Frenchies, Nutella and Hill Billy Spanish

(and there are pictures at the end!)

So my week...

I´m still in the MTC.  It just kills me.  I want to be out in the field so bad! All we do is study and study some more!  However, this CCM is way better than the one in Provo.  At week 5 for Spanish speakers, you have to teach a lesson in all Spanish once a week.  Here, we´re teaching lessons all in Spanish at least 5 times a week! Everything is in Spanish and my speaking skills have improved a lot.  We did a session in the temple this morning and I listened to it in Spanish.  It was kinda hard, but I understood most of it.

The Italians left and that was a huge bummer. I miss those chaps (we also had a Brit, so we exchanged phrases) But I picked up on a bit of Italian.  If my language skills haven´t improved, at least my acting skills have.  If we can´t use the words,we act it out. It´s pretty funny.

We realized when the Italians left that we would not have anymore female missionaries (hermanas) anymore, but then one elder in my district said, " We´ll were getting the french so what´s the difference?" AHAHAHA...ahem...but the French have been ok so far.  Two of them are not even French, they are from French Polynesia and they are pretty hilarious.  They´re gonna teach us the haka later today.  It is super hard to understand them because they speak French but with like...a Tongan accent or islander accent (like the humo´ke´likie´áhua words...I hope i didn't´t just say something though) but the gift of tongues is real and so we´ll be able to speak some French with them probably next week.  So my arsenal of languages will include English, Spanish, a tiny bit of German, some Italian, and hopefully now some French. You can´t survive in Europe with only one language.  I love learning languages though! It is so cool!  Its funny though, the French elders who are from France don´t speak any other language, all the other missionaries from Europe speak at least 2!  So like the French though to only speak their own language!

Ok enough ragging on the Frenchies...oh, I did learn that ´le poisson´ (don´t know how to spell it, the song the chef in the little mermaid sings) means "Fish" Who would have thought?! haha

Ok, so on Saturdays we go to a huge park and get to do real missionary work.  We gather our supplies and take the metro and our work starts!  It was amazing, this past Saturday, my companion and I get on the train and right there, a man signals us to approach him.  This never happens.  So we got pretty excited.  The guy said "Preach to me" I was taken aback and had a loss for words. Seriously?! He came to us! SWEET! so as I was talking to him, the guy across the seats starts talking to my companion.  I got the address of the guy I was talking to and he said he wanted missionaries to convert his family because they didn't´t claim Christianity anymore. So I got his information.  My companion had a really cool experience.  The guy that started to talk to him had led a pretty incredible life.  He also had taken all the lessons and had a baptismal date! But he had lost contact with the missionaries for over a week so he figured that the missionaries didn't´t care about him anymore.  My comp. told him and bore testimony that they still cared for him and that god cares for him even more, he said the man´s eyes began to water and that he said he would call the missionaries that night! 

When we got to the park, we talked to another lady who had had contact with missionaries before! she was from the Dominican Republic and was curious because she saw guys with white shirts and name tags there and now that she lives in Spain she sees them here! we talked to her and she wanted to know where the church was so she could go!  It was incredible! I don´t know what the Lord´s plan for everyone is but the people we talked to apparently needed to be reminded about the Gospel and about the Lord. I really felt like a tool in the lord´s hands.

The last man we talked to at the park was pretty hilarious.  My comp. said he was from Utah and he looked kind of annoyed, then I said I was from Virginia, he lit up and said, Oh, not all Mormons are from Utah?! He said his son was studying at University of Virginia and he asked me if I knew some old slave song about Virginia.  He sang the first bit and asked me to sing the song to him.  I had NO idea what he was talking about, but he didn't´t speak English so I made it up.  haha.  I think I said, "Oh sweet Virginia, land of cotton and slaves, we love pickin´ cotton, and livin´ our days" to the tune he gave me.  He accepted it and we started talking about the gospel.  haha. But towards the end, he didn't´t seem to like what we were saying about modern day prophets after we had told him about the first vision. He started to argue so I bore my testimony about Joseph Smith and about living prophets. And I looked at him straight in the eyes when I did it. He went quiet and his expression changed from anger to curiosity.  We taught him some more and ended up giving him a pamphlet about the restoration. He didn't´t want to meet with the missionaries though. But it was a very spiritual experience for me.
My Spanish is coming along, and I think I can speak it well, but I have the hardest time understanding when people speak to me! There are so many different accents here in Madrid and in the South of Spain, where I´ll end up serving, they speak hill billy Spanish. So their accent is even harder to understand! When I say hill billy Spanish, its kind of the equivalent to people that speak "English" in Arkansas and some of the southern states.  But I´m excited to speak like a Spanish hill billy!

I´ve gained 6 pounds since I left in February.  I never though I would break the 160lbs mark but as of yesterday I am 161! AH! that is the heaviest I have ever been in my LIFE!  it´s probably because I eat so much nutella here.  If fish is for dinner, I go straight for the nutella and bread! We had some kind of fish soup the other day and I smelt it and the scene from "Emperor´s new groove" came to mind when Pacha opened Kuzco´s bug for dinner. Ugh it smelt terrible! the food here kills my stomach for some reason and about once a day a scene from Dumb and Dumber comes to mind...but I´ll spare the details....

oh yea, for lunch we had Salmon.  ugh...the salty tang of the sea was a little too much for me...so I had some nutella and bread

we went to a Wal mart like place and they have kinder eggs and milka and all that good stuff we´ll find in Heaven here! I didn't´t buy any though...maybe next time!

We had General Conference this weekend in the Sala grande...basically means the big room. It was thankfully in English! The MTC President has some contraption where he can watch his TV from back home through the internet so he Tivo´d GC and that´s how we got to see it.  I can´t remember which sessions we watched each day but we watched 1 on Saturday 3 on Sunday and one Monday.  We also watched the young woman´s one but that was on maybe Friday.  This was the most conference I have ever watched in my life! yea it was pretty cool but still...whew, it was a lot because I wanted to stay awake through all of it!  But the messages were great and I felt like they all spoke to me directly! But now myself and the other elders are worried that everyone we knew back home is going to be married by the time we get back.  There were 3 talks on marriage!

I´ve only got 3 more weeks before I will finally be able to go to Malaga! but the cool thing is that after one transfer there, it will have basically been 6 months.

Well I love and appreciate your letters so much!

Jason

**I don´t remember which pictures I sent last time but this is basically the rest, I hope I didn't´t send any repeats!

But the pictures where we have beads on was the night the Polynesian elders got here. They gave everyone leis and so we had some fun with it!

I hope the pictures turn out nicely...Could you send me some of your trip to Orlando? I would love to see them!

Lots of love!**