Hinckley Blog

After dinner at the Riberas, we drove back to Barcelona, parked the car at the train station, and boarded the train for Zaragoza. I had interviews Saturday night and Sunday morning, and reorganized the presidencies of both of our branches there on Sunday morning.

One of the branch reorganizations was necessitated by a change in the mission presidency. I extended a release to Pte. Lacambra who has served as my 2nd counselor since I arrived. He is a wonderful man with a great deal of experience in the Church, and both the stake and the ward were begging to have him back after a few years of serving in the mission presidency. I have called Pte. Jochann Wolfart as my new counselor, which meant I had to release him as president of the Zaragoza 2nd Branch!

Pte. Wolfart is from Germany but is married to a woman from Zaragoza. They are a remarkable young family - their children are trilingual as they speak German in their home, Spanish at school and with their friends, and their parents teach them English! Sister Wolfart was KHH's Spanish tutor (via Skype) when we first arrived. Pte. Wolfart served his mission in Germany and knows both Hobie and Amy. Yep, it's a small world after all.

I was in Zaragoza just a couple of weeks ago to take care of some Church business there. It is a four hour drive by car, so on quick trips like this I take the AVE, the high speed train, which makes the trip in 90 minutes by traveling 190 mph. And there is very little down time, as I can work on the train. The AVE is one of the little things that makes our life much easier and enables us to simply be in more places in the allotted time!

AVE is an acronym for high-speed train, but it also means bird - and the front of the train does resemble the beak of a bird!

Our train pulls into the Zaragoza station

The train from Barcelona to Madrid pulls into the station

Saturday our friends, the Riberas, invited us to lunch at their home in Sabadell. You may remember that this is a recent convert family. They received their endowment in February and plan to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple in June (the missionary who originally taught them 16 years ago is now the principal of Cottonwood High School!).

Brother Ribera is actually in Salt Lake for a few weeks, so Sister Ribera and their daughter Mar hosted us and the Hermanas who serve in their ward. They also invited the Elders from the neighboring ward.

At the table: Hnas. Boone and Gonzalez, Elder DaSilva, Hna. Ribera, Mar, Hna. Hinckley, Pte. Hinckley. Elder Morrison took the photo!

Mar attempted to have her father join us via Skype, but it was 6:30 a.m. in Utah and he was a little groggy!

Carme doing her magic in the kitchen

The meal was, to put it mildly, memorable! For starters we had baby clams sauteed in olive oil with a dash of red pepper, and a ham roll with cream cheese and plum confit. The main course consisted of sauteed fideo noodles with seafood: clams, cuttlefish, octopus, and whole jumbo prawns in the shell. It looked spectacular and it tasted as good as it looked! The meal was exceeded only by the quality of the company. A good time was had by all, and it was the perfect way to begin the Semana Santa!