David Knowles was called to serve in the Spain Madrid Mission in 1988.  He spent the first eight weeks at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah learning the rudiments of the Spanish language, and then boarded a plane for the 20-hour trip to Madrid.

It was a long, tiring trip; but Elder Knowles was excited, full of anticipation, and unable to sleep on the flight.  There would be plenty of time for sleep later, he reasoned.  Upon arrival, there would be a welcome, a nice bed, an orientation, a good meal, and probably a sight-seeing trip to show him around.

He and the other new missionaries were met at the airport by the mission president’s wife.  She was brand-new to the country, too, having only arrived there a few weeks earlier.  She was still suffering from culture shock, and felt rather disgruntled.

“It’s so dirty and different,” she said about the country—“but you’ll like it,” she quickly added, as she remembered that she needed to be positive.

“The leaves don’t fall off the trees here—they just turn black,” she grumbled—“but it’s really pretty. You’ll like it.”

Upon arrival at the mission home, Elder Knowles was shown into a room that was jam-packed with missionaries.

“Where’s the bed?” he wondered.

One-by-one the new missionaries were admitted to the mission president’s office for a short interview, and were paired up with a senior companion.  The waiting room gradually thinned out.

Then it was Elder Knowles’ turn.  The mission president told him that he would be serving in Alcobendas, a suburb of Madrid, and that Elder Oyolo would be his companion and trainer.  Elder Oyolo was a native of Peru, and spoke no English.

“With Elder Oyolo as your trainer, I guarantee that you’ll be speaking Spanish in a month,” the mission president told him.

Elder Knowles was introduced to Elder Oyolo, who said, “Come on,” grabbed a piece of Elder Knowles’ luggage, and headed out the door.  Elder Knowles followed, dragging the rest of his luggage.

“We drug my luggage one or two miles to the subway station," Elder Knowles said.  "Elder Oyolo talked the whole way, and I never understood a word.  I was so tired.  I just wanted to get to wherever we were going so that I could go to sleep.”

The escalators at the subway station were very crowded, so the two elders drug the luggage down flight after flight of stairs.  The subway took them to their station where it was necessary to drag the luggage back up to street level where they commenced another mile’s walk through the train station.

The train deposited them near a bus stop.  The elders laboriously loaded the luggage aboard the crowded bus, and continued their journey.  Elder Oyolo continued talking.  Elder Knowles only picked up an occasional recognizable word, and longed for the trip to come to an end.

Another hike was necessary at the end of the bus trip before they finally arrived at their apartment.  It was fairly large.  There was a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two bedrooms.  Elder Knowles was shown into a tiny bedroom containing two twin beds pushed up against one another.  He made a mental note to ask later if he could move his bed out into the living room so that the beds could be separated, but for now the arrangement was good enough.  He collapsed on his bed, and shut his eyes—too tired to even remove his clothes.

Elder Knowles would learn later that moving his bed to the living room would not be possible since the other rooms were occupied by other people who shared the common living quarters with them.

Elder Oyolo was standing over Elder Knowles and jabbering very concernedly about something.  He wasn’t letting Elder Knowles get the sleep he so desperately wanted.  What was he saying?  What was it he wanted?

Elder Oyolo pulled an appointment book from his pocket and pointed at a line.  It said 6:30.  They had an appointment to teach a discussion to a lady at 6:30, and if they didn’t hurry, they’d be late!

Elder Knowles fell asleep again and again during the discussion.  The lady laughed about his nodding head.

In the days to come, when the missionaries weren’t teaching, they kept busy by looking for others to teach.  The town they served in was made up of apartment buildings, four stories high, for as far as the eye could see.  The elders’ method for finding new teaching prospects was to run to the top of an apartment building and then knock on every door until they reached the bottom.

After a month of this activity, Elder Knowles was ready to go home.  The language was a struggle.  The culture was strange.  The days were long, and people were often rude.  Elder Knowles had knocked on thousands of doors, and many had been slammed in his face.  “Had there been a boat sailing for America,” he said, “I’d have been on it.”

Elder Knowles was feeling very discouraged one day.  The time was about 25 minutes before noon.  They had just finished knocking on the doors of an apartment building.

“Let’s knock off early and go back to our apartment for lunch,” Elder Knowles hopefully suggested to his companion.

“We’ll do one more apartment building,” Elder Oyolo replied.

Elder Knowles reluctantly followed him to the top of the next building, and the missionaries began knocking on doors.  They reached the bottom of the building without a single door being opened to them.  The very last door was Elder Knowles’ turn.  He knocked.  Nothing.

The elders turned and headed for the door leading to the street.  It was then that something stirred inside Elder Knowles.

“Wait,” he said.  “I’ve got to knock on that door again.”  He returned to the door and knocked a second time.  He listened, but could hear no activity inside.  His companion was standing at the street door beckoning and saying, “Come on.”  Elder Knowles was about to turn away and join him when he heard a sound from within the apartment.

“They’re coming,” he said to his companion, and beckoned for Elder Oyolo to join him at the door.

An elderly woman opened the door.  She was using a walker.  Her hands were so twisted from arthritis that she couldn’t even properly grasp the walker’s handles.  It had been an effort for her to come to the door.  She was mad, and very obviously wanted to chew them out.  Instead she curtly asked, “What do you want?”

“We’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Elder Knowles answered.  “Could we come in and share a message with you?”

The woman asked to see identification.  Satisfied that they were who they said they were, she admitted them.  The elders tried to give her the first of their six discussions, but everything they said came back to the woman’s health.  It was all she could think about.

Elder Oyolo finally said, “We hold the priesthood, and are authorized to give blessings to people with health problems.  Would you like to have one?”

The woman did.  Elder Oyolo asked Elder Knowles if he’d ever given a priesthood blessing in Spanish before.  When told that he hadn’t, Elder Oyolo replied, “Well, this will be your first.”

Elder Knowles laid his hands on the woman’s head.  The words came to him, and he felt good about his fluency.  When he finished, he felt like he’d done a good job.  The woman smiled, and thanked him.  An appointment was made to see her again the next day, and then the elders left.

On the way back to their apartment for lunch, Elder Oyolo was silent.  Elder Knowles could tell that something was bothering his companion.  Finally he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think you should have said what you did in that blessing.”

“What did I say?”

“You told her that she was going to be healed of her arthritis.”

Elder Knowles didn’t know that he’d said that, and commenced to worry, too.

The next day the elders arrived at the woman’s door at the appointed time and knocked.  The door opened almost immediately.  The woman stood there without her walker and announced, “I have no arthritis!”  She showed them her hands that were no longer bent and gnarled.

During the next days the elders taught the woman their prepared discussions.  The woman, whose name was Manuela Vinelo Planes, wanted to be baptized.  A date was set, but opposition arose from her children.

“If you join that church, you’ll never see your grandchildren again,” they told her.

After some agonizing soul searching Manuela told her children, “This is something that I just have to do.”

One daughter agreed to meet with the missionaries.  She threatened them.  “My mother’s health is very fragile.  If anything happens to her, if she catches cold from being baptized, you’ll be responsible, and it will be on your heads.”

The elders assured her that the baptism would be like taking a warm bath.  The daughter agreed to attend.

On the day of the baptism, the elders went early to fill the baptismal fount.  The fount was a portable swimming pool, heated by a propane-fired, on-demand water heater.  They began filling the fount, and then left to tend to other duties.

They returned an hour before the baptism was to begin.  The fount was full of water—but it was icy cold!  The heater had malfunctioned.  What was to be done?  Experience had taught them that postponed baptisms never happened.  They had to go through with it.

The elders prayed.  Perhaps Manuela would put on a brave face.  It was their only hope.

Members of the Church began arriving to attend the baptism.  Each new arrival tested the water and exclaimed, “You can’t baptize her in that!”

The elders hoped that the daughter wouldn’t test the water, too, and that Manuela wouldn’t let on how cold it was.  They got their wish where the daughter was concerned.  She didn’t test the water.

Manuela had asked Elder Knowles to baptize her.  At the appropriate time in the service, Elder Knowles entered the fount.  “When I stepped into the water, it was all I could do to keep from crying out,” he said.  “It was so cold that I momentarily lost my breath.”

Elder Knowles turned to help Manuela down into the water.

“The instant that her foot touched the water,” Elder Knowles testified, “it became as warm as could be.”

“Ahh,” Manuela said, “it’s nice and warm.”

Elder Knowles said the baptismal prayer, gently submerged Manuela in the water, and then helped her back out of the fount.

“The instant her foot left the water,” Elder Knowles said, “it became ice cold again.”

Manuela became a very faithful member of the Church.  She walked about four miles to church each Sunday.

“From that time on,” Elder Knowles said, “my heart was changed, and I became a very dedicated missionary.”