Not sure if this is week 6 or 7 but I'm calling it 7. Also, this is going to be a super long email, so I'm sorry and if you want to just look at the pictures I won't be offended haha.
This week (or week and a half I guess) has gone by in such a blur, but it also feels like I've already been here forever.
I guess I'll start with the end of last week: my park companion was Hermana lighten and we had a good time in the park. On Sunday, we had a testimony meeting in the afternoon and that was really nice, we also repeated a few of the musical numbers from over the weeks so it was fun to see those again. Then on Monday we had some in - field training (just like talking about getting to know people in the field and things) and also had time to pack. All of us were definitely a lot less thorough packing up to leave the MTC than we were when we packed to get there.
Tuesday morning, we woke up at 5am, ate a quick breakfast, and were on our way to the train station by 5:45. Brought back memories of early morning seminary... Seminary is awesome but I definitely don't miss waking up hours before sunrise. A lot of people were kind of sad /crying because they had to say bye to their friends who are going to different missions, but even though I loved the MTC I have to say I definitely wasn't sad to be leaving and so I wasn't one of the people crying haha.
There were 18 of us on the train going to Málaga. We all had really good intentions to make up for lost sleep on the train, but we ended up just talking the whole time. The ride was about 2.5 hours long and mostly just going through farm land. We did see that super famous all - white town in the distance though!
As soon as we got off the train we saw President and sister Andersen waiting for us along with the office couple and about 8-10 other missionaries. We all rolled our suitcases to one of the Málaga churches (there are two) which was about a ten-minute walk. This church is interesting because the chapel doubles as the gym (it has all folding chairs) and there is no carpet in the whole church. Also, the church is just at the end of a row of stores in the middle of the city so it doesn't even look like a church from the outside.
We also met up with one other new elder at the church, I can't remember his name but he went to the Provo MTC. We had a sort of orientation presentation thing and all had short interviews with President Andersen and then after a few hours we all moved so that we were only sitting every - other chair and the trainers (who had also been in a meeting, just in a different room) came in and sat behind us. Then they went in alphabetical order and announced who was companions with who. This meant that I was at the end, of course haha. Reminded me of elementary school.
ANYWAY, they finally said my name and my companion and we stood up and hugged and took a picture by the map and then went to sit where I'd been sitting.
My companion is Hermana Johnson from Grantsville Utah and
she is AWESOME. We've only been together like a week and are already friends.
She graduated in 2016 too but just worked until she left for the mission in
December. So she's 4 transfers ahead of me.
Hermana Johnson has a tiny little ruler she uses when she
underlines things in her scriptures and now I think I need to find one too. She
knows how to cook chicken, which is good because I realized that I don't know
how to cook any meat. So, we've had pasta with pesto and chicken a few times.
She also brought up descendants, the Disney Channel movie (she did, not me!)
which was funny. She couldn't remember the word they spell out in that one song
(ridiculous) but we're good now haha. She said she likes having me as a
comp because she's only had senior comps until now and they never knew any of
the more recent movies like Moana.
Another thing about Hermana Johnson: SHE ALSO LIT EASY MAC
ON FIRE! I'm not the only one!!! We've been trying to talk only Spanish when
we're out on the street (which is actually easy after about 5 minutes) and I
was telling her the story in Spanish and halfway through she stopped me and
said she did the exact same thing. Forgot to add the water. She DID catch it
before it burst into flames, but she said her house was still filled with
smoke. Anyway, I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Our area is about 30-40 minutes by bus from Málaga. We are the only missionaries in Torremolinos. Our church is actually the one where we had the orientation thing, and we get there by bus. There are two elders also in our ward. The ward normally has 40-50 people there which is pretty good. It's backwards (sacrament last) because we share the building with another ward.
The city is definitely a tourist town, but it is BEAUTIFUL. Flowers everywhere and an ocean breeze (you can actually see the ocean from most places, including our bedroom window!! Sunrise over the ocean is a pretty nice way to wake up). Unfortunately, it's really humid and pretty hot, but thankfully our apartment has air conditioning which is super nice.
Our area actually includes a boardwalk along the beach. However, one rule in the mission is that we're literally not allowed to set foot in the sand. So we won't be going in the ocean anytime soon haha. The pictures below were found on the internet by my mom.
We've visited a few members and investigators this week. A
lot of people are out of town. But we visited Norma, an older woman, and
her family, who are all from Argentina and members. We ate lunch with them on
Friday and it was super fun even though I didn't really know what any of them
were saying haha. We also ate dinner with Lorenzo and Inma, two recent converts
to the church. Inma talks SO fast. Aka, I had no idea what she was saying. But
afterwards Hermana Johnson said she still only gets 75% of what Inma says, so I
don't feel too bad haha. Everyone here has folding fans they carry around
everywhere and when Inma saw that I didn't have one she gave me one of hers (apparently,
she has a lot) which was super nice. It's pink because Hermana Johnsons is red
so we can match.
We also taught an investigator, Angelica. She's from Russia and is also learning Spanish so that's kind of tricky. A Russian accent in Spanish sounds pretty funny. On the bright side, she speaks slowly. We got to teach her about faith.
We've done a LOT of walking this week. Luckily, I like walking and have good shoes!
On Saturday there was a barrio 1/2 combined ward party! The theme was Christmas in July and it was super fun. The main part of it was dancing which was definitely different than ward parties in the states haha. The missionaries (10 of us total) were just awkwardly standing on the sides haha. But it was still super fun. Me and Hermana Johnson probably rolled out and baked about 100 cookies in the church kitchen.
On Thursday, we were contacting in an area that Hermana Johnson didn't know as well, and we reached a place where we could either go right or left. We felt like we should go right, so we did. At first the road was empty and we were kind of confused why we felt like we should go that way, but then Hermana Johnson realized we were in front of a less-active, Giovanna's house. She had tried to visit her a few times before but she was never home. But we rang and she answered the door and let us in and we were able to give her a quick lesson. She said she hadn't been to church in years but might be able to come this week! So we are going to stop by again this week. She even said the closing prayer at the end of the lesson which was super awesome! We watched the video that's just narration of a father talking about his kids (with like video clips of the kids at home) that then turns to talking about heavenly father's love for us. If you haven't seen it you should, it's really good!
One more thing about this week: we have had four (four!!) BATS in our piso. The word for bat in Spanish is murciélago. We both know that word very well now.
The night before I came, one was trying to get out of the bathroom vent. They got it out and released it into the wild.
Then on Wednesday Hermana Johnson opened the bathroom door and a bat flew out and into her bedroom!
We looked really hard for it... But can't find it. So...
Then during study on Thursday morning, a bat crawled out from behind the cabinet in the family room. We caught it in what is now called the bat bucket and released it. At that point, we called the dueño and told him about our issues. Except we couldn't say Murciélago clearly enough, so we told him we had a pájaro de la noche (bird of the night) problem. Gotta do what you gotta do.
On Thursday night another bat was trying to get out of the vent, but by this point we had covered the vent with a bag and so we just hit it through the bag and it went away.
So now we're keeping our bathroom door closed.
Hopefully the dueño is bringing us a new vent today or tomorrow.
Spanish is coming along, I feel like I can speak pretty well but it's definitely difficult to understand people. Hermana Johnson is really good at understanding though. But I've got my fan and a good pair of shoes and we've got our vent covered by a bag so we're all good!!!
Have a good week! Spain is a little crazy but it really is great, the people are incredible and I know that I'm exactly where I need to be.
Love, Hermana Walker
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