Sooo Many Amazing Experiences!

18 January 2018

Chere Mere,

Happy birthday!! I love you so much and I hope it´s a wonderful and a wonderful year!

Okay, I´ll just explain a little bit first. We have P-days on Thursday. We didn´t get on the first week we were here though. I should have explained that better. I´m allowed to read emails but not to write except for an hour on Thursdays when I also have to write president. I´m hurrying! 

Everything is so great here! I love my companions Soeur C (from Italy) and Soeur R from Utah. They are both so kind. We get along wonderfully. Our district is pretty small. We have two elders from Tahiti, one from New Caledonia, and one from France. They of course speak fluent French, but we sisters have some difficulties. Soeur C speaks English, German, French and of course Italian but we all have a lot to learn.

We speak French in our classes all the time, but a couple days ago we started having an hour and a half of French lesson in the evenings. We´ve been teaching lessons in French to our "investigator" or "ami de l´eglise". It´s so great! Preach my Gospel is the most amazing book ever! Besides the Book of Mormon. But every sentence in it is pure gold. So full of truth.

There have been sooo many amazing experiences here. One of the best was that on Saturday we went to the park here in Madrid (Retiro park), (we took the metro!) and we took Book of Mormons and tried to teach people. We switched up companions for this and we were supposed to be able to speak Spanish! I was really difficult to switch back into it. After a lot of trying and not succeeding, we managed to talk to a family from Colombia and they accepted a Book of Mormon! As we said goodbye to them a girl came right over to us so excited about what she had overheard us telling the family. It was so amazing. A gift from God. She was so excited and we gave her a Book of Mormon and she gave us all her information for a referral. When she left us she told us she wanted to tell her mom about it and she took the Book of Mormon and kissed it. She was the sweetest, most light filled person ever! I loved her immediately. It was raining too hard that day in the park and most people didn't want to stop and talk, but she made everything more than worth it.

I´m soo excited to go to France to preach the gospel, but I definitely need this next week and a half to prepare.

Another rule we have is to not take pictures except on P-day so I don’t have very many. :/

We did get to go the Madrid temple last Thursday. It is so gorgeous, but fairly small. I got to listen to the session in French. Sadly, the temple is going to be closed for the next couple of weeks for cleaning. We are all very disappointed but I feel worse for the elder from New Caledonia and Soeur C because the temple is very far from their homes.

Here in the MTC there are mostly Spanish learners, but also Russian learners and native Portuguese speakers. Most of the teachers speak Spanish. I am already gradually forgetting Spanish. :/

Thank you so much for your emails, Madre! I love you!

Soeur Marriott