Hannah in España: #5 CCM

I had the best park day ever. I'm feeling way blessed to have God on my side and to be IN Spain and to be A MISSIONARY. THIS IS THE BEST.

This is gonna be good, I'll start from the beginning. My companion was the one and only Hermana Sinclair #blessed. We were psyched. I've been sick know for 2 weeks and I was feeling garbby Saturday morning (Park morning) so I slept all morning to be good for the park. I almost wasn't well enough to go to the park but good grief I'm glad I was able to go. SO WE pray and make our way to the park. We walked in the park and Hermana Sinclair started handing out the tarjetas like candy. And we'd say "tenga un buen dia" and we handed one to this man and woman. And the man says "thank you" so then we were like hold up you speak English and we went turned around to talk to them. The man's name was Omer and the woman was Alex. Alex was from New York and Omer was from Egypt. And they were just on vacation in Spain. We talked for a bit and they were lovely. Omer had never heard of missionaries or the gospel but Alex worked with a Mormon gal and had seen missionaries before. They were the loveliest people. Omer eventually said "okay I'm a teacher and the best teachers can deliver their message in 2 minutes talk to me" he said he was very interested about this whole missionary thing and wanted to know what we had to say. So first we asked him what he believed in. He believed in God and believed Jesus to be a prophet. So we were like Yeah! So we told him in two minutes about God and Jesus Christ and he wanted to know more. He wanted to know about the Book of Mormon and eventually we started talking about prophets somehow and I said "We have a prophet on the earth today" and at that, Alex chimed in and was like woah that's news to me! So I pulled up a picture of President Monson on my tablet and they were so awed but the fact we have a prophet. Through that we were able to basically to teach the first message to our good friends. My favorite part was that Omer was just asking us about why we lived our religion and why we were missionaries. He had so much respect for us because we told him that we keep the commandments and do the right thing because we love God not because we fear eternal damnation. He really admired that about us and he just congratulated us for the work we were doing. He congratulated us for not bashing on other religions in any way, we were just simply inviting people to come to Christ. This guy knew what was up. He was gold. I'm not lying when I say God prepares the hearts of his children to hear the truth and accept it. Alex and Omer are gold. I'm actually really sad that I won't ever see them again but I know they'll find the truth. Towards the end of our conversation he kept thanking us for our time and he kept saying he was so interested in our religion so we gave him every resource that we could, LDS Facebook pages and all. He asked us if we could sing for him and if he could record it and of course we said yes. So I asked if we could sing a song about Jesus and he said of course. So we sang them I Know That My Redeemer Lives. And he recorded us all in selfie mode with a selfie stick. It was a sweet experience. We were just in the middle of this busy park singing about our Redeemer. #gospelgoals

So then Hna Sinclair and I say goodbye to our friends and go on our merry way feeling like we were on cloud nine and I see a guy on a bike taking pictures of the Glass Palace with this huge cámara. So I was like I'm gonna talk to this guy. So I did. I put my Spanish mode on and asked if I could see the picture and he showed it to me and tbh it wasn't even that great but whatevs I'll give it to him. He started telling us how he has been in that park for 4 hours taking g photos but when he told us this, his voice was crazy weird. He talked in like a very airy huffy puffy whisper. I don't know how to describe it but it was very hard to understand his Spanish at first . We found out that he was deaf and was wearing hearing aides. His name is Alfonso and he was probably around 24 ish but we got talking to him for a while and he was so kind! Let me tell ya we definitely had the gift of tongues to be able to communicate with Alfonso as long as we did because that was no small task. He helped us with our Spanish and told us that in one more month we were going to be fluent. He was Catholic and very graciously accepted our Libro De Mormón. We wished him a good day and went on our merry way again

We were walking down a main road when to our right we saw this group of girls all dressed like Disney princesses having a tea party. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen in my life and Hna Sinclair and I decided that we had to go talk to them because they are living their lives the right way. So we awkwardly back tracked and came to find out that to get to that patch of grass we had to go all the way around to the other side. We almost were to lazy but we went ahead and did it. As we were just about to approach the princesses I see this guy sitting underneath a tree by himself drinking some Maté. (I don't even know if that's how it's spelled)the only reason I recognized it was because of the cup and straw was the exact same as Travis's and I remember Travis drinking it all the time. (shout

-out to you Travis) but all the sudden without even thinking I just yell across to him "ese es mate??" again I have no idea if that is even correct Spanish but it's what I said. And all the guy says is "si quieres?" he was holding it our for me to drink it ah hahaha. That's so nice. I kindly declined but we started talking to him. Here is what I know about this guy. His name is Tomas. He is 18 years old and he turns 19 on Saturday. He is from Buenos Aires Argentina and moved to Spain ONE Week ago. He came to Spain all by himself to work and hna Sinclair and I are probably the only people he knows in this country. He is Catholic and he actually practices it hardcore (which I so appreciate. I appreciate how many Catholics are here in Spain but I love it even more when they actually practice and know their religion) he has his own little religious group and with this group they study other religions. He doesn't speak English. We got to talk to Tomas for about an hour and it was FANTASTIC. I love Tomas, what a guy. He was so so so very kind to us and not just because we were girls his age. He wasn't creepy at all he was just so insanely kind. He was so willing to hear what we had to say and even asked so many questions. He expressed what he believed in in a way that was so respectful and not to debate or anything. We were Interested in what he had to say too. We got to share the first lesson with him and he thought the whole priesthood and prophet thing was so interesting also. Something that was kind of funny was we were talking about God restoring the priesthood power through Joseph Smith and he takes the Restoration pamphlet from me and turns to the picture about Joseph receiving the priesthood from Peter James and John and in clear English says "wait hold on what is happening here???" HAHAHA HA it was so funny.

But everything we were telling him he was just soaking it right up. We were like "Peter James and John appeared to Joseph Smith as angels and gave him the Priesthood" and he just responded "oh claro" which just means like of course. He was so Interested in the passing down of the priesthood power and authority to be a prophet. He pretty much said "okay so is this what happened? And then proceeded on to explain the entire process of restoring the priesthood" and we were like "yep you got it right on" hahaha it's like he knew more about the priesthood than we did, 😂😂 solo bromos. So then the clock turned 4 o'clock and we asked him to come listen to us sing and he did. He said he'd be in the park next week on his birthday so we will definitely wish him a happy birthday and probably just baptize him right there in the fountain. Hahaha jokes. But seriously I love Tomas. I hope he does well in life, I think he will.

My friend Elder Perez is doing so much better, thanK you for the prayers. I love having the Españoles here they are all so awesome even though they mostly just make fun of my bad Spanish but hey it's great practice! Most of them are staying in Madrid or going to Barcelona so I'll really miss em. It's just kind of funny because I'm good friends with the Elders and the only way we communicate is through bumping knuckles and then my broken Spanish hahaha it's awesome.

I'm excited to meet my new trainer that's for sure. I'm pumped. I'm so sad to be separated from this family that I have here and from President and Hermana Packer but I'm so excited to meet my President and Hermana Anderson. I'm so excited to go out and love people the way that I love Omer and Alex, and Tomas. I'M SO EXCITED I LOVE PEOPLE. I'm just so excited to love my investigators so much that I pray for them every night like I do for Tomas and Omer and Alex. It's all very exciting. The excitement is almost so much that it hides all of my fears and inadequacies of not knowing Spanish very well and not always feeling prepared to teach lessons to my fake investigators. But the truth is, when we were teaching the first lesson to Tomas in Spanish I just felt like the words flowed right out of my mouth and I was able to explain everything using the right conjugations and Indirect object pronouns and what not. It was seriously awesome.

OH. I went to the doctor on Monday with my companion. We had to take the metro, yes we went by ourselves and yes we got lost, hahaha but I found out that I have bronchitis so I went to the farmacia and got 3 medicines for 18 euros and I should be healed within a week! Hahaha I've had this Nast cough for 2 weeks now and I'm finally getting the antibiotics I need so this is a happy day!! Poor president Packer feels awful that we waited for two weeks to find out I had bronchitis and I was dying but hey I'm okay! Hahaha I'm just glad that's about over with.

Hmm what else. Last pday we went to on this like ski lift think over the city of Madrid and that was pretty cool I guess and then we visited this ancient Egyptian Temple thing that was a gift to the Spaniards I think IN Toledo. I send pictures of that. Today's pday we are just getting our Visa Residencies which is super lame but it's aight. I'm A RESIDENT HOW COOL.

I'm almost outta hereeee hollaaaaa!!!It's super crazzyyyy but 'ready. I think I'll email ya on Monday just to say that I'm leaving the MTC and that I probably wont be able to email again until that following Monday. so you might not hear from me for a while but its all right! there's only like one month til Mother's Day I think! wahhoooo

okay that's all for now

Brazos y Besos Hermana Rust the third