Hola hola hola!
Well this week's title
has 2 meanings:
1. A little more
symbolic (metaphorical? I don't know)... The era in Torremolinos is ending, and
I'm heading to PUERTO DE SANTA MARÍA this week! It's over by Cádiz and is
apparently a great area. I'm going to be companions with Hermana Matsu, who's
going to be in the last transfer of her mission. I'll let you know more about
all that next week! I'm sad to leave Torremolinos and Hermana Encarnación, but
SUPER excited to get to meet new people, see a new city, and teach and serve
the people in my new area!
2. A little more
literal... The study room in our piso has two doors: one that goes into the
hallway with the bedrooms, and one that goes into the kitchen. We have the
heater in this study room, so we like to close the doors to keep the warm air
in there. But every time, without fail, when we close one of the doors, the
other one opens! So either there's some really weird air pressure, or the piso
has ghosts.
Tuesday and Wednesday,
we had citas and talked to people on the street and things. Good times, but not
much to talk about.
On Thursday, we had
district meeting! We got to move it to Thursday so that afterwards, we
could have a Thanksgiving mediodía. Hermana Encarnación and I made
cookies, brownies, and arepas. We also brought like 20 oranges because Lorenzo
gave us about 60 oranges when we ate with them on Wednesday from his campo. We
combined with the other district in our chapel to eat on Thursday, so there
were 14 of us. Some of the elders brought chickens (not alive, don't worry) to
eat, and some other people brought stuffing (made from scratch! Apparently box
stuffing doesn't exist in this country, which is sad), mashed potatoes and
gravy, and ice cream. It was a good Thanksgiving.
Thursday evening, we
taught a pretty chaotic lesson to a tiny piso full of Romanians. It was
definitely interesting. Luckily we figured out how to get the gospel library
app to read the scriptures out loud in Romanian.
Then we left the
Romanians and taught Giovanna and her family! (Yes, her name actually IS Giovanna--not
Yovanna. We were right, then we were wrong, and now we've got it actually
confirmed by the bishop that it's Giovanna.) The lesson on tithing went great.
They're such a cute family and they want to do the right thing.
On Friday we had a few
more citas. We visited Andrea, taught Liliana (an old investigator who hasn't
had time to meet for the past 3.5 months!), and taught Lelica and Matei too.
They were good lessons too, but honestly I can't remember much from them
because so many things happened this weekend!
Saturday morning we
took a bus and then the metro to get to the piso of Joshua, our new ward
mission leader! He is so awesome. We had correlación in his tiny little kitchen
on an interesting variety of chairs. He is really going to help the ward and
the missionary work in Málaga 2!
While we were waiting
at the bus stop in Málaga to get back to our piso after correlación, we got a
phone call from President Andersen! He called to let Hermana Encarnación know
she's going to train this next transfer. She's going to be such a good trainer.
But the best part of the phone call was that once he finished talking with
Hermana Encarnación, the phone got passed to me and he told me where I'm going
this transfer! Normally we have to wait until Sunday morning to know, so I was
pretty excited.
Saturday night, we had
a street contacting activity with the Málaga 1 and 2 wards. We attached
glowsticks to the #iluminaelmundo (#Lighttheworld) pass-along cards, then went
out into Málaga with the members to give them out and spread the news about the
initative. It was so fun to see the little kids running around giving out
glowsticks and cards. People are a lot more receptive to a cute kid than they
are to us, and the kids were so excited to be able to share the gospel!
Sunday morning I put a
quesadilla in a pan because I was hungry and we were out of Muesli. Then we got
a call from the zone leaders about transfers! We already knew where we were
going, but we still wanted to know what was happening with the rest of the
people in our zone. I went into Hermana Encarnación's room so we could both
listen. Cool things happening, people leaving, people coming, cosas así. Then I
went to do something and Hermana Encarnación went into the kitchen...
"Um, hermana?"
"Sí?"
"Su quesadilla..."
*Hermana Walker runs
into the kitchen*
"Oh no."
There wasn't a fire or
anything, but there was a good amount of smoke. And picture the blackest thing
you've ever seen, then multiply it by 2, and that's the color of my quesadilla.
14 minutes on the stove will do that. And then we left for church, so I didn't
get to eat breakfast.
On Sunday got to the
church at 9:30am and left at 9:30pm. This Sunday was the primary program, which
was super cute. There were 17 kids in the program and it was really well done.
It's always weird to hear the familiar songs sung in a different language. I've
gotten used to hearing the hymns in Spanish, but hearing the primary songs in
Spanish was super weird--really cool though. For the last song all the parents
of the kids came to the front and they sang together. It was so cute. This
really is a church for families. We invited Andrea to come and were pretty sure
she was going to come with her family... but then she didn't. That was pretty
hard, because Hermana Encarnación and I were both sitting there the entire
primary program, thinking about how much Andrea would have loved it if she had
been there!
A good thing from
sacrament meeting was that I convinced Hermana Encarnación to lead the music,
since it was my last Sunday. :) I don't think I'll tell the people in my new
ward that I know how to lead music.
We ate lunch in the
church and did our studies there too. Then we started setting up for the
Christmas concert! I still have no idea how we became the companionship in
charge of it. We moved chairs and put up decorations and called people and
basically stressed a lot. BUT there was a really good turn out--the chapel was
full to the back wall! And the members came on time like we asked, which is a
miracle in and of itself for Spain. The performances all turned out really well
and at the end when two elders presented the video of the initiative and talked
about it, I think all the members felt excited to participate! The best part of
all was that we told our bishop that the concert would last about an hour-- and
when we checked the time after the closing prayer, it had taken 59 minutes!
Lots of people brought food to donate to a food bank. Pretty much no one
brought food to eat afterwards like we asked, but we had brought a lot of
cookies and one companionship of elders and one of hermanas brought food to
eat, so I think there was enough in the end. Then after the concert we stayed
to clean up for a while. When we got back to our piso we were both exhausted.
In the end everything went really well, but I am never planning another concert
again.
Today we've been
deep-cleaning the piso and I've been packing! I have to leave tomorrow since
the new group of missionaries comes in tomorrow. I'll stay with a couple hermanas
in Málaga on Tuesday night and then go to my new area on Wednesday. So today is
a little chaotic. But I'm so excited to see how the next transfer goes!
28 days until
Christmas.
Love, Hermana Walker
No comments:
Post a Comment