This week all the missionaries left the Missionary Training Center and we were spread all over Spain. I'm in the city of Guadalajara, which is a 45 minute train ride east of Madrid. My trainer is Elder Molina, a missionary who is from Ecuador but lived in Barcelona for the last 8 years. Being with a native Spanish speaking companion is hard but I'm learning Spanish a lot faster. It's hard to understand a lot of what's going on when people are talking but I'm getting better, I can almost understand half of what people say.
In the weekend before we left the MTC we had a lot of classes about going out into the mission field and how to work effectively there and how to live on our own. We had one last park day on the Saturday before last, where we got to go with our normal companions who we were with during the entire MTC time, which was fun. Then on the next Sunday we sang on the steps of the temple one last time, which was as always a great experience. When we had our first week, there were about 5 people watching us, and all of them were MTC teachers. Each week, we've had more and more people coming, and this week we had about 40-50. A lot of them were still friends and families of MTC teachers but it was still really cool.
Then Tuesday was the day we had all been waiting for. All the missionaries going to the Málaga and Barcelona missions left around 5:00 in the morning to take a train to their respective cities to meet with their mission presidents, but all the missionaries going to Madrid, the 14 of us, woke up at the normal time and had breakfast, then we got picked up by the Assistants to the Mission President, who took us to the Mission Presidents' house and we had an orientation type thing there. After lunch there, we went back to the church building by the temple, and we had a big meeting where we all found out our areas and trainers. After that we grabbed our suitcases and left.
For me, Elder Molina took me to our area and we made it there in time for a ward activity at the church where there were about 10 members, and we basically played games for an hour after a spiritual thought. It was weird to play all the games in Spanish but I survived without embarrassing myself (I think). For those of you who have heard of these games, we played Signs and Do you love your neighbor, and a couple more that I hadn't learned before but it was pretty fun. After that we went to our Piso (apartment) and I unpacked.
My life the past 6 days has been really different from the life in the MTC. I've been doing a lot of walking and a lot more talking in Spanish so that means I understand a lot less of what is going on but I'm improving a lot faster now. We usually spend our days studying in the morning then going out and finding people in the afternoons. We've had a few lessons where I say a few sentences every once in a while but I'll be able to say more when I can understand everything that is going on. The people here are pretty friendly, which is nice as missionaries.
The ward here is small-ish but it's still a ward, not a branch. On Sunday we had about 50-60 people there. They don't have a chapel, they use the first floor of a building here. On Sunday I was called up to introduce myself and bear my testimony in sacrament meeting along with the Hermanas in our area, since they're both new to this area as well, and even though I got up and talked for maybe 30 seconds I think I did pretty well for it being my first Sunday in the field. Being out and seeing a new part of Spain is a really cool and different experience, it looks really old and authentic, especially when we're in the older parts of the city. Even though it's hot and I'm usually tired, I like seeing all the different parts of the city.
My favorite part of the week was yesterday, Sunday, when we got to go to church. It was really nice to have something that was similar to life back home. The whole time I was there I felt a comfortable spirit and I know that it's because this church is the same all around the world and that's because it has the same person, Jesus Christ, at its head. It was a good feeling. One of the lessons was on a General Conference talk from April 2016, Patterns of Peace, which was a really good lesson. It talked about how when we put Jesus Christ first, everything else falls into place and we'll have peace in our life.
I hope you all have a good week, I love you all!
Elder Corey Dobbs
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