Ch. 58: A Book, A Rose, and a National Crisis

Chapter 58: A Book, A Rose, and a National Crisis

My public relations career officially took off and crashed all in the same day. I would like to tell you of the story of how I have started a national crisis, but let´s start at the very beginning. This week, the bishop gave us 48 hours to prepare a booth for St. Jordi, their huge holiday here in Cataluña. On this day, it´s customary that the women by their significant others books, while the men give roses. It´s a really beautiful day with the book stands, and the smell of roses everywhere. They have a huge outdoor market where people set up stands to sell their books and roses, and our bishop had it arranged to have a Book of Mormon stand. He called us and told us Sunday that he was putting us in charge of it. We had two days. Well, actually we had one day because the day after Easter here is bigger than the actual day of Easter and everything is closed. We went running around like crazy to get things ready. We went to the office to pick up pictures, we went and printed out genealogy fans to put up, we picked up decorations, we printed out papers to put in all the Books of Mormon, and we made over a hundred little chocolates to attach to our pass-a-long cards with our information on it. In all, we didn´t get to bed until four in the morning, and we had to get up at six to set everything up. We were zombies running off adrenaline. We got there early, packed everything in our suitcases (which were extremely heavy by the way. It broke the wheel off my companion´s suitcases, but that´s what happens when you don´t have cars.... haha) Got there, and the elders still hadn´t arrived with the actual tables. People were asking us where our tables were, and I had no idea. FINALLY the Elders arrived, but they had forgotten the flags in their piso that were supposed to be our table cloths. So, they flew back to their piso to get them, and while they were gone, the organizers of the event came around and told us that we had to be setting up. So, I thought fast and went to a Chinese store (the equivalent of a dollar store—they are everywhere here) and bought a Cataluña flag really quick. I bought the first one I saw, and we set up at least one of the tables. The day went on, and it was a very successful day. We were outside constantly talking to people for 14 hours! In all, we gave away 40 Books of Mormon, found 15 references of people who are interested in the church, and 2 members that didn´t know the church existed in our little pueblo here in Vilafranca. Overall, it was a really successful day, or so I thought.....

Sunday comes a long, and the bishop pulls all the missionaries into his office. He looked up from the table, looked down again, looked up and said, “Who brought the flag with the blue triangle and the star?” I gulped. Oh no. I said, “Uh.....I did. I had to think fast so that we could at least start putting up the decorations, and I thought the blue matched nicely with the Books of Mormon.” The Bishop just laughed and shooked his head and replied, “Hermana, that is an illegal flag used in Cataluña for the Indepentistas that want to be separated from Spain. It´s a war flag.” Oh my gosh. I had no idea! And the flag is EVERYWHERE. I thought it was just another way to do their Cataluña flag. Well, the bad part came in when a member thought it was funny, and so he took a picture of a Catalan Book of Mormon with that in the background, and put it on Facebook. So everyone was fighting that the Mormon church supports the Independistas. Well, there goes my career. Lesson learned. It ended up being ok, the bishop resolved it, but everyone sure is never going to let me live that down. Oh well.

We also saw a miracle from one of the parts of the stand. The genealogy. We set up our fans and some information on it that had our ancestors and a few things. We had a Spaniard come up to us and say, “That kind of stuff is really nice in the United States, but nobody cares about it here. I don´t even know the name of my grandparents.” And then he walked away, so I was thinking it was a waste of time that we had gone to all that research for absolutely nothing. Well, the next day we were walking through a park and the first man we contacted didn´t seem interested, but as he was walking away, he hollered over his shoulder, “Wait, are you the church that is so focused on the genealogy??” We replied, “Sí!!! Sí!!!” He came running over and he told us he was from France, and he had been trying to get into genealogy, but had no idea how. Because we had already printed some of our genealogy off, we were able to show him some of ours, and he said, “Well, give me your card, and I will call you when I have time.” I was so disappointed. If you have ever been a missionary, you know that this means they are really not interested and it´s just a nice way to let you down...but not this time!! This time I was wrong! He called the next morning to see when he could meet with us. We met with him, and we got him set up with an account, and the church´s genealogy specialist is going to help him get started as well. We are really excited with our French man. (I´ve never taught a French man, I was pretty excited.) We also met with a couple of our investigators this week, but our real progressing investigators were all busy and or out of town. So, more stories to come from them in this coming week. We are working hard, and now that the national crisis is a little bit taken care of, we are moving forward. Haha Les Quiero a todos!

Hermana Hopkins  

Chapter 57: A Hallelujah for Easter

Chapter 57: A Hallelujah for Easter!

There is no better way to spend Easter than to celebrate it with the baptism of our little Africana, Albertha!! It was such a wonderful process from start to finish. Our little African has so much faith. It was seriously a blessing to be able to teach her. We had quite the little miracle while preparing her for her baptism. We passed by almost every day this week to see how she was doing. When we passed by on Wednesday night she was having a lot of side pains due to her pregnancy. They were debating on taking her to the hospital, but we decided to kneel down and have a prayer with her and her husband. We told her that the elders could come over and give her a blessing, but she told us that she really just wanted to go to bed and see if it would be better in the morning and to have the elders come the next day. When we came the next day with the elders, the pain had almost diminished and after the blessing, she said it was all gone. I love the faith of this cute girl. On Friday we came for her interview and all was going so well. I had never had a week go so smoothly before a baptism. Sunday morning she came to church in her total African attire (Love it!  She is from Ghana.) and after church we got to work setting up the font. I was determined to have the perfect baptism. The programs we had a little bit of a problem since the church´s printer wasn´t working, but after an hour of messing with it, it finally worked out. We ran home to make the truffles for a little something afterwards, and when we got back to the church, we had forgotten part of the chocolate, so we had to run back to piso and bring it back. We were out of breath and flying to get everything ready, but it was still running smoothly. She came in, and we got her in her white clothes, and started the program. The program was in English, so I was the designated translator to Spanish. Luckily, a lot of the Spaniards in this ward speak English such as the bishop and the people who gave the talks and conducted. The baptism was absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite parts of baptisms is when they come out, and we go to help them to the bathroom to change, and we ask them, “How do you feel right now?” Albetha had the best response ever. She looked at us, wiped a tear from her eye and said, “Everything in my life just changed. I just became a member of the church of God. I am a Mormon! My baby will now grow up with God in his life. My home will now be lead by two parents with the Holy Ghost.” I took her by the shoulders and I turned her to the mirror and I told her, “Albertha, what do you see when you look into the mirror?” and she looked at me kind of puzzled, and so I continued, “I see a beautiful daughter of God, and I know that your Heavenly Father could not be more proud of you.” Then she promptly folded her arms, and said a quick pray out loud and she said, “Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for letting me be baptized.” It was such a tender moment! Then we went back in to have the musical number before the confirmation, which was me. However, the pianist had to leave and go out of town, so I was doing it acapella. Which, at this point is just fine.  It´s not like anyone here knows the difference between notes. However, I was still a little nervous since I really hadn´t had any time to practice. However, I was singing If the Savior Stood Beside Me which I have sung a few times on the mission, so I didn´t worry too much about it. I went to give myself the starting note on the piano, and I was getting up onto the podium to get to the microphone, to my absolute horror, my boot hit the edge being the catalyst to the most ungraceful fall you had ever seen in your life. If you have seen the movie Miss Congeniality when she falls on her face during the evening wear competition, that´s me. Times 10. I tried to catch myself, but there was no use; I soon found myself an embarrassed heap on the ground. I didn´t want to get up, I just wanted to die right there. I got up on my knees and peeked my head over the podium to see the audience slightly elevated above their chairs in concern to see if I was ok. I was not ok. My pride had been shattered, and so I slowly slid back down....realizing the show must go on, so I sprung up and tried to think of something to say, and so I muttered out, “I´ve always been one for grand entrances.” Everyone laughed and laughed. Great. I can sure break the mood. Once I caught my breath from joining in their laughs, I sang the song, and she was confirmed. She and her husband (who is a member) gave a beautiful testimony afterwards, and it was a memory I will never forget. They are officially on the road to becoming an eternal family in the temple. What a wonderful way to spend Easter!! There´s nothing like leading someone into the waters of baptism the day that all men can remember as the day we received the hope for eternal life. I love the gospel. We also had some other great experiences this week. We have really been working on prayer with our investigators so that they can receive their own answers. We are teaching our lovely Catalan grandpa, Josep and his daughter, Angela, and they are so funny! They come to church almost every week, but they won´t pray together. He keeps saying that he already knows God won´t listen to him, so what´s the point even trying. However, it´s a little bit of progress since he didn´t even know if God existed before!! Ha! At least now he believes God is there....he just has the relationship between us and Him confused a little. He really is the best though. We had a lesson about prayer, and he promised us that he would pray with his daughter. Now we just have to see if all went well. It was such an incredible week full of sweet little experiences, but that is all I have time for. I love you all so much, and I am so grateful to be a missionary right now!! Sometimes we have to fall so that we know how to get ourselves back up. J

Les Quiero!!

Hermana Hopkins  

Chapter 56: The Ugly Duckling

Chapter 56: The Ugly Duckling

 

            As missionaries, I think we often feel like the ugly duckling. Either we are comparing ourselves to other missionaries, we are mocked for our beliefs, or maybe we put it on ourselves by having too high of expectations. However, as we know with the end of the story that the little ducky matures and becomes a beautiful swan. Luckily, as missionaries we don´t need to wait until the end of our missions to become swans. A quote really struck me this week: "We become who we want to be by consistently being who we want to become." Heaven knows I needed that this week. I think more than any other point in my mission,  After having a really hard week, it becomes harder and harder to get yourself out the door and out to work! I knew that if I wanted to spread this message of happiness, I really had to strive to be the message--that is be happy and show it on my face. It was really a trying week, but we were really rewarded by the weekend. A ward member gave us a reference of her friend that has just started reading the Book of Mormon. So, we went to visit her, and she told us this: "My friend gave me the Book of Mormon to read. She gave me a passage to read, and told me to pray and ponder to know if it was true. As I got to the end of the passage, I was debating in my mind if I should continue reading this Book. As I kept thinking about it, a little pillar of light reflected on the following page. I tried to move the Book away from the light, but no matter where I moved it, the light followed. I decided to read where the light was, and it was like it was speaking to me. I know this Book is from God. It is like the prophets knew my life, and our giving me the advice I need right now. I told my friend this experience, and she told me that must be God trying to tell you that he wants you to be a member of this church. I thought about it, and I thought, ´Yeah! Your´re right!´ I know that God wants me in this church, but I have to work all week every week. I will pray to see if my boss will let me off just one Sunday so I can come and see if this really is His church." Wow!! It was quite the experience. She has a lot of faith. She´s from Colombia and her name is Lucresia. She´s a little bit older, but she carries herself like she still has got a lot of life in her. Little did she know that all the choices that she made leading her to this little town outside of Barcelona, Spain from her home in Colombia was just so we could share her this message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Christ. We also met with Alberta this week. It was our last official doctrinal lesson with her before her baptism next week, and I was slightly nervous to teach it. Tithing. Gulp. I was nervous because they are saving up for their little baby boy that is due in August, and her husband has struggled with tithing. However, when we started the cita, she told us," Sistas (that´s what it sounds like), I know tithing is the way of God. I love tithes. We are blessed for it. My husband hasn´t been paying, but we are going to better, and when I am baptized, if I ever get a job, I promise I will pay my tithing." Well, that was easy. We barely had to teach her anything.  It helps when the spouse is a member, even if they are less active. I am so grateful for those little tender mercies that we saw at the end of our week. I think God was just making sure we were humble enough to teach them. :)  Thank you all so much for your love and prayers.

Les Quiero,

Hermana Hopkins 

Ch. 55: The Wedding Singer

Chapter 55: The Wedding Singer

I think we have all had those nightmares when we have a big event, and there is always something that comes in the way. And as hard as you try to get to that event, you just can´t make it. Then, you wake up and think, “Phew, it was only a dream....”

This week, I lived it.

It all started when I was asked to sing at the wedding of one of the recent converts here in Vilafranca. I have never been asked to sing at a wedding before, and I was actually kind of excited. The only thing that puzzled me was what on earth was I supposed to sing at a wedding with keeping with the missionary rules. However, that problem was soon solved when the soon-to-be bride asked the elders as well to sing a quartet with me of Families Can be Together Forever. All was set and ready to go a week before. Then, as we were talking to a few of the Relief Society women, they asked if we would help make the refreshments for the reception to be held at the church shortly after the ceremony. Being the sister missionaries that we are, of course we said yes with little hesitation. So, Saturday arrives and we knew we needed to get baking everything at about1:00 in order to get everything to the church by 5:00 so that we can get to the wedding that starts at 6:00 on the other side of town. Well, like we all know as missionaries that plans never work out quite like we wanted them too.... Our lesson that we had planned that morning went an hour over time, so we weren´t even able to go to the grocery store to get our supplies until1:30. We started getting cooking at 2:00. We were flying!! I was making some truffles while my companion was making some baked goods and I turned to her and asked, “What are we supposed to put all this on? Do we have any trays?” My companion looks at me, and then looks down and says, “Will this do?” I look down and see one of the most hideous bed trays (you know, the ones like when you are sick in bed and someone brings you dinner) I had ever seen. No, that was not going to work! We are doing this for a wedding!! So we grabbed our shoes and ran out the door to go get trays fit for a wedding. Luckily, there was a shop right up the street that we knew of. Not so lucky was on the way back, in my haste, I failed to see the little present that a dog had left for my right shoe before it was too late. Great! So here we are panicked that we hadn´t even started the cookies we said we would make, and we had less than an hour! So, we really started flying and got everything done at about 5:15, which was ok....not great, but ok....So we called the Elders to see where they were because they were going to help us carry it all to the church, and one of them had set their clocks wrong (go figure) and they were waiting for their brownies to come out and told us they would meet us at the church. So, there we were balancing like 4 trays of food waitress style to more than a mile away to the church. However, we got in the elevator of our apartment and realized that neither of us had open hands to push the button...so carefully....ever so carefully.......SPLAT.

Cream cheese frosting when flying down my black skirt. (luckily it was only 2 cookies) So, I ran back inside to clean off my skirt and then we were finally off to the church. We arrived at the church at 5:50. We had 10 minutes to get across a 30 minute walk. After debating how on earth we were going to do it, we decided in a taxi. However, the taxi driver told us that it would be a 10 minute delay until it could get to the church. 10 minutes!! We could run to the taxi station in less time than that.

And that is exactly what we did.

We took off in a dead sprint in all of our nice clothes towards the taxi station, shouted the instructions to the driver, and he took us all of about 30 seconds and made us pay eight euros.... talk about taking advantage of us Americans!! So we took of running again and walked in at 6:08. If it had been an LDS wedding in the states, we would have been just fine. However, because we are in Spain, we missed everything but the exchanging of the rings. Well, then it was just our time to sing, and after all the running, we were pretty tired....but took my fingers through my hair and got up and felt good as new, then the elders followed suit, slightly out of breath, and then I look at my poor companion...... hahaha She is bright red, huffin and puffing, her once-curled hair is now a sporadic mess, and she is dripping sweat. I just put my head in my hands...could this day get any better?? We sang the song, and everyone made jokes at us of how Americans are always late. Ya, ya....However, hopefully we planted some seeds with that song and all of the non-members listening. Everything ended up working out, and it was an enjoyable evening.

However, as much as I would love to be a wedding planner here in Spain, I am really a missionary, and that is what the week was truly focused on.

Last week I talked a little about Eusebio, our Bolivian friend who was praying about baptism. This week, we taught him the Plan of Salvation, and it was a beautiful lesson! As we were teaching the lesson, I kept getting the impression to talk about the temple. We usually don´t do that during a second lesson because it is a lot of new information for the investigator, but the impression persisted, and so I decided to ask the ward member with us to share an experience she has had about the temple. She explained that her grandfather had recently passed away, but right before he died, he asked the family to do his temple work for him. This was really weird since his entire life he had not been completely against the church, but he didn´t ever want to be involved with “the Mormons”. However, his heart was softened just when most people thought it would be too late, but with the blessing of the temple, they were able to do the work for their grandpa and grandma, and they had a sweet experience doing it. Eusebio just shook his head and said, “That makes sense. God loves us, and has a lot of mercy with us.” At the end of the lesson, after we explained the Kingdoms of Glory, I turned to him and asked, “Eusebio, if you want to live in this kingdom with your family for the eternities,” pointing to the celestial kingdom, “What do you need to do right now in your life?” he replied, “I need to follow the example of my Savior.” and so we asked him if he would be baptized. He whispered, “Of course I will be baptized. I would like to learn more, and go to church a few times, but if this is right, then of course!!” We were so excited after this visit, we practically danced all the way home. We wanted to meet with Marlon, our golden investigator, but he has been having finals, and so we haven´t seen him. This week for sure we will have more news on him! We are just seeing a lot of new things that will be going on in this area, and it´s definitely exciting! To end a great week, we went with a couple of the ward families to a big Sunday Spanish dinner up on the mountainside. They made us the traditional Calcots that they do here only in Barcelona, and with a ton of other things that I have no idea what they were, but they were good!  And then we were able to watch the Sunday morning session of general conference, which is always so inspiring! What incredible opportunity we have to listen to modern prophets and apostles!! I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Les Quiero!

Hermana Hopkins  

Ch. 54: Mojitos, Miracles, and Marlon

Chapter 54: Mojitos, Miracles, and Marlon

Every missionary has to make their mark in the ward. I think if the members can relate to their missionaries, they trust them more and they work better with the missionaries. So, I was thinking that the last couple of Hermanas that have been here played the piano and sang...so singing was going to be out of the question. I had to be more unique. So, instead I decided I would be the party Hermana. So, for one of the ward family home evenings, I made mojitos. (non-alcoholic of course haha)....and it was a big hit!! Everyone loved them! So everyone has called me Hermana Mojito, and the member work, believe it or not, has even improved! It´s all about the members in the missionary work. :D So this week, my companion had stomach flu, so half of our week or so was spent in our piso while I completed the usual Betty Crocker chores: cleaned the house, reorganized furniture (I haven´t really missed the tv on my mission until these couple days), cooked, cleaned some more, contacted every person who has ever been taught in our area since 2006 to see if they would be interested once again, and so on. Nobody was interested. Haha Oh well, I had to do something. However, God truly blessed us with a lot of miracles. We met some golden investigators this week that I really hope progress. Marlon is definitely the favorite. He was contacted before by missionaries, but never had the time. He is 21 and from Ecuador, and he studies in Barcelona but lives here in Vilafranca. He is basically an atheist, but wants to learn more about the church. We met with him and he is so willing to do anything to find out if it´s the truth. In fact....HE CAME TO CHURCH!!! I couldn´t be more excited. He left saying, “I feel really good. I want this to be the truth. I will keep coming until I know; I´ve never been in a church like this where everyone wants you to know for yourself and not just because it´s in the Bible. I love it.”I was so excited. There are so many who claim to have faith, but really do not act on it. Finally, I am teaching a positive atheist who has the courage to act. It was such a tender mercy. Also, we met with Eusebio, a man from Bolivia that we found the other week. He didn´t show very much interest until we came yesterday. Wow. He had the first 10 pages or so of the Book of Mormon completely marked and cross references and everything. It was so wonderful. We invited him to be baptized after having a powerful Restoration lesson with him, and he said, “If God tells me, how can I say no?” The power of the Book of Mormon, my friends. So, right now we are waiting for these two men to receive their answers. Most of the rest of the week was pretty hard.... We were rejected many times and did a lot of walking, but hopefully planted some seeds. Alberta, our Africana told us this week, “I can´t wait until I have the Holy Ghost to help me. I just can´t wait to feel closer to God.” She´s so cute! Africans are so funny though...SO enthusiastic. After every prayer she´s just like, “Thank you LORD! AMEN! Uh HUH!”  On the train today there was another African man who sat next t us, and he said, “I don´t know if your busy, but I would like you to explain what you name tag means on your shirts. Does that really mean that Christ has a church?” Oh yes. We explained to him a little of the church and he said, “I like you. You are happy and show love. There are so many people in this world who are sad because they don´t have anything. They just don´t recognize that with God, you have more than everything!” I love Africans.  And I think it was great advice. It definitely put a smile on my face. So, remember with God, you have everything!!

Les Quiero,

Hermana Hopkins