Week Three Madrid MTC

Hola!

Oh my goodness I'm onto week 4. Which means I have 2 weeks left in the MTC! Ah! We leave March 21. Can't believe it.

ALSO! You are currently hearing from the latest and greatest Sister Training Leader the Spain MTC has ever seen! Me and Hermana Clark just got called. At the 3 week point they switch the leadership positions. So here we are! Pumped!

So this week was really good. But also kind of sad. On Monday all the missionaries going to France and Portugal left:(( But then on Tuesday we got 6 new missionaries going to Russia! And one going to Italy!! YAY! They had been in the Provo MTC for the past three weeks and then have another 6 weeks to go here. Except for the Italy sister. She leaves when we leave. They're awesome it's so fun!

The Spanish is coming along really well. We got new investigators to practice with this week. And now we have two. It's just our teachers again acting as investigators.

But it was so funny yesterday Hermana Clark was telling our investigator that her cousin is an anesthesiologist (no idea how to spell that) but she didn't know the word in spanish so she said doctor of drogas (drugs) and he looked at her and goes "drogas???" it was HILARIOUS! And she was like noo no no and tried to explain it and then he got it and told us the Spanish word for anesthesiologist which is pretty similar to the English word. It was just funny hahaha he laughed at us.

Also Elder Castagnetto, an elder in our district had a lesson where he told the investigator that we have a cerveza bautismal instead of servicio bautismal which means beer baptism instead of baptismal service. SOOOO funny hahaha

But other than that it's going really well. Sister Clark and I have made it a goal not to use Spanish notes in our lessons and it's really paying off. We got feedback yesterday from our teachers for our lessons and both of them told us that our Spanish is fantastic. And one of our teachers is like super brutally honest about everything and makes fun of our Spanish all the time (he's great, love him) but it just meant so much more from him cause I know he'd only say that if he meant it. So that was a really good confidence booster.

THE PARK! Oh my goodness this week's park experience was the absolute best. I was paired with Hermana Peterson who is from Canada and hadn't taken Spanish at all prior to coming here. But she's the bravest person EVER. She just talks to everyone. So I was super excited to get to be with her.

So we get to the park and we say a prayer and immediately she's like "lets go talk to this woman" so we go over and she's sitting on a bench watching her kids play on the playground and we start talking to her about random stuff like where she's from, her kids, blah blah. At first she wasn't feelin it, But then she warmed up a little bit and we invited her to bring her kids and come listen to us sing (after our 2 hours walking around we all meet up and sing a few hymns next to a fountain). So she was like "sure!" and then her husband walked over and he speaks a tiny bit of English so it ended up being easier to communicate with them. They were both super impressed at how well Hermana Peterson could speak and understand after only 3 weeks. But then when they learned I had taken 3 years of Spanish before my mission I think they were a little disappointed at how much I didn't know hahaha. Good times.

But anyways so throughout that conversation we learned that they identify as Catholics but they hate the idea of a church and they don't like the Bible. So sad. But they LOVE Jesus Christ. They told us that He's their life. So. Interesting. So we gave them a restoration pamphlet cause they asked the difference between our church and Catholics. And then David (the husband) looked at me and then pointed to the picture of Jesus on the front of the pamphlet and said "When I eat the body of Christ I see him." (takes the bread and wine, like the sacrament) And I was like "really? In Heaven?" And he said "no, in my mind." and then he looked me right in the eyes and said "He's real." And I said "yeah He is" and he said "have you seen him?" And I said "no, but in my mind yes." And he said "That's faith!" and I was like "YES!" The spirit was so strong.

And then we told him that the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon testify of Christ and we can learn about Him and His dealings with people by reading those books. And he was loving it. And then we had him read Moroni's promise and gave him the Book of Mormon! He was SOOO grateful. And then he looked at us and said "When you walked by to talk to my wife I saw Jesus Christ's light illuminate in you." Oh. My. Goodness. That was the coolest moment of my entire mission so far. The fact that he noticed...oh man. I can't even tell you how cool that was for us to hear. And then we got their number so the Madrid missionaries can teach their whole family! What a happy thing!!!! So yeah that was the best!

I hope everyone's doing super well over there. I love you all TONS!!!!

AND CONGRATS ON MISSION CALLS TO KATE AND GRACE OH MY WORD!!!!! Chile and Arizona are getting good ones. And we can all speak Spanish to each other PUMPED!!!!

So much love,

Hermana Johnson