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.
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.
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?
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
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