Week 5

Hello everyone!  How are you all doing?  I hope it is great because this is definitely the best time to be living in!  This week has been fantastic!  There are always the ups and downs but overall there are always more ups than downs.  One of the downs of this week was our service project.  We literally mopped the parking garage for the temple…I guess whatever helps…  Anyway last P-Day we went to the mall, kind of a waste but we got to come back and rest for a bit afterwards!  The best part of P-Days is definitely the MTC devotional at night.  We watched a devotional from Elder Holland and those are always amazing.  This one was on Missionaries who come home after their missions and go inactive.  He said that we have to have at least one convert on our missions, and it better be us!  I have definitely been changed just in the month I’ve been here it is so crazy! 

Oh by the way I leave the MTC for the Spain Barcelona Mission on TUESDAY!!!!  I leave at 6 AM (10 PM on Monday Utah time) from the MTC and catch a high speed train to BARCELONA at 7!!  I am so excited and nervous at the same time!!

The greatest experience I had this week was giving out my first ever copy of the Book of Mormon in the Parque Retiro!!!!  My companion for this week was Elder Del Amo, who is from the south of Spain and is only here in the MTC for two weeks before he goes to the Madrid Mission.  He didn’t speak a lot of English but I spoke enough Spanish and we were good enough at charades that we could communicate.  We were going around the park not having a lot of success and so Elder Del Amo suggested that we say a prayer.  So we said a prayer and not 5 minutes later, we decided to stop and talk to this lady who was taking pictures.  We waited for her to finish and then went up and started talking to her.  She was from Brazil and so she spoke Portuguese, but she also spoke a little bit of English.  So with a combination of my English and broken Spanish and Elder Del Amo’s perfect Spainish we taught her about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and she accepted a Book of Mormon in Spanish because we didn’t have one in Portuguese.  The best moment of the day was when we got back to the MTC and heard that Elder Sadler and his companion had found the same lady after we did and were able to trade her Spanish Book of Mormon for a Portuguese one!  The Lord always finds a way to get his work done!  I am seeing that more and more!  Also on a side note, one of the new native Spanish Elders here is Elder Narcizo.  He is the funniest guy and everything he does is ten times funnier because he’s a dwarf (midget)!   On Thursday he was running around with this little black poncho on acting like Harry Potter!  It was hilarious!

One of the best things that has started happening here in the MTC since we got all of the Native Spanish speakers is singing.  Every night after we all finish eating dinner Elder Ward sits down at the piano in the cafeteria and plays a couple hymns and we all sing as loud as we possibly can in Spanish or Russian!  It is amazing the power that comes from music!

My experience here at the MTC has been amazing but it’s coming to a close.  One of the funniest things I see was the “Teachers Archive of Wrong Spanish Phrases.”  In this the teachers kept some of the funniest phrases new missionaries have said and mixed up words in.  For example one missionary said, “Adán y Eva se caigaron.”  The sentence is supposed to say Adam and Eve fell.  The word for Fell in Spanish is cayeron.  So the phrase the Missionary said actually meant:  Adam and Eve pooped themselves.  It was awesome to be able to laugh at the mistakes others have made and realize that although I don’t think I’m doing well with Spanish, I’m doing a lot better than some other missionaries!

I can’t wait to continue learning the Spanish language and Serve the Lord.  I love the Lord and know that I am where I am supposed to be at this time in my life.  The Lord said to Peter, If ye love me, feed my sheep.  And that is what I am doing.  I have a testimony of this Gospel and of the authenticity of this church.  Yo sé que la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días es la verdad.  If you don’t have a testimony of this church and all of its parts, go get one.  It will bless you more than you could ever imagine!  I love you all and hope you are all having a wonderful time reading this!

Con Amor,

Elder Tikal J. Jonson