Week 19: Out with a bang

Hola hola hola!

This week has possibly been the longest week of my mission--not in a bad way, just in a wow-last-Monday-feels-like-ten-years-ago kind of way. 

On Tuesday we had a great lesson with Amparo. As we were teaching her, she was telling us that she could feel the Spirit testifying to her. She's still trying to stop smoking, which has been really hard. But she's doing great, and the next step is to figure out a way to get her to church!

On Wednesday we woke up to a massive thunderstorm! Hermana Johnson and I agreed that it felt like a hurricane (then again, neither of us has ever actually been in a hurricane, so I don't think we're qualified to say that). The windows were shaking like crazy and later that day, we heard that there had been more than 110 lightnings! (Pretty sure that's not how to say that...110 bolts of lighting?) We woke up at 7:30 like usual and Hermana Johnson started trying to finish packing, and then about 20 minutes in... the lights went out. It doesn't get light until 8:30 or 9, so basically our piso was pitch-dark. Hermana Johnson was convinced that this was her punishment for putting off packing for the last minute haha. Luckily my lovely mom made me bring a little lantern on the mission, so she finished her packing via lantern, and the occasional super bright lightning flash that would light up the entire piso. Hermana Johnson took a video of the storm that shows one really big lightning strike, I'll try to attach it. You could say that mother nature wanted Hermana Johnson to go out with a bang! Right as the sun finally started to light up the piso...the power came back on. Anyway, Hermana Johnson finally finished packing, and then we pulled her suitcases to the bus stop near our piso. Three buses were completely full and passed us by... so we decided to go to the train stop and take the train, about a half hour away. We probably looked pretty weird, two Mormon missionaries lugging three suitcases through Torremolinos centro. But we made it to the train stop, got her suitcases down the stairs, got them down ANOTHER set of stairs that goes under the train tracks, UP a set of stairs to get to the platform on the other side, and onto the train. It was probably a 2-hour process to get from our piso to the big train station in Málaga, but we finally got there! President and Hermana Andersen had picked up Hermana Encarnación from the airport and had all her suitcases in their car, so I hugged Hermana Johnson goodbye and then President and Hermana Andersen drove Hermana Encarnación and I to our piso in Torremolinos. Needless to say, the trip from Málaga to Torremolinos was a lot faster than Torremolinos to Málaga! 

Hermana Encarnación is great. She speaks probably as much English as I do Spanish, so between the two of us we normally can figure out what each other is trying to say haha. She's from the Dominican Republic but has lived in Barcelona for three years. And she's going to be a chef, so basically, we're going to eat pretty well this transfer. We haven't even been together an entire week yet, but I've already learned a few things from her:

1. I do not know how to cook.

2. I am not as tidy as I thought I was... I used to think I was a pretty clean person, but she came in and reorganized all the kitchen cupboards, mopped all the floors, and started taking apart things that I didn't know could be taken apart (like the vent/hood thing over the stove), cleaning them, and putting them back together! She's like the fairy godmother of cleaning... she makes cleaning supplies that I didn't even know we had appear out of thin air, then uses them to make the piso sparkling clean! I try to help, but I'm not quite at her level yet (I cleaned the bathroom this morning, but then she came in and re-cleaned it, and now things I didn't even know were dirty are clean!)

3. My Spanish has a loooong way to go haha

4. The word for sticker in Spanish is pegatina!

It's definitely been weird being with someone other than Hermana Johnson, but Hermana Encarnación is really great and I'm sure we'll get closer as the weeks go on!

On Wednesday afternoon, we visited Fátima and taught her about receiving answers through the Holy Ghost and acting on those answers. She told us that she knows the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith couldn't have written it, and she knows he was a prophet, and she told us that this coming Sunday she's going to come to church! Then we went to Lorenzo and Inma's house to eat. It's weird doing the exact same thing we always do, but with a new companion. 

On Thursday we ate mediodia (the noon meal) with Norma and Ramón, then visited Giovanna again! Except funny story... her name isn't Giovanna. It's Yovanna. If you say Giovanna and Yovanna out loud, they kind of sound the same... but we've definitely been writing Giovanna and calling her Giovanna and everything for the past three months, and just realized like a week ago that her name is Yovanna. So THAT'S awkward. She probably realized we were calling her the wrong name, but didn't say anything because she's so sweet. No worries, we're now calling YOVANNA by her actual name!

On Friday we visited an old investigator named Angeles. We've knocked on her door a few times but she never opened up--but this time, she did! We talked with her for a long time. She has a lot of problems, and she really needs this gospel--and she invited us back to visit her again! Yay! Then we went over to Hermana Blanca and read 1 Nephi 17 with her, and THEN visited a woman named Maria. We were about halfway through the video (which is only like 2 minutes long) when this huge mouse ran across the floor and behind a bookshelf! Hermana Encarnación and I kind of looked at each other, but Maria didn't seem to notice it. Then it ran across the room again a few minutes later! This time Maria noticed it, but didn't seem fazed, so we're not sure if it was her pet or what. Kind of weird haha. Friday night we visited Fátima again!

Saturday was pretty much a day of trying to find people and finding no one. So it was a REALLY long day. Sometimes hours fly by, and sometimes five minutes take ten years to pass. Saturday was more like the second. But on Sunday after church, we got a phone call from our investigator Lorenzo who we've been trying to call for weeks but never answers his phone! He told us he wanted to meet later that day, which was super awesome and almost never happens! We met with him and had a really good lesson. 

I've been reading in the book of Ether in the Book of Mormon, and Ether 6:4-12 talks about the Jaredites' journey across the ocean. They submitted themselves to the will of the Lord and trusted Him to guide them, but that didn't mean they had a really quick, easy journey. They were "buried in the depths of the sea" a few times, which probably wasn't fun at all, and the journey took 344 DAYS! But the Lord protected them and always brought them back up to the surface, and when they finally did get to the Americas, the first thing they did was express gratitude for the Lord's help.

"And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them."

I picture the Jaredites, setting their feet on the beach for the first time in almost a year, and immediately bowing themselves down to express gratitude. They didn't complain that it had taken so long, or that it had been so bumpy. They just gave thanks. I've been working on remembering to be patient on days like Saturday when pretty much everyone fails us and no one wants to talk to us, and trying to be more grateful when miracles do come, like Lorenzo's phone call. Because if the Jaredites can spend 344 days in a boat and still be grateful, I can definitely be grateful when something good happens after a long day or week. Just be patient and be grateful and trust in Heavenly Father, and everything will work out!

Love, Hermana Walker 

Here are some pictures of Hermana Johnson's farewell dinner with Ramon and Norma.

Week 18: transfer calls!

Hola hola hola!  

I know these emails are always super long, so in case you just want to know where I'm going  I wrote TRANSFER CALLS!!!  in all caps right before I say where I'm going haha. 

Tuesday was district meeting. It was elder Stratford's birthday! Hermana Johnson and I made a cake that her mom sent her from AMERICA and 63 of those peanut butter cookies from last week... We didn't realize 2 batches would make that many! Elder Stratford's comp, Elder Neubert, brought... nothing. The Nerja elders, Elder Lentz and Elder Gentry, brought a pineapple and matches. It was a party. 

One of our goals this week was to give out a Book of Mormon every day. It's normally pretty hard to give these out, because you want to make sure that the person you're giving it to has at least a LITTLE interest, and most people don't want to take a book and have to carry it around with them. We had to run into our piso for 2 minutes on Tuesday night, and then we had 20 minutes left before we had to come back for the night. And we still hadn't given out a Book of Mormon!  So we said a prayer and booked it out of our piso. We crossed one street, stopped the first girl we saw on the corner, and ended up talking to her for 20 minutes! She's evangélica and said her biggest problem with our religion is the idea that we need more than the Bible (this is a common concern, but the reality is that the Book of Mormon isn't devaluing the Bible in any way, it's just God wanting to give us more guidance and more of His word! So who wouldn't want that?). BUT she said she would read the Book of Mormon to find out for herself, and when we called her a few days later she said she'd been reading! She's only 17 so she's busy with work and school, but we're going to try to find a time to meet with her soon. MILAGROS! 

I have nothing to say from Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday... But I'm sure they were good, or at least not BAD, because if they were super awful I would probably remember them. 

Saturday night we got the chance to go to a baptism of the elders in the other ward! 
It was a couple from Argentina who are friends with two members in that ward. They were the cutest couple and so prepared for the gospel! Finding people to teach through members is the absolute best way to find people to teach, 100%. If you have a friend who's interested, invite them to meet with the missionaries to find out a little bit more about what we believe!

All week we'd been counting down the days to Sunday morning, when transfer calls come. It finally came, and thank goodness, the zone leaders called us at like 7:35am (we wake up at 7:30) because if they had waited five more minutes I might have died. 

TRANSFER CALLS!!! 
Hermana Johnson is heading to Almería, which is a few hours away but still in our stake so I'll see her a couple times next transfer. 

My companion is going to be Hermana Encarnación! Our zone leaders didn't know anything about her and Hermana Johnson had never heard of her, so I was a little nervous for a while there. But we talked to a few missionaries at church and on Sunday night and now I know a few things about her!

1. She's a native Spanish speaker, and from the Dominican Republic
2. She does speak some English (someone said she speaks as much English as I do Spanish) 
3. She has an afro
4. She came into the mission 2 transfers (12 weeks) before Hermana Johnson 
5. She's been home for a while (not sure how long) for medical reasons BUT she's back now! This will be her first transfer back. 
6. She's super funny and sassy

That's literally all I know haha. I'll find out more when she gets here! It will be weird being with someone other than Hermana Johnson, because she's all I've ever known. I'm also still confused about where we are about 25% of the time, so we'll be using maps a lot for a while. But Hermana Encarnación seems great, and I'm excited to meet her on Wednesday! 

On Sunday night we got to watch a broadcast from Germany! Elder Ballard from the quorum of the 12 apostles gave a special talk to all the members in Europe. It was super good. He talked about how there are miracles that God can make happen, but we have to have faith or they won't happen! Faith has been a theme I've noticed in the Book of Mormon this time reading it. If we don't have faith, we won't see blessings, we can't be strengthened, we can't experience miracles. But if we DO, we can see God's hand in our life in amazing ways! So keep up the faith! 

Love,

Hermana Walker 

There was a big combined youth activity with all 4 Málaga wards and the fuengirola ward a few weeks ago. It was with all the missionaries from those five wards and was about getting them excited to go on missions. We just got two pictures from it, so I just shared those with you. Don't be confused by how many people have name tags, because we gave everyone fake paper name tags... 

Victoria, Fátima's daughter. She is the sassiest six year old you will ever meet. 

Chicken with mashed potatoes and Ikea gravy. Happy day. 

This big fountain in torremolinos centro was filled with bubbles- someone poured soap in it. Hermana Johnson had never heard of doing this so she thought it was hilarious.

A book stand on the street in Málaga where all the books are blue... If you look very closely, you can find the truest blue book there is! 

Week 17: A very normal week

Oct 9, 2017 Hola hola hola!

Well, like the title says... this has been a very average, normal week. Nothing too crazy happened besides the fact that we walked about 56 miles this week.

We didn't end up getting to meet with Andrea, since she's living in a different city for a few weeks while her piso is being renovated. We're going to see if we can get something to work out in a week or two. We met with Amparo and Fátima. They both like meeting with us, and they're both reading the Book of Mormon and really like it, but neither of them is willing to make the sacrifice to come to church, which is a little frustrating. We also met with Lidia, a less-active member, who actually DOES want to come to church but got in some sort of accident so now she has foot problems and can't for a while.

I sliced my finger open with a knife! This sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is. It was a butter knife, and the cut was more like a really long, deep paper cut. I didn't even know you could cut yourself with a butter knife. The more you know! It happened when we were cutting up squares of chocolate to put on some peanut butter cookies that we made on Monday night. We brought them to district meeting and everyone was WAY excited because peanut butter is hard to find here and when you do find it, it's really expensive. But we made the sacrifice, splurged on the tiny jar of peanut butter at mercadona, and WOW it was worth it. Fact: we're making them again tonight at 10:15 so we can take them to district meeting again for Elder Stratford's birthday.

We went to visit one future investigator this week named Angeles, and she let us into the building, but then when we knocked on her door this adorable little 3-year-old boy opened it. Apparently, his mom went "shopping." When we asked him when she would get back, he said, "Um... 9:30." He was totally lying and his mom was definitely there, but he was super cute so it was okay.

Transfers will be on Wednesday the 18th, so this coming Sunday we'll get transfer calls! (We'll be told who's going, who's staying, who's coming for the next six weeks.) What's most likely to happen is that Hermana Johnson will leave and go to another city, I'll stay here for at least 1 more transfer (6 weeks), and someone else will come in to be my new companion. BUT, we really won't know until Sunday. So I'll let you know next Monday what's going to happen!

Sunday was fast Sunday, and I went into church determined to get something out of every class and every speaker. It's just extra easy to get unfocused at church when you only understand about 80% of what people are saying. But I tried really hard to take notes during testimony meeting and actually got a lot out of it, which was really cool! Also, when I was leading the music (for some reason, whenever it's my turn to lead the music, we end up singing songs that are either really obscure from the English hymnbook or not even in the English hymnbook, which is fun), I looked around and realized that I recognized the vast majority of people in the ward! I've been here a long time haha.

One thing I loved that someone said (I might have written it down wrong) in their testimony was, "El Señor no quiere que corramos más que podemos, pero que sí, corramos." "The Lord doesn't want us to run more than we can, but that yes, we run." He doesn't expect anything more than our all, but He DOES expect our all.

Have a great week and give it your all!

Love, Hermana Walker

We went to IKEA on preparation day.  Ikea is close to our apartment and it has good Wi-Fi and food so I'll definitely be going there again.

We also got to see the city garbage being collected.  We always wondered how that was done since the garbage cans can't be opened up.  It turns out they are raised into the air and the dumpsters underneath them are dumped.  Mystery Solved!

Week 16: Now I know what Argentina smells like

Hola hola hola!

I'd say there were three highlights from this week:

1. Hermana Johnson is now practically a senior citizen because she turned TWENTY

2. Feria de San Miguel

3. GENERAL CONFERENCE!

Let's get into it:

1. Hermana Johnson had her birthday on Tuesday! Holly decorated a birthday tree for her companion.  

 She got lots of great gifts from family back home including a fit bit like mine.  We won't be companions forever and now that she has gotten used to counting her steps with my fit bit she wanted her own.

It kind of felt like it was my birthday too though, because she got to do so many fun things and that meant that I got to do so many fun things too! We ate chocolate and churros for breakfast, had cake at district meeting, and then went to Ramón and Norma's for dinner that night! Chocolate and churros are pretty self-explanatory, and so is the cake. Ramón and Norma's house, though, was AWESOME. We eat with them probably once a week, but this was nothing like we've ever done before.

Their daughter Karen and her three crazy little kids were there, and so was Karen's husband. Karen is a less-active member and her husband isn't a member of the church, so it was super awesome to get to spend time with them not only because their family is just so crazy but also because we got to share a message with them which was really special.

After we ate dinner, Norma came out with this super cool Argentinian cake, and Norma, Ramon, and Karen started singing happy birthday to Hermana Johnson IN ENGLISH! These are three people who really don't speak English, at all, so at first, we weren't even sure what language they were singing but then we realized it was English and it was the cutest thing ever! Then they sang it again, in Spanish, and then sang ANOTHER Spanish birthday song and were started on their fourth song when Karen decided Hermana Johnson had probably had enough. I guess they weren't sure how old Hermana Johnson was turning, because the cake had one of those candles that can be like a number, but instead of being a number or having a 2 candle and a 0 candle, they just had a question mark candle! Pretty sneaky... They also made these bon bons that are also Argentinian and we've been eating leftover cake and bon bons all week.

But the funny thing is, the Argentina candy they gave us a few weeks ago, the cake, and the bon bons all had kind of similar flavors... so I guess you could say we know what Argentina tastes like now. It tastes REALLY GOOD.

2. Feria de San Miguel

So what we're pretty sure of is that every city in Spain has its saint. By pretty sure, I mean like 30% sure. What we're more sure of is that Torremolinos' (did I put the apostrophe in the right place? Who knows, who cares) saint is San Miguel, like the archangel Michael. For weeks, Torremolinos has been decked out for some big fair about San Miguel, and it finally happened this week! Every time we walked past the city center this week, we saw something new: a massive dish of paella, a concert, a party, and ALWAYS tons of women wearing flamenco dresses and massive flowers in their hair.

We went over to Arlessa's piso on Friday night, and when we left and went in the direction of Amparo's piso afterwards, we got trapped in a massive crowd of people all along the street for a few minutes. There was some sort of procession happening that involved, como siempre, a ton of people in flamenco dresses, but also a lot of army people twirling guns, some sort of military trumpet marching band, and a group of people carrying a massive statue of San Miguel! Pretty cool. When the trumpet people started playing, all the people in the crowd around us started singing some song, which was... interesting, and very confusing. So that was a kind of fun, random thing that we literally ran into on the street. Then the procession passed, the people spread out a little, and we were able to get by. Spain is fun.

3. General Conference!

Every 6 months, the leaders of the church, like the prophet, the members of the quorum of the 12 apostles, and other leaders speak in a worldwide church broadcast called General conference. They speak on whatever topics they feel the church members need to hear and it's super cool! It's broadcast from a huge building in Salt Lake City called the conference center, so there are about 20,000 (I think?) people there and the rest watch via satellite. There are 6 meetings (sessions), about 2 hours each: one the weekend before for women, one on Saturday morning, one Saturday afternoon, one Saturday night for the men, and then one on Sunday morning and one on Sunday afternoon. There's an 8-hour time difference between Utah and Spain, so it makes watching general conference a little tricky (claro). Since there were some technical difficulties at the church, we downloaded the talks from the women's session and have been watching them at night, just one at a time. But we got the wifi fixed so that we were able to watch the Saturday morning session at 6pm here, which meant it was live--which was cool, except a little weird when the session ended and we walked outside and it was night. We set up the sessions in English in a classroom so it was pretty much just the members watching in Spanish in the chapel and a room of missionaries watching in English. It's fun being so close to Málaga, because there are a LOT of missionaries who live close. There were probably 8 or 9 sets of missionaries at the church to watch conference.

Then on Sunday we watched the recorded Saturday afternoon session in English. Lorenzo, our investigator, came to the church to watch the Sunday morning session live at 6pm, so we watched that later session in Spanish with him. I got the majority of what the speakers were saying, except by the last talk I think Hermana Johnson and I were both kind of mentally exhausted from almost 2 straight hours of just listening to people speak Spanish, so we re-watched that last talk in English afterwards. Lorenzo really liked conference! He was impressed with the choir (apparently, he really likes to sing) and told us he wants to be at the conference center in Utah for the next general conference. We want him to be there too! We taught him the Word of Wisdom (a health standard revealed through the prophet Joseph Smith) last week, and when we asked him on Sunday how it was going, he said he's stopped drinking alcohol and tea completely and gone from drinking three coffees a day to one. We're really excited for him! Hopefully we'll get a chance to meet with him this week. Hermana Johnson and I are watching the recorded Sunday afternoon session of conference today at the church.

Another thing from watching conference in Spanish: we English speakers don't realize how lucky we are! Yes, they translate the talks (it's a translator's voice over the speaker's voice), but they don't translate the words on the screen (186th (?) semi(?)annual general conference, first counselor, first presidency, cosas así) from English, and the choir sings in English! The words thing was kind of a surprise, but the choir really shouldn't have been. But it's still just weird to think about the people who don't speak English, and so they don't get as much out of the musical numbers or the names on the screen and they don't even get to hear the actual voices of the speakers. The more I learn about the church here, the more respect I have for all the members of the church who live outside of the states. They're awesome!

This week we didn't have a TON of citas, but we got to meet with a few people, like Fátima, Hermana Blanca (I don't know why we call her Hermana Blanca, but we do), and Lidia. We also got in contact with Andrea again! She's the woman who's AWESOME and we taught once a few weeks ago, but...

Bad news: She went on a two-week trip to Hungary

Good news: She's back from her trip!

Bad news: We called her because we knew she would be back, but she didn't answer the phone even though we called on a few different days

Good news: She finally called us back!

Bad news: She's moving

Good news: Her new piso is still in our area!

Bad news: They're doing renovations on their piso so they're living outside of our area for the next three weeks

Good news: She said she'll be in Torremolinos on Wednesday and we can meet then!

We're not EXACTLY sure where her piso is, but we have the general idea of where it is and so we're going to go searching for her building today or tomorrow and if we can't find it, we'll call her. We're really excited to get to visit her again!

All the talks from general conference were super great, but one I really liked was Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the women's session. In his talk, he shared a story about three sisters. One was sad basically her whole life, one was mad, and one was glad. The point of his talk was that it is we ourselves, not the events or situations in our life, that determine how happy we are. Don't get mad, get glad! I could write a lot about every talk from conference, but I'll just leave it at that for the sanity of everyone. 

Hope you have an amazing week! 

Love, Hermana Walker

This was a yummy fish dinner served to us this week.