Oct 4, Malaga, Mijas

After the tour of Alfarnate and Alfarnatejo, we drove to Malaga (an hour south of Alfarnate). Emilio was very tired after our late night talks. We were not going to bed until after 1am!

We tried to go to church in Malaga, but it was Conference weekend, so church was at an unexpected time. We did go into the church and found out when Conference began. Then we walked REALLY far to see the Cathedral, which happened to be closed.

Then, we walked back to church and watched two talks of Conference in Spanish while Emilio had lunch. Then, we decided to take a drive a little ways up into the mountains to a little town called Mijas. It was very cute and a definite tourist trap. We loved it all the same.


Mijas had the typical white houses with red tile roofs and a bull ring.

We happened to see the Matador drive up to the bull ring for the daily fight. Some other lady was taking her picture with him, so I jumped right in for my picture.

This was the side of another Ermita dedicated to another virgin who performed a miracle of some kind. It was a very relaxing place with a great very of the Mediterranean Sea.

We left Mijas and went back to Malaga for dinner, which turned out to be fried octopus. By then, Daniel and I were getting a little leery of the food. We had dinner on the coast and then enjoyed an ice cream.

Emilio was trying to get a hold of his brother, Javier, who is a priest in the Catholic church. Javier had finished a long day of preaching and was headed back to Alfarnate. He was going to pick up Emilio on his way back to Alfarnate. We thought we were not going to meet up with him, but it turns out we did. We had a great conversation with him.

I did not write in my journal while in Spain for Oct. 4 but here are some of the things I remember:
We had a nice walk around Alfarnate with Emilio. He wanted us to meet every person in the 2 villages that were related to us. So we walked from house to house just saying "Hi". The people were happy to meet us.
Today was general conference. We drove to Malaga for church. On our way there Emilio, Daniel and I had conversation about our church and the catholic church. He knows more about his church than most catholics I met in Chile. We found hymns that were in common. It was a nice drive. We found the location of a church in Malaga to go to church, but when we arrived conference had not started yet. Emilio was disappointed that we had left Alfarnate so early. So we walked around Malaga to find the main Cathedral, it was closed so we walked back to church. By now Emilio was hungry and did not want to come to watch conference, so he went to eat and we went inside the church to watch 2 conference talks. The first was by Elder Neil Anderson and the second talk was by Elder Boyd Packard. Daniel and I decided we had better go find Emilio and see what he planned for the rest of the day. Emilio wanted us to meet his brother, Javier, who was a preist for the Catholic church, but he was busy with 3 masses he was giving today. So we decided to drive up to Mijas, a small town 2 minutes into the mountains.
There we had a relaxing afternoon. We met 2 couples from Mesa. We had a wonderful talk with them and of course they knew a friend of my mom. Around dinner time we went back to Malaga and had dinner on the beach. It was good...octopus and french fries. Then we went out for ice cream.
Around 9pm Javier called and said he was not going to be able to meet us, so we were on our way to take Emilio to a friends house in Malaga. As we were driving there Javier pulled up next to us! Emilio was very pleased that we could meet his brother. We drove into an small street and go out of the cars and talked for a few hours. Obviously we shared many of our feelings about our church and listened to what Javier had to say about his. It was a nice coversation. Javier is a wonderful person. Finally after midnight we decided to go our separate ways.
I really enjoyed meeting Daniel's family. It was a wonderful element to our trip and made Spain feel special.