Week Eight, On the Islands

Hola hola como esta!!!!!

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREW MY CUTEST BROTHER!!!!!!!!!!!! April 6th everyone! Tell him happy birthday and give him lots of hugs and kisses for me!!!!

Well today was so good. And it totally flew by I'm honestly still a little shocked that it's already Tuesday again. But that's how it goes I'm beginning to see hahaha.

So I thought I'd give a little more details about what my days look like and what exactly I'm doing over here haha.

So. I am serving in the Spain Barcelona Mission, but that mission covers a third of Spain (plus the islands) so throughout my mission I'll be serving in different cities around Barcelona. So that's why I'm currently on an island! And let me tell you, this place is BEAUTIFUL! I'm seriously in love.

So anyways. We wake up at 7:30 and go for a run and then eat breakfast and get ready for the day. Then we study the scriptures. 

And then we normally walk around and contact people. That's where we just stop random people walking on the street and talk to them! We'll normally share a little doctrine principle (for example: we have a prophet here on the earth today! Or, we know that our families can be together throughout the eternities, not just "until death do us part.") and then if they're curious and want to learn more, we write down their number and set up a time to meet with them again! And then we'll almost always pray with whoever we talked to. :) It's happy.

And then the other thing we do is citas (appointments)! Those are the times that we're meeting up again with the people that we found while contacting. During those, we teach lessons about the gospel of Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. Our purpose is to invite them to come unto Christ. And it's special because we just teach them these things and give them a Book of Mormon and then just tell them to pray about it. Because we're not here to force this stuff on them, and we know that if they pray and ask if what we teach them is true, Heavenly Father will give them an answer. And once they've received an answer, then they have a desire to be baptized like Jesus Christ was with the proper authority. It's incredible!!!!

So yeah those are are the main things that I'm doing every day as a missionary! I LOVE it!!!

Also. Yesterday we walked 11.8 miles and took 27,104 steps. So. There ya have it haha lots of walking.

Also Spanish is coming along so well holy cow. I can understand almost everything. Hermana Sperry speaks to me in only Spanish when we're on the streets, and it works! It's amazing. I'm improving so so much. And it's been nice also having Hermanas Nelson and Barlow in our apartment because Hermanas Sperry and Nelson speak Spanish so well so we know there's hope! Haha

And I gotta give you an update on Ricardo. Oh my goodness still don't know how I get to be the one to teach and have these experiences with him, but I must've done something right somewhere along the road haha. He's amazing. He came to general conference! (Which meant we had to watch it in Spanish cause we sat with him, but that's okay it was good listening practice). But he just absolutely LOVED it. At the end of the talk by the woman who spoke after President Monson (I don't remember her name ah) he turned to us and said "that was all for me." It's so great he was totally feelin it.

And also earlier this week he called Hermana Sperry and was just going on and on about how excited he is to get baptized and that he had told his whole family (keep in mind, we met him for the first time 8 days ago, so this is insane something like this never happens) about it. And he told us again how grateful he was for us and that when he saw her (Hermana Sperry) and her new companion (me) he knew that "we were his missionaries." Cause he had seen them before I got to the islands, and had just now felt like he needed to talk to us. I just feel so blessed I can't even tell you. So that's going really well. :))))

And update on Alex who is getting baptized on the 22, HE QUIT SMOKING!!!!! So that's incredible and it's the happiest thing that's ever happened. I love it!!!

Also something so sweet happened while we were contacting! We stopped this one lady from the Dominican Republic and talked to her a little bit and she ended up being interested so we got her number and such. And then we asked if we could pray with her and she said yes so I prayed and when I finished she was crying and told us that while she was walking, she had been praying to not feel sad (because her mom had recently passed away) and was praying to feel Heavenly Father's love. And then she said that we were an answer to her prayer and that we are her angels!!! It was so sweet. AND SHE HAS A BAPTISMAL DATE NOW TOO! AND HER DAUGHTER!!!!! April 22 (happy birthday Sarah!) So that's a happy happy thing. 

Life is soo good. I love everything! And I love you all and all your emails! Thank you for your kind and encouraging words and the experiences that you share with me. I read every email I get I promise! I wish I had more time to answer, but I do want you all to know how much you mean to me and how much I love and miss you all. <3

Also I have an assignment! Go to lds.org > general conference > April 2017 and choose a talk to read or listen to. :) They're all fantastic!

(ALSO SHOUT-OUT TO JANIE MY BEAUTIFUL COUSIN (and BYU choirs) WHO SANG IN THE WOMEN'S SESSION! TOTALLY SAW HER AHHHH!!!!!!!!!! It was beautiful!!!!!)

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!

Love,

Hermana Johnson

 And the bonus extras:

And yep without a dryer we hang our clothes on a clothes line on our balcony! Which is on the backside of the building. It's fun it's like we're pilgrims or something hahaha

 So yes life is so good. General conference was great! We watched the women's session and the Saturday morning session on Saturday, and then the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday morning sessions on Sunday. They don't show the Sunday afternoon one unfortunately so we'll have to do  that on our own time. Although on Sunday I watched it all in Spanish cause we had Ricardo so I'm gonna have to re-watch those anyways.

So in the chapel they just have a projector and then in the relief society room they had it in English. So on Saturday we sat in there with all the missionaries and watched it in English.

UGH I got so sad when the BYU choirs sang at the women's session. Those were the same songs that we had worked on all of last semester too so in my head I was singing along. And I saw Janie! And tons of other people that I love! And my choir director directed it! SO that was depressing. But ya know it's good I'd rather be here anyways so ha! Hahaha

But yeah what I did get to see of conference was great. I loved it all!!!! We bought tons of candy and treats too so that was fun. 

Oh! Preparation day today! We went to a Castle. It was super fun and big and beautiful! Also it's tall on a hill so from the top we had a view of the ocean on one side and on the other side could see the whole city. So beautiful. I finally figured out google drive again so all my pictures up till now are on there!

OH also! Yesterday Hermana Sperry went to concilio which is a meeting for all the zone leaders, sister training leaders, and president. So she flew up to Barcelona on Sunday night and was there all day yesterday. So she grabbed letters and packages there, but we don't get them until tomorrow at the zone meeting where they teach us the things that they discussed with president. So pumped to receive my curling irons! Hahaha. But yeah that was fun because yesterday I was in a trio with Hermana Nelson and Hermana Barlow! We worked mostly in their area and I taught a lesson to a family from Nigeria that they're teaching. It was in English yay!!! But that was super fun hahaha Nigerians are HILARIOUS! They have this funny African accent and are so smiley and laugh big loud laughs at EVERYTHING. It was a good time.

So yeah life's good! I'm still loving it! CAN'T believe this is already week 3 of training. I'm1/4 of the way done! I love Hermana Sperry though I don't want to leave her ever hahaha she's SUCH a good missionary too.

Alright that's all I got for now I think. I love you all TONS and TONS!!!!