Gijon and Leon

To end our trip we stopped in Gijon and Leon, two cities in Mike's mission. He never actually served in Gijon, but we wanted to see it. It's a beautiful beach town and Jay loved the ocean there. He and daddy played together in the water, but I didn't get any pictures. We all had regular clothes on, but Jay decided he was swimming anyway. Both boys were pretty soaked by the time we were done. It was a good time though.
After the beach we walked up to the city park. It overlooks the ocean and it's beautiful! There's a crazy statue up at the top. We're not really sure who built it or what it signifies, but it's kind of cool. I think Jay's favorite part of Gijon was this awesome ship playground. It was very hard to get him to leave. It's so funny to watch him play with Spanish kids because he just shouts whatever they shout, even though he doesn't really know what he's saying. He loves playing with other kids.

Our second stop was in Leon. Leon was Mike's second area in his mission. We had a wonderful time there. We were even able to find his old apartment building. It used to have the best shower in the mission I'm told. The missionaries don't still live there anymore though.

Here's Mike in front of his old area. It brought back a lot of memories!

Of course Jay's favorite part of Leon was riding this cool train. We were pretty excited to find it because we had been promising him the whole trip that he could ride on a train.

It was fun to see the city from the train.

Here's the pretty cathedral in the center of the city.

Here is the government building. Also beautiful.

The center square.

Jay also loved this marionette show. All the kids were pretty enthralled with it.

One of the most amazing parts of the trip was running into the missionaries. Here's what happened. We went around the city looking for some of the people Mike had taught while in Leon. One was a little old man named Cecilio who was 76 when Mike and his companion found and baptized him. It has been ten years, so we didn't even know if he was still alive but we searched for his apartment anyway. Unfortunately we couldn't find it. We went by the church, but no one was there.

We decided to leave town and head to the next place when all of a sudden we saw two Elders walking down the street. We quickly pulled over and to our amazement we saw that not only were they Elders, but one of them was Elder Roldan - a missionary from our ward in Spain. What a surprise!

We knew he was serving in the Bilbao mission but we didn't know he was still in Leon. We were so excited to see him. After talking for a while we asked about Cecilio. They said he was still alive and living in the same apartment and that they would take us to him. They hopped in the car with us and we went straight to Cecilio's. It was so amazing to meet this man.

I have heard so much about him. He told us how much he loves Mike and how he loves me and Jay because we are his family. He told us that Mike is his "Godfather" for finding him and teaching him the gospel. He also shared his strong testimony of Jesus and the gospel with us. It was awesome! We loved our trip to Northern Spain and it ended perfectly by being able to see Cecilio.