Holly's 2nd week at the MTC

This week has been another blur of classes, studying, teaching, and sleeping, but it's gone a lot faster than last week did. 

On Friday for our service project we weeded around the temple, which was SUPER fun. The weeds were huge but had super weak roots and the dirt was super soft so they were very easy to pull. (Mom, you would have loved it)

On Saturday, there was a big event going on in Madrid so instead of going to Retiro (the normal park we go to) we split up into 3 groups and went to different places in the city. My companion was Hermana Lenzinger and our group had a (super tiny) park and then just some streets. We've decided that every Spaniard talks way too quietly and way too fast, but we probably got about half of what they were telling us. One older lady was feeding the birds which reminded me of that Mary Poppins song.

On Sunday, we had church. I got called on to give a talk (I chose the Christlike attribute of diligence) and Hermana Lighten translated. Also at church, the French sisters sang a song called Souviens Toi and it was SUPER beautiful. It's only in the French hymnbook but we could all feel the spirit and they're super good singers. They told us it's about the plan of salvation and translated a few of the verses for us afterwards.

When we meet all together, the majority of us sing in Spanish, the Portuguese sing in Portuguese, and the French sing in French (aka there are 3 hymn numbers written for each hymn on the board during sacrament meeting). This means that as a group we sound kind of terrible haha, but the hymns are 99% the same notes/rhythms in the Spanish hymnbook as in the English one so it's not much harder to play. I have to have an English hymnbook to play out of for the prelude music, since otherwise I don't know which songs I know/are good!

Then on Sunday afternoon we had our devotional and Elder Mendez, one of the Portuguese elders who actually has cerebral palsy, got up and sang "You can make the pathway bright" (in Portuguese, he doesn't speak English) and it was AMAZING. Again, with the whole you-can-feel-the-spirit-in-other-languages thing.

Then on Sunday night it RAINED! It's been sunny every day that we've been here, so that was pretty exciting. Me and Hermana Forsyth were standing around in it for a few minutes before we all gathered under the little covered area in front of the temple to sing.

This past Tuesday morning the French district left, so we've been missing them the past few days. We had a devotional Monday night and they all bore their testimonies and it was really good.THE GIFT OF TONGUES IS SO REAL. We've all gotten so much better at Spanish in just a week and are able to memorize so many more Spanish words and phrases per day than we ever could for Spanish class in high school. It's kind of amazing.

For p-day, our district and 2 other sets of sisters decided to go to Alcala, which is the city where the author who wrote Don Quixote lived! We got to go inside a museum in the house where he was born, and also to go inside a massive, beautiful catholic cathedral. It reminded me of the one in Sound of Music where they get married, since it even had that gate thing at the back of the pews (I think that's in sound of music??).

                           

We also stopped at a place for tapas, which are basically appetizers and something really popular in Spain. None of us were brave enough to try the squid or the pig ears (sorry dad), but the foods we did get were good.

To get to the city, we took the subway and then took the train! It was a long ride but really fun. We had a good group of people and teachers with us. On the train ride back, some guy brought a big speaker and a microphone and did this rap performance thing up and down the train. No idea what he was rapping about, but we all thought it was pretty funny.

Then we got back, ate lunch, and got to go to the temple! The temple is BEAUTIFUL. 

Afterwards we got 45 minutes of actual, scheduled-in FREE TIME. We didn't know what to do with ourselves haha.

Every day at lunch and dinner (which is just our zone, so 5 sets of sisters and probably 6-7 sets of elders), our table is just cracking up the whole time. Sister Cornwell is obsessed with peanut butter, so we've started calling her capitan mani (the brand of the peanut butter is Capitan mani). 

And we rank the food on a scale of cucumber soup (which was cold, and super gross) to fried chicken (which was wonderful). Normally the things are closer to the fried chicken end of the scale, which is good.  The elders and Hermanas sit at different tables that aren't even next to each other in the cafeteria, I guess they had issues with flirting in the past but they don't any more. There are also two flights of stairs, one at either end of the building, and elders have one sisters have the other.

The bottom 3 floors of our MTC building are actually hotel-ish rooms for people who want to go to the temple and are from out of town, which is kind of cool.

I can't think of anything else to say, so I guess that's it! The native Spanish group comes in on Tuesday, and I think the Portuguese group must be leaving around then too. 

Talk to you in a week! 

Hermana Walker