Happy 2016 everyone!! So I finished off the year strong by trying
Caviar and Salmon without throwing up so that's pretty good, haha. I
hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas holiday and had a great New
Year's! Me and my compy wanted to follow the strange Spanish
tradition of eating 12 grapes the last 12 seconds of the year. (Bueno,
at 11:00pm became we have to follow the rules. 🤗) In other words,
I'm not going to send the video of us almost choking on all of the
seeds, ha. :). Even though This week was didn't have a whole lot of
lessons because Spain doesn't stop Christmas celebrations until
January 6th, we sure did keep ourselves busy. Although sometimes I
feel exhausted from using the metro like 10x a day, I really like my
area and I'm grateful for all of the people I'm meeting and the places
I'm seeing and the things I'm learning.
I'm not sure if it's from all of the Christmas spirit I felt in
December or more of the fact that I'm about to hit my ONE YEAR mark,
but wow have I been feeling closer and closer to Christ lately.
Yesterday we ate with a family in the ward and then afterwards the
Elders gave a really short but powerful message. They had us go all
around and say the one thing we would say if Jesus was here right now.
I said that I would say, "why do you love us so much?" And then after
they invited us to really open our hearts to our Savior that night
when we prayed. Well this whole week this has really been on my mind,
especially the word "repentance." Because we know that Christ and
repentance go hand and hand. A couple of days ago, my companion
shared with me a story that I actually had heard before but I always
love hearing. It's about a boy in Seminary, whose teacher asks him if
he can do 300 push-ups within a certain amount of time. One day,
during the class, the teacher asks which students want a cookie. Some
say yes some say no. For every single person, whether they wanted a
cookie or not, the boy had to do 10 push-ups in front of the class.
At the end of the 300+ push-ups the boy is very weak and in pain but
was determined to do them for every person. After this demonstration,
the teacher explains to the class that the atonement is the best gift
in the whole entire world for us, yet so many people reject the
opportunity of repentance, to feel whole and clean again. I always
get so emotional with this story, because it is so true. The
atonement of Christ happened because of the love he had, has, and will
have forever for us. As I have been so blessed to see and experience
wonderful things here in Madrid, I have really begun to see the
difference between worldly and material things and the things that
matter most, this gospel. Like it might sound a bit redundant, but
wow I've never been so sure about wanting to have a Christ centered
life. For example today, we went and took a tour in the ROYAL PALCE
OF MADRID! It was really really cool, but looking at all of the
material things with gold and porcelain that has been adored for many
many centuries by very famous kings and queens; nothing truly can top
spiritual things! ENSERIO. It's just not the same, and if I had to
come clear to Madrid to figure that out, so be it. 😊
As for training, it's going great! I'm very spoiled to have such a
sweet hija. Hermana Modugno is just the greatest and she keeps me
smiling laughing and calms me down when I get stressed. (The other
day I saw a dog that looked like Sophie, my dog that died right before
I left for my mission.. And she had to hug me so I wouldn't start
crying, haha.) She already speaks Spanish like a champ and I'm
teaching her a bit of English. The other day I taught her "I am a
child of God" in English and she learned it in like 5 mins! I'm still
trying to learn it in Italian, but my problem is if a word isn't
English or Spanish, I say it with a French accent, whoops. Well
anyway, this week we're keepin it Italian in our piso so we are going
to make homemade pizza with the cheese her mom sent us from Italy.
SCORE! 😍
I hope you all started your 2016 year off well and enjoy your week!!
The gospel blesses lives and you are all in my prayers. Ciao. 😘
Hermana Berry
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