Hey everyone!
I hope you're all enjoying your summer wherever you are. I'm starting to have a lot more fun here in the CCM(Spanish for Missionary Training Center) as I get to know people better and as we get in the routine of things. This week definitely went by way faster than the first week. Our classes are going really well and I'm learning a lot about the gospel and about Spanish. It's still really hot here but not all of the Spain Madrid mission is like this, luckily.
We've been having role play lessons with teachers who pretend to be church investigators who want to know more about the church and hear the message, which is basically a trial by fire; we have to do it all in Spanish so we learn really fast. It's probably the most stressful part of the CCM, since we have to teach a lesson most days. But it's been going fairly well. Our investigator is still listening to us and I hope it's not just because she has to keep doing it since she's our teacher.
We went to the park last Saturday again to find people to talk to about the church. This week I was put with an Elder who is also learning Spanish which made it a little easier but it was still really hard to find people who wanted to listen. But we had this awesome experience where we were getting discouraged, so when we came to this crossroads of the path in the middle of the park, where there was almost no one, we prayed and tried to listen to where the Holy Ghost would tell us where to go and it led us to this guy who was sitting down in a completely isolated part of the park who spoke English and took a Book of Mormon, it was amazing.
Sundays are the best here because it's all church stuff all day and it's super great to be able to feel the Spirit so strongly. Besides the regular 3 hours of church, the CCM President gave an awesome lesson about our Heavenly Father, and we got to sing right outside the temple grounds which is always really cool.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all kind of blur together because not much new happens. We just have normal classes and physical activity every day but they go by pretty fast.
Today, Thursday, we went to the National Archaeological Museum of Spain which was super cool. It went through the entire history of Spain and had artifacts that were all super cool. They had stuff from Egypt, Greece, and Rome too, which was really awesome to see. The museum was in a nicer part of Madrid too, which was a nice change from where we went last week. There it all looked really cool and European but there were a lot of beggars going around and people trying to sell things on the street and we didn't see any of that today.
Last thing; on Saturday we had an awesome experience but I need to start from last Thursday. Okay so this all started when we went to the temple. I was reading in the Book of Mormon in the book of Alma, chapter 32, thinking about my own faith, and I got to verse 27. The part that stood out to me was when Alma said "if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you." I really liked it because it made me think that you didn't need anything for faith besides wanting to have it.
Normally on Saturdays, we have a practice lesson with one of the teachers here where they pretend to be someone who we need to talk to. Well, on Friday night, we found out that instead of having a lesson in Spanish(which makes talking to people at least ten times harder) with a teacher pretending to be a member of the church who stopped coming, we would be talking in English to an actual person who had stopped coming to church. We were so shocked to find out and we got really excited. The person was a 14 year old girl from New York named Senia, and she was a cousin of one of our teachers here. Her whole family had stopped going to church 3 years ago because there had been some argument with another family, and Senia said that she had missed having her whole family at church, and that she wanted to go back. As soon as she said that, the scripture from Alma popped into my head and I told her that if she wanted to go back, then that was all she needed to make it happen. She seemed happy to hear that. As the lesson went on, I also had the impression to tell her that if she went back, then she could lead her family back and that as long as she still had the desire to do that, it would be all right. After I said that to her, both of my companions said something similar, and we could feel the Holy Spirit testifying the truth of it to us. We invited her to begin reading the Book of Mormon and to pray daily to strengthen her faith. All in all, it was a really good lesson. She seemed really happy to hear all of it, and afterwards I found out that both of my companions had had the same thought in the middle of the lesson to tell her that and then I knew that it had been told to all of us through the Holy Spirit. I really hope that she follows through because I could feel that she wanted to go back and I could feel the joy that she would get from it. Also, having a good lesson with someone really helped me and my companions because we had been getting kind of frustrated with having unsuccessful practice lessons in Spanish, and it felt really good to have such a spiritual experience. I know that the blessings of going to church and reading the scriptures and praying daily are real, and I know that it can bring so much happiness into our lives.
Until next week,
Elder Corey Dobbs