Week 15:The week of citas!

Hola hola hola!

This week was a week of CITAS! In a normal week we have maybe 6 people we visit (members, investigators, less-active members, you know). This week we had THIRTEEN! So it's been a pretty good week.

On Monday we taught Fátima again- but not just Fátima! We taught Fátima, her 14 year-old son Kevin, and her 6-year-old daughter Victoria! It was awesome! We taught them again later in the week too (minus Kevin). Fátima loves reading the Book of Mormon. She knows it's true. And she says that if our church was in Torremolinos she would definitely come, BUT that she can't come to church because it's so far away! This is true--we have to leave for church more than an hour beforehand to be sure we get on the bus on time and can walk to the church from the bus stop in Málaga. It's pretty far. But it's worth it!!! So she didn't come to church this Sunday. But some of the sessions of general conference will be shown this weekend at the church later in the day than a normal church service, so we're hoping we can get her to the church to watch general conference with us this weekend. (how general conference works, just because a few people asked: we can watch it at the church, but I'm not sure what language. Women's session Saturday morning, Saturday morning on Saturday night, Saturday night on Sunday morning, Sunday morning on Sunday night. We watch Sunday night on our own time.)

On Tuesday we taught Giovanna- but not just Giovanna! We taught Giovanna, her husband, their two teenage kids, and someone else (we're pretty sure she was Giovanna's mother-in-law?). Anyway, that was awesome! We invited them all to come to church, and in the end only Giovanna came but we're going to keep working on the rest of them!

We ran into hermana Blanca sitting outside her building on Tuesday. She's so old and pretty big, so she just takes her walker in the elevator, comes downstairs, and sits outside during the day. When we ran into her on Tuesday, she was sitting outside her building with a cute little dog! We asked her where she got the dog and she said "no sé" (I don't know), which was a little concerning... and then we asked her the dog's name and she kind of started laughing. "No me acuerdo!" (I don't remember!). She'd only had it for three days and already forgotten the name! It's the best-behaved dog I've ever seen, but I'm worried it's going to die with Hermana Blanca as it's owner haha. We showed the video "Padre Terrenal, Padre Celestial" and read a few verses together, and the next day we visited again and read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon with her! She also can't come to church... because she really can't walk. But we'll see.

Friday and Saturday were the days of citas.

On Friday, we visited Hermana blanca, Liliana, Amparo, and Fátima! AND THEY WERE ALL HOME! It was definitely a miracle that we visited Liliana, because she was literally moving out of her piso when we came up. If we hadn't seen her, we wouldn't have known that she was moving! And then we all walked down the road to her new piso so we would know where she was living. Our visit with Amparo was really good too, and she said that she really wanted to come to church and to bring her a skirt--but then on Saturday night when we called her to remind her, she said she actually couldn't come and gave us all these excuses. We feel the Spirit so strong in our lessons with Amparo, and she does too, and she really wants to act. The problem is that then we leave, and she forgets the way she felt when we were there!

On Saturday we visited Hermana Blanca, Norma and Ramón (they're super fuerte members, but I'm counting them), and then we finally got to visit a less-active member named Lidia! We've been trying to visit her pretty much ever since I got here, and finally all our efforts paid off and she let us in. We had a really good lesson and are going to visit her again this week! Then we visited another less-active member who they used to visit all the time but who I haven't seen the whole time I've been here (so basically, she dropped off the face of the earth two months ago). But on Saturday we finally met her! The normal people here are all a little crazy. But Loli, this less-active member, is crazy even by Spain standards. She opened the door and grabbed Hermana Johnsons face with both hands to give her besos, and there was this crazy circus-y music playing in her piso in the background, and it just felt like we were in a Disney movie meeting some crazy person, like the witch lady in Brave or that voodoo person in Princess and the Frog or the seagull in the Little Mermaid. Or some combination of those three. But now we have a cita with her for tonight, so hey!

Then came SUNDAY! Sundays are the best. On the way to the bus stop we saw all the floats lined up for the parade. The floats really just looked kind of like decked out covered wagons. Pero muy bien. There were two really good parts of church: 1. Giovanna was there! She's the best. At the end of the meeting she asked us what day we're coming to visit this week! 2. I didn't have to lead the music in sacrament meeting! I do NOT like leading the music in sacrament meeting. I really don't know the words to any of the songs (claro, spanish) so I'm doing this awkward look-down-at-the-hymnbook-look-up-to-lead-for-two-seconds-oh-no-that's-not-the-right-word-look-back-down-at-the-hymnbook-get-off-beat-leading-pause-to-get-back-on-beat-start-leading-again-oh-thank-goodness-the-song-is-over thing, PLUS the whole ward is just looking at me when I'm leading which isn't my favorite thing in the world. ANYWAY, today one of the ward members just sat up on the stand with a hymn book and led all the songs and I don't even care that they didn't tell me anything I was just so happy during all the songs to not be leading! Here's to hoping he leads every Sunday from now on. Pray for me.

Sunday night we taught Lorenzo again! He has a lot of questions, and a lot of them don't have answers. BUT he has read the Book of Mormon four times. And we asked how often he reads and he said 15 minutes before mediodía and 30 minutes before bed EVERY DAY! So... he just needs time, and faith. We taught him the word of wisdom.

Overall... a very good week! This week I also read the talk "come what may, and Love it" by Joseph B. Wirthlin and I LOVED it. It talks about responding to adversity. We need to laugh, remember the important things (the REALLY important things, not just the things that are important in the moment), and trust in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. There's one scripture that we love to share with investigators, Mosiah 4:9: "Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend." When faced with problems, keep an eternal perspective and don't take things TOO seriously and you'll be a lot happier!! 

Have a good 3-months-to-Christmasiversary! 

Love, Hermana Walker

We went to a crocodile park on p-day. After more than 19 years of living, I FINALLY know the difference between a crocodile and an alligator.

Crocodiles have long and pointed, V-shaped snouts while alligators have rounded, U-shaped snouts. Their behavior is also different, with crocs being more aggressive than gators. The things you learn on a mission...There were crocodiles, alligators, turtles, and an Irish guy who led the tour. The only people there were English speakers so our tour guide gave the tour in English.  At one area, he told someone to pick a number.  They said seven, so then he counted down seven people and landed on me.  Then he pointed at me and said "alright, you're the one who's going to be fed to the alligator."  Then he kind of laughed and said "maybe God will save you".  Luckily he didn't really feed me to the alligators. 

We made Enchiladas! Corn, peppers, chicken, and mysterious white sauce from Mercadona.  They were delicious!

Parade floats (they look like covered wagons): this was the view from our bus stop. There was a group of people working on their float in our apartment complex parking lot all day Saturday to get ready. 

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AW

Week 14: The Best Day of My Life

Hola hola hola!

Yes, it's true. This week, I had what I'm pretty sure was the best day of my life to date. But FIRST, I'll tell you about everything that happened in the week that led up to it.

Bueno. On Monday night, Hermana Johnson and I made this Texas Sheet cake that her mom makes, and Hermana Johnson was convinced it wasn't as good as her mom makes it, but I thought it was GREAT. 

On Tuesday, we had district meeting. I really liked one thing that we read as a district, which was on prayer in the GEE (guía para el estudio de las escrituras). I'm not sure if it says a similar thing in the Topical Guide or Bible Dictionary, but essentially what one of the paragraphs said was that "the purpose of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to obtain those blessings that He is ready to give us, but which we need to ask for in order to receive." That's so cool to think about! More on prayer later...

Another of the talleres from district meeting was on obedience. As missionaries, we are asking people to abandon their entire life--stop smoking, spend 3 hours and another hour or two on the bus every Sunday to get to church--and so why does it feel so hard to turn off our tablet for 2 minutes while our companion is out of the room? That really hit me--as missionaries, we really have it easy!

On Tuesday night, we met with Vlad again. He still thinks we're just meeting with him to learn English. And really, we are. We want to serve and help him practice his English. But as he's talked with us more, we can tell that his interest in the church and a relationship with God are also both growing. We had a really good talk about the role of the family in the church and kind of sneaky-taught parts of the Plan of Salvation just in response to his questions! So we're going poco a poco with him.

On Wednesday I hit 3 months since the day I entered the CCM, which is weird. It kind of feels like I've been here for 3 years.

There were also cool things that happened on Wednesday! We had citas with Amparo and Fátima in the morning... and they both failed us, so we decided to go to our backup plan and go to the Ayuntamiento de Torremolinos (I think it translates to city hall?) to ask about service opportunities in the community. It talks about having planned service activities every week in Manual Misional (the missionary handbook), and so we were trying to follow that guideline and find planned service opportunities. Well, the people at the Ayuntamiento were zero help, and told us to go to the red cross, which we have no idea how to find. BUT, blessings for trying to be obedient, because we walked into the Ayuntamiento and THERE WAS FÁTIMA! She was super friendly and told us to come visit her in an hour, which we did, and then we were able to teach her and have a really good lesson with her! Fátima is kind of crazy, but she's super awesome.

On Thursday and Friday we went on intercambios again! It was really good, but I got about 11 mosquito bites (actually, I got exactly 11 mosquito bites--I counted) which was really not good. But overall, I learned a lot, and it's always not only fun but also really helpful to get to spend time with other missionaries and learn from them and see how they teach and things!

And then came Saturday, AKA THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE.

I AM NOT KIDDING YOU.

We took a train and a bus to get to the chapel in Málaga where all the missionaries in the entire mission were going to meet to listen to Elder Holland, which was really stressful because for a few minutes there we were pretty sure we were on the wrong bus. But it all turned out okay, we were on the right bus, and then they lined us all up on chairs and behind chairs in the parking lot to get a big mission picture! It was crazy being surrounded by so many missionaries! There were only 50-60 missionaries at the CCM and apparently we have close to 190 missionaries in our mission, so that was SUPER cool. Elder Holland came, along with the Europe area president Elder Johnson and his wife, Sister Johnson (Sister Holland was resting for later). But a couple of zones from far away still hadn't arrived, so Elder Holland decided to have all of us come around and shake his hand while we waited for the other two zones of missionaries to come so we could take the picture. And when Elder Holland shook all of our hands, he asked us our name and where we were from but also, I kid you not, stared into our souls. He told us later that he was conducting "interviews" with all of us.

Apparently way back when, the apostles used to interview every missionary every year. Claro, that doesn't happen anymore, but he said he likes to do that when he visits missions to get an idea of how the mission is doing. And then he assured us that the mission is doing good, which is good, because he has a reputation of being a little fuerte with missionaries who aren't being obedient and diligent haha. In his own words, "I am famous for going crazy." 

ANYWAY, after we shook his hand, we took the picture and then went inside.

Elder Johnson and Sister Johnson both spoke, there was a super good musical number, and then Elder Holland spoke.

                                           The hands that shook Elder Holland's hand

 His talk was FUEGO. He said a lot of things, as in, I'm still writing in my journal everything he said at that first meeting in the morning and it's taking 10 pages and counting. So I'll just talk about a few of the highlights.

In regards to life on the mission: 

"Do not miss this one chance. This experience, the one you're having now, only comes once. Don't have any regrets. Don't have anything left when you go home. Have as close to nothing left as you can." Then later he said that we need to "Give everything you have for this period of time." It's so true. We need to be focused on the mission right now, focused on Christ and helping bring people to him. And when we're doing everything we can, and giving everything we have, we can be sure that Heavenly Father is doing everything He can to help us.

Then he talked about what makes us different from other churches: "Our message is that God speaks to man." We believe that we have a prophet today, and that this church is literally the church that Christ established in his time, restored to the earth in this day and directed by people who are led by Him. That's what's so special about our chuch, and that's why the Book of Mormon is so important--because if it's true, and I know it is, then Joseph Smith really saw what he said he saw. He really saw Jesus Christ and God the Father, and he really was directed by them to restore this church, and this chuch really is led by a prophet of God today. How cool is that to think about?

Overall, the morning was really, really good. After the conference all the missionaries stayed around for a little bit to take another picture, and then the missionaries from far-away areas hopped on their buses to go back to their areas, and us missionaries who are lucky enough to be serving in the Granada Stake right now got on city buses and then the train to go to the special Granada Stake conference. This was SUPER cool, because Elder Holland, Sister Holland, Elder Johnson, and Sister Johnson all spoke at this too! 

My second cousin Hermana Ash is new to my mission and she was there too so I got my picture taken with her.  Our Grandmas who are sisters will be happy to see us together.

One cool thing that's really not on topic but I'm going to tell you about anyway is that at the conference in the morning, everyone spoke in English--claro, they're not fluent Spanish speakers. The native missionaries who don't speak much English had headsets. But at the conference in the evening, there were two microphones set up at the front of this giant building--one for the speaker, and one for their translator. Not only was it a good chance to kind of be practicing Spanish as we listened to every sentence in English and then in Spanish, but it also really made you think about every word that was said. And there were a LOT of good words said.

The main theme of this conference, of Elder Holland's talk at least, was prayer. He said this phrase or something very similar to it at least 3 or 4 times during his talk:

"When God can, he will ALWAYS give us what we want. If he knows he should not, he will give us something better." Whoa. That's so cool to think about. Sometimes, it's true, God doesn't give us what we want. And it's because He has a plan, and His plan is ALWAYS better than our plan. But then later, Elder Holland said something very similar, but finished that God will give us either what we want, "or something better...eventually." We need to have patience. God's timing isn't always in line with our timing. A lot of the time, it isn't. But we need to be patient and trust in Him that, when we don't get the response we want right away, He is going to give us something better eventually.

Another thing Elder Holland said was that most of the time, God will do it--answer prayers--through us. "We become His hands, his arms, an extension of His heart." This is so cool!!

He challenged us all to pray to be the hands of God. 

At the end of his talk, Elder Holland switched into Spanish to bear a simple testimony--that God lives. That with the gospel, we have nothing. No joy, no hope, no light... and with the Gospel, and with the atonement of Christ, we have everything. He said more than that, but I don't have much more written down. But when he switched into Spanish, this big room where 900 people were gathered, full of grownups, children, babies, went SILENT. 

These people had probably never heard the voice of an apostle speaking to them in a language they understood. I'm not sure where Elder Holland learned Spanish, and his Spanish wasn't perfect, but he testified of what he knew in a language that the members of this stake could understand, and it was incredible how strong the spirit was as he spoke. He finished his testimony with these words:

"Les amamos hoy, mañana, siempre. Para siempre." We love you today, tomorrow, always. Forever.

Whoa. Do you see now why this was the best day ever? An apostle of the Lord, one of only 15 "prophets, seers, and revelators" on the earth today, spoke twice, and I got to hear him twice and feel the spirit and the power of his testimony twice in one day. Not to mention being surrounded by missionaries, eating 2 magical homemade cookies from Hermana Andersen, and then a little miracle on the way back from the conference:

We were planning to take the cirucanias, the train, back to our piso after the conference. But then the train stop was really dark, and we realized that it was probably closed. So then we had to walk bastante, like 20-30 minutes, to get to a bus stop on the main road so we could get back to our piso before too late. When the bus finally came, it was so full that we were stuck standing--which is not fun when you're someone like me, who still hasn't mastered the art of not falling every time the bus starts and stops. But at the next stop, a woman from our ward got on and ended up standing right next to us for the 20-30 minute bus ride! It's not like we had a bad relationship with her, but we really didn't know her, and she's one of about 12 active members who live in our area so we've been wanting to get to know her since I got here! And we had a really nice conversation with her on the bus and now I feel like we're kind of friends with her, which was super good!

On Sunday, we got to go to church which is always great. And then after church, the stake president's wife came up to us and said they had invited the Elders in our ward over to eat but that they had a cita, and would we like to come with them to their house to eat? This family lives in our ward, but in the Elders' area, so we hadn't ever been over to their house. Of course we said yes, and when we got there we realized several things: 

1. They have a BEAUTIFUL house. It was like a house in the States, but nicer, and in Spain.

2. All of their kids speak like four languages (Spanish and German they're fluent, since apparently the stake president is from Switzerland--does this mean he has an accent when he speaks in Spanish? I don't know. I don't speak spanish. A couple of the kids are fluent in English too, and all are learning English and French).

3. Sister Hanni is a FANTASTIC cook.

4. Between the conference with the missionaries in the morning and the conference with the stake at night, Elder and Sister Holland came to this house and ate with the stake president and his family, and the delicious chicken and cheese and salad and tortilla de patata and quinoa that we were eating were actually leftovers from the meal they'd eaten with Elder Holland the day before, and the table we were sitting at with the family was the table that they had eaten at with Elder Holland on Saturday. So THAT was kind of awesome.

5. Elder Holland loved the cake that Hermana Hanni made (which we happily finished on Sunday) so much that he said that she would have to come to his funeral and bring that cake and everyone would be crying and sad because he had died, and then she would bring the cake and everyone would be happy. It really was a good cake.

Overall, the week was good. And the weekend was GREAT. I stand by my statement that Saturday was literally the best day of my life to date. My testimony grew so much, Elder Holland blew my mind a few times, and I am more motivated than ever to try my best at everything I do in the mission and afterwards, too.

Hope you all have a great week (although I'm sure it won't be as good as mine was, it might (?) come close), and remember what Elder Holland said. He compared the way swimmers become good swimmers to the way we can be good missionaries (and, I think, good people overall):

"Kick when you don't want to kick, stroke when you don't want to stroke...that's the way you win races."

Love, Hermana Walker

Week 13: No one died except maybe the lizard

Hola hola hola!

We started off this week by meeting with Vlad again on Monday night. We haven't moved on to lesson 2 with him yet, because he really doesn't have interest--yet! But we met with him again and his little six-year-old daughter who only speaks Russian and is the cutest girl EVER was there. She was missing a few teeth and had these long, blonde braids, and she speaks a tiny bit of Spanish but can say things like "yo hablo ruso" and that's about it. But afterwards she gave us a big hug, which was probably one of the highlights of the week. We miss little kids!

One thing we were talking about with Vlad was the value that we place on things, and how we really need to value the little things more. Like, eating dinner with my family after the mission will probably seem like the coolest thing ever that first night. But I ate dinner with my family every night for the first 18.5 years of my life and never felt like it was anything special! We should try to enjoy everything we do as if we hadn't done it for the past year and half, and we'll be a lot more grateful.

On Tuesday we had district meeting minus Elder Ramirez, who was in trainer's training. So of course, we took pictures with him. Creepy? A little. Fun? Very.

On Wednesday, we met with Victor again! We also met with him on Friday. He's always more than happy to meet with us and listen to us, but he STILL hasn't come to church! I was reading in Ether 12 and it talks a lot about faith in that chapter. I really liked verses 6 and then 12-18 because they talk about how we don't receive a witness and we don't see miracles come until AFTER our faith.

6. Faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

12. For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith.
13. Behold, it was the faith of Alma and Amulek that caused the prison to tumble to the earth.
14. Behold, it was the faith of Nephi and Lehi that wrought the change upon the Lamanites, that they were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost.
15. Behold, it was the faith of Ammon and his brethren which wrought so great a miracle among the Lamanites.
16. Yea, and even all they who wrought miracles wrought them by faith, even those who were before Christ, and also those who were after.
17. And it was by faith that the three disciples obtained a promise that they should not taste of death, and they obtained not the promise until after their faith.
18. And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God.

I love these verses because the point they make is so true--we have to have faith before we can see miracles and before we can receive our own personal witness of things. This is what we're trying to get Victor to understand. To know that the Word of Wisdom is given by God, you need to live it. To know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet, you need to listen to what he says. To gain a testimony of the importance of going to church, you need to go to church! To gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, you need to read it! 

Also on Wednesday, we were knocking doors in an apartment building and one English lady opened the door. We got two words out, and then she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't believe in Jesus. Sorry!" and closed the door. She was super nice and English, but it was kind of a surprise to remember that there are still people who don't believe in Jesus Christ--we're kind of in the land of the Catholics, so everyone at least has that foundation. It was a little funny just because of how cute she was when she said it, but also sad to think about.
This week we've been going through the list of future investigators that we have in the area book app--the list of people who've given us their name and number or address and expressed that they might have interest. This has been a PROJECT, because I'd say there are more than 100 people in there. But we've been making our way slowly down the list, calling them and deleting people who don't have information (a few just have a name and that's it, so not very helpful). One of the people who we've been trying to get in contact with is a woman named Andrea! On Thursday morning we finally met with her, and she is AWESOME. She has these two little kids and is from Hungary, but she speaks perfect Spanish. We taught her lesson 1, the restoration, and gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she would read it and pray about it. She was asking questions during the lesson but they were good questions that were relevant and that she really wanted to know the answers to and she is just so perfect! The only issue is that she's going to be in Hungary with her family for a wedding until the 25th. But we are going to call her on the 26th and visit her again!

On Friday, we called someone on our list named Paco. And by we called him, I mean that I called him, because I think Hermana Johnson hates me and wants me to die death by phone calls (just kidding...kind of). ANYWAY, I called him and he was really chatty, apparently he's this old man who sells cars. We ended up talking for, like, 12 minutes, which is REALLY long when you don't really know Spanish, and then I invited him to come to church and he said something along the lines of "Well, I'm single, so would I be able to find a wife there?" I really didn't know what to say, so I said something about how I was still pretty new in the area and didn't know, but that it was worth a shot and that he should come to church anyway. I ended the call pretty soon after that... Turns out he lives in the Elders' area, so we passed his number on to them. He wasn't at church on Sunday (I think... I don't really know what he looks like), but who knows, maybe Paco will show up in a few weeks looking for a wife!
On Friday night, we taught Giovanna and her husband! She came to church last Sunday and she came to church this Sunday too. Her husband has work a lot of Sundays, but he's going to try to come when he's not working. We watched the video "Elder Holland testimony of the book of Mormon" (or something like that... it's super good and you should all go watch it) and then challenged Giovanna and her husband (whose name I CANNOT remember) to read the Book of Mormon every night together as a family (they have 2 teenage kids). When Giovanna came to church yesterday she was so excited to tell us that they had read together as a family on Saturday night! Giovanna's sister is a really active member in the other Málaga ward so Giovanna always meets up with her after church. Yesterday we got to meet her too, and she is AWESOME.
On Saturday morning, we found a little lizard in our piso. Actually, it was on my bed, wearing my pajamas (aka it was in the sleeve of my pajamas). We tried to catch it, but it ran away and then we just kind of gave up. Funny how things that would really bother you not on the mission, like having a lizard loose in your apartment, just don't really seem that important! But no worries, because this morning when I was cleaning the bathroom I found him and caught him. Part of his tail fell off, which was pretty gross because it was still squirming around when it wasn't attached to him. I'd heard that that happens, but I hadn't really believed it... now I do. We threw him out the window, and hopefully he landed in a bush or something, because we're on the fifth floor.

On Saturday we had a cita with another person who we found when we were going through the area book, a woman named Fátima. We had her address, but her street wasn't on the map so we got the general area of where she lived and then were just wandering around trying to find her street when we ran into AMPARO! Here's the story with her: she mysteriously moved to Córdoba a few weeks ago, she kind of explained to us why she was going but not really, and we never heard from her again. We thought she was lost forever! And then, we were in the perfect place at the perfect time to run into her on the sidewalk! We FINALLY got her phone number, and we're going to visit her this week! It was a miracle!

The cita with Fátima went really well, too. She was being taught by missionaries about a year ago, but they stopped teaching her because they couldn't get in contact with her. But we taught her and she was SUPER friendly and receptive and said she's already reading the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and we're going to try to meet with her again this week too! 

Another miracle of Saturday... there's this old lady named Hermana Blanca who Hermana Johnson used to visit a lot before I got here, but we'd only seen her once since I've been here, almost a month and a half ago. She can't walk very far but she was never in her piso and we could never find her at her normal restaurant and she has about 8 cell phones and none of them work (apparently) so we couldn't call her. We were really, actually, truly convinced that she was dead. But good news: she's alive! We just happened to run into her sitting at a table outside a restaurant across the street from her building! And we got her new phone number, so we're going to try to visit her this week too.

However, we're not sure how many people we'll be able to visit this week, since this week is going to be CRAZY. Tuesday and Wednesday will be pretty normal, but Thursday and Friday we're going on intercambios in Málaga, and then on Saturday morning we get to attend the all-mission conference with ELDER HOLLAND!! We're SO excited! And then because we're in the Granada Stake, we get to hear him AGAIN on Saturday night when he speaks to the members of our stake. 5 days... not that we're counting or anything.

There's some big festival that's going to happen in a week or two here in Torremolinos, and they've already started decking out all the streets with lights and things. Something about San Miguel? We're excited to see what that's like.

I can't think of anything else to say, except that I read the talk "Notwithstanding my Weakness" by elder Neal A. Maxwell this week and it's really awesome so you should all go read it.

Our district taking photos with elder Ramírez.... He doesn't know we took this haha

City : we were trying to get in contact with a few people in a building and we got out of the elevator and view was really pretty. 

Talk to you next week!

Love, Hermana Walker

Week 12: OneTransfer Down

Hola hola hola! 

Another week has come and gone! On Sunday we got transfer calls. Normally after the first transfer (6 weeks) of training, you stay with your trainer for another six weeks to finish your training. This would mean that in a normal situation I would be staying with Hermana Johnson for another six weeks. But alas, on Saturday night we got a very suspicious phone call from one of our zone leaders, so by the time Sunday morning came around we were pretty sure what was going to happen. A lot of companionships were changed around this transfer, and so while I'm staying in torremolinos, hermana Johnson is going.... To stay in torremolinos too!!

Yes, that is how our zone leaders told us we were both staying when they called us on Sunday morning. Kinda freaked us out at first, but no worries. We're both staying!!!

This is really good for two reasons:

1) hermana Johnson is the BEST

2) I still haven't figured out how to open the door to get into the piso

 

Here we are posing by our apartment pool

So this week, we really didn't have a lot of citas (appointments). Actually we really DID, but everyone decided to fail us. But that's okay!!! We had a lot of chances to contact and follow up on some future investigators (people whose name and number we have, but haven't actually met with yet). But by having a lot of time to contact, I really mean we had a LOT of time to contact. One night we decided to contact every person we passed as we did a big loop around centro. Unfortunately, this meant that I accidentally contacted the same person twice, about ten minutes apart. I didn't even notice that she was the same person until hermana Johnson told me afterwards! She politely declined both times haha. I'm going to work on recognizing faces better... 

One cita we DID have was with Victor. We actually met with him twice! We've already taught him the first three lessons and are going through the commandments now, but the problem is that he still hasn't come to church! He tells us he'll try every weekend and loves reading the scriptures with us and (sometimes) on his own, but he never actually comes to church. But we're still working with him and know that there's a special spirit that comes from being in church so we're going to get him to come!!! And he's also really excited for elder Holland to come. 

On Tuesday, we met with this man, vlad, from Romania. He's learning English (his English is really good) and we're meeting with him to help him practice his English. It's a service opportunity and we also take a while to share a spiritual thought or a lesson with him before talking about other things. Two things about these meetings :

1) teaching in English is WEIRD

2) Vlad is CRAZY! He's a pescatarian (I think that's what it's called? Like vegetarian, but eats fish) and he goes scuba diving about every other week, in the ocean, to catch his own sea food. But not just like little fish either. Like funny eel things and stingrays!!! He's also really self - motivated, which is awesome. He gave us a talk about being motivated and setting goals and gaining knowledge. He made one really good point :don't pretend to know things you don't, or just ignore the things you don't understand. You need to ask questions when you don't understand, or you'll never learn anything! This is especially applicable to Hermana Johnson and I with the language, but also applicable to just life in general. Ask questions!!! 

We did meet with one man who's kind of a Europe traveler sort of guy. He had all these piercings and tattoos and was a reference from the elders. But he was one of the nicest, most polite and accepting people we've taught. He's only in torremolinos for a few days and now he's on his way, but we taught him the first lesson and gave him a book of Mormon and a card with the church website on it. He said he would read the book of Mormon and pray about it and hopefully he'll find the missionaries again sometime in the future! Moral of the story : don't judge a book by its cover! 

GOOD NEWS! although we really didn't have a lot of citas this week, we did have two people come to church!! Our investigator, lorenzo, and also Giovanna, the less active member we've been teaching, both came! Giovanna even brought her scriptures in a little bag! This is the first time since I've been here that anyone who we've been teaching has come to our ward, so it was super exciting! And it was fast Sunday (the first Sunday of the month, when members of the congregation get to come to the front if they want to share their testimony) and it was a REALLY GOOD fast Sunday! The stake president and his wife and the bishops wife and hermana Johnson all bore their testimonies. But the best part of the meeting was at the very end. There was some visiting authority, we're still not sure who (we think he was an area seventy?) who bore his testimony. Normally our ward is pretty loud. Just a lot of babies and kids and an echoey room. But I kid you not, when this man got up the room went SILENT. It was incredible and the spirit was so strong! 

Random note: please stop over feeding the missionaries! There's no such thing as too many eating appointments (in my opinion haha, but that's coming from someone who has, at most, two a week), but there is DEFINITELY such a thing as feeling bad and feeling like you have to eat so much at every cita. The missionaries probably aren't starving. Don't make them eat everything :) 

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but we have an enemy. He's not OUR  enemy, we're sure he's a nice guy. We see him talking to his friends. But he seems to think we're his enemies. He's the man who cleans ramon and norma's building, which is also the building where a few less active members live. So we're there every so often visiting these people. Around my third day in the area, we ran into him in the lobby and he was getting really close and yelling at us and pulled a pass along card out of his pocket that was ripped in half and threw it on the floor and was yelling at us to get out of his building (why on earth he had a card conveniently in his pocket, I have no idea). Now every time that he's outside the building and we walk by, he's telling all the people around him about the testigos de jehováh (jehováh witnesses) that keep trying to get into his building and warning them to watch out for us. First, we're not testigos. Second, we're just visiting people we know! We're not sure why he hates us - - he doesn't have to listen to our message, but he doesn't have to hate us! - - but it's kind of an exciting adventure every time we're in that area or trying to get into the building to visit people haha. 

Today we met up with elder Ramírez and elder Stratford and also pascal from our ward and took a tour of a bull ring and walked around Málaga centro. It was really fun! Tonight we're going to meet with vlad again. He doesn't think he's ready for /wants God in his life, but we can tell he totally does! Poco a poco :) 

Our shopping carts full at the market

 Green parrots are very common here

 My wall by my study desk

Thanks for all your support and prayers and have an awesome week!! 

Love, Hermana Walker