pics ;) It seems like everything is just breezing on by now! That makes me glad to hear. It looks great to me!
It feels wierd to be passing the year mark finally. I've always looked forward to it thinking how weird it will be when it passes, and here we are!
As a random sidenote, I always introduce myself and show everyone our family pic you sent me. They ALWAYS say I have a wonderful family, and a  guapa madre  (Looks like dad chose well!) They always say that me and my brothers look alike too. So keep being wonderful =)
Well, that's about all I have for today. Enjoy some pics of our island resort =) I can't send too many though, because this locutorio is garbage... a la proxima!

Transfer Day in July

 Ooooooh, who lives in an island out in the sea,
Elder Coombs does!
It's humid and sunny and not very big,
Where Elder Coombs is!
If preaching the Gospel be something ye wish,
like Elder Coombs does!
Then pack up your back and hand out some Books!
Preaching the Gospel, Preaching the Gospel, Preaching the Gospel, Preaching...the Gospel!

Well, there you have it. My highly creative parady of Spongebob's themesong about where I've been transferred to! I'm now in Menorca, a little island out in the Baleares. It's just that. I've been told there are like 40 members on list, and like 15 actives. Before the branch president used to be gone so the missionaries had to do just about everything, but I hear he quit his job and has time on sundays now, so now we only do almost everything haha. The reputation of the islands is basically a prison sentance. Confined to an area with little work, super expensive stuff, and low standards of morality! Needless to say, President only sends people he trusts  I got a personal phone call from him transfer night to "prepare" me. And, now I see why! It seems pretty easy to get depressed or discouraged out here haha. It's like all tourists, or people who work in tourist industries and don't have much time, rumor has it. So we'll see! Basically we're just going to turn it from a branch into a ward haha. We'll show Menorca what's boss. Also, I only got to bring one of my two suitcases, because travelling out to here is kinda expensive. So I had a little sorting to do, what is essential, what is not. Luckily, I could just leave all of my winter stuff iin one and take all my summer stuff in the other! My new companion is Elder Judd, from Sandy Utah. He's really nice, kind of quiet like me =) A big change from his last companion I hear. We pretty much own the island to ourselves, so that's another big change. We've made good use of my frisbee today =)
   So that's where I'm at. I had no time yesterday because I was in a train or airplane or some station pretty much all day. It was kinda hard to say goodbye to Valencia. Especially with some of the members. I'll send a few pics. The Hermana's had a baptism, and Elder Schindler exercised his priesthood in baptizing him, and I in confirming him. That was a neat experience. In case you are wondering, he insisted on wearing the gown instead of a shirt, who knows why.
   I'm glad mom had a fun birthday. I had heard about that video here, a member showed us the trailor for it. It looks pretty interesting. The Mormon Tab concert sounds super great. I would have loved to go! Hope you enjoyed some of it for me. Best of luck to Kyle too...he's had a super rough time!
   Sounds like trek was lots of fun! I think they purposefully chose a spot with lots of cow pies and bugs to afflict you haha. You should have prayed for a flock of seagulls to deliver you! I'm glad you learned lots, trek was a fun experience for me as well. Get a feel for the early saints, and I can only imagine Zion's camp too.
   That was a really neat miracle about Ethan's experience. Tell him to stop living on the edge so much! I liked dad's experience about the scripture and feelings. I hope that you didn't wet yourself haha  I ride trains every day, but I've never seen a place where cars can cross the tracks...so I don't know if there's too many accidents.
   It is really weird to think about how I am almost at my year now. I have thought about what happened a year ago every now and again. It makes good testimony for teaching the plan of salvation! It also makes me ponder the purposes of the Lord. As for the mission, lots of crazy things have been happening. They made two new zones. A lot of missionaries from my group are starting to become district and zone leaders and ayudantes to the president. Training too. Elder Bozarth will be our district leader here in the islands. Our district is us and them two out in Ibiza. We get to do our district meetings over Skype it sounds like. In September we'll be getting 40 new missionaries it sounds like. Quite a few! We'll see what happens!
   It was fun to hear about all the new mission calls and news. That will be pretty crazy! Did you ever get a hold of Kaleb's address/email?
  The home building seems to be putting along. That's pretty exciting. Gayla reminded me that school starts up pretty soon. It was hard for me to believe that! Better enjoy your last month of summer!
Well, I gotta go. Love you all! See you later! Have a great week!