Chapter 14: Lessons Learned From Hotel Barcelona (June 17, 2013)

Chapter 14: Lessons Learned From Hotel Barcelona

Before I came on my mission, I had a vision of what I thought the life of a missionary would be like: You wake up loving every morning and looking forward to the day. Then after energetically getting ready for the day, you hit the streets with a new found sense of excitement for the work. You knock doors to really nice people who are of course waiting just for you to receive the gospel in their homes. You teach lessons every day, you can fluently speak the language, and you see miracles every day. I am here to honestly tell you that unfortunately, this is not true. In fact, almost none of it is true. Except for one thing. You do see miracles everyday. Some days, you come home completely frustrated because you have three appointments planned, and none of them follow through. So, you decide to contact in the streets, and not one person will listen to you. You get home completely exhausted and just want to go to bed. Of course there are great days, but I never thought about how hard it was going to be before hand. Now, let me expound on this--I do love my mission. I LOVE my mission, but I didn’t realize that it would be so hard. This week was transfers, which means the old missionaries leave, and the new missionaries come. We are the Hermanas that live in the area of the mission home, so it was our responsibility to turn our piso into a hotel. After preparing for 4 hours to receive 11 Hermanas into our 2 Hermana piso, we went and picked them up from the mission home. A flood of memories came back into my mind from my first day in the mission. The confusion, the excitement, the fear, all of it. I realized how far I had already come, and I was excited to see how the new Hermanas were doing. I think most of them were just ready to go to bed. haha It was absolutely insane, and we had Elders delivering air mattresses at 11:00 at night, but we made it work. We took a couple Hermanas with us to our appointment (our only one in the entire week that followed through), and they loved it. It was a good one for them to go to. His name is Joel, and he told us that we look like we walk with Christ. I loved that! He is a little flakey when it comes to church attendance, but he really loves the idea of the plan of Salvation, so we are working with him. He said, "Hermanas, please just tell me where I am going after this life." We described to him the Plan of Salvation, and he asked us, "Why doesn’t everyone in the world know this?" We told him that we are trying! We just need all the missionaries we can get in the world so people like Joel can have access to this information. We had the new Hermanas with us for 2 more days, and we were in charge of getting them to their proper transportation, getting registered to Barcelona, etc. They are really a great group of Hermanas. Now here is the part of the week I wasn’t expecting, we had two Hermanas that are moving in with us until they can find a piso to live in. Best part? They were supposed to go and FIND their piso themselves. As they were leaving the other day to go out looking for one, the one turned around and asked how you say the word "rent" in Spanish. Well, long story short, the four of us were soon on the streets of Cornella looking for a piso for these Hermanas. That was something I wasn’t expecting to do as a missionary. haha We were switching off calling the numbers of pisos for rent, and when it was my turn my companion told me to ask the man selling it how many bathrooms there were. So I asked, "Cuantos baños tiene?" (baños is bathrooms). He replied, "20." I turned to my companion and half exclaimed, "This piso has 20 bathrooms, buy it now!!" haha ok, so I knew something was up, but still. I gave the phone over to my trainer because she knows more Spanish, and she just laughed. She told me later that he had thought I asked, "Cuantos años tiene" which means how old are you. hahaha We all had a good laugh over that. Things you say as a new missionary I guess. Now, back to the work this week. It was straight up miserable. We had 1 lesson with Joel, and the rest of them cancelled on us. One of our really good investigators named Marisa called us and said, "Sorry Hermanas, I just can’t have you over anymore. I can’t keep going on with something that I know is false." We walked the streets and knocked doors, and couldn’t find anyone who was listening to us. Worse part of the week?? We still hadn’t heard from Francisco by Thursday night. Now, Francisco would wait outside his apartment building if we were 5 minutes late for our appointment, and he still hadn’t contacted us. We were so worried. I can’t tell you how long I spent on my knees each night praying for something to happen. Well, on Thursday night, my life became quite the whirl wind. The ward missionary leader called me and asked if I would sing for Sacrament meeting with another Elder. So Friday, we had a lot of other ward business to do, and now I had to find a song to do. We decided to do the EFY medley (Armies of Helaman/ Sisters in Zion) However, we couldn’t find an arrangement in Spanish, and so we spent the evening creating an arrangement ourselves. Elder Wilkinson, bless his heart, played it for us and created a beautiful arrangement. So I thought everything was settled until Saturday morning. We had the Ward Talent show that evening that the ward had been looking forward to for 6 months. The missionaries were planning a hilarious skit that we were going to practice that morning before Ward Correlation. That’s when they asked me if I was singing a solo for the talent show. I told them, well I am singing for sacrament meeting and I am part of the missionary skit. Well, the activities leader was apparently not very happy with me. haha She told me that I was going to sing a solo, so I need to get prepared. Alright, so I had 6 hours to prepare a solo... to top it off, they wanted me to sing “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban. Really. So, again, we were rushing to come up with arrangement that would work since it was a really hard song. Again, bless Elder Wilkinson’s heart. haha I thought of all weeks, why was everyone asking me to do all these things?? Sometimes, you have days where you don’t really feel like singing, but unfortunately, I had no choice--the activity leader is a fierce woman. haha So, we felt like we should try one last time and invite Francisco to the Noche de Talentos. We had Jorge, his friend in the ward, call and invite him to hear me sing (really, not that enticing, but I’ll take it.) and he said of course he would come!! The heavens parted and I could hear the hallelujah chorus. That inspired us. We called all of our potential investigators that had cancelled on us, and 4 of them said they would come as well!! This talent show was a blessing sent from Heaven. Anyway, Francisco came, and I stumbled through You Raise Me Up (definitely not my best performance seeing that we only had 30 actual minutes to prepare, but luckily I was familiar with it.) I got kind of choked up singing it while he was taking a video of me singing (isn’t he just the cutest investigator ever!!), even though he couldn’t understand the words because they wanted me to sing in my native tongue. People don’t realize how much missionaries care about their investigators. After the talent show, Francisco came up and said, "Alright Hermanas, sorry I haven’t been able to meet with you or call you back. My life has calmed down again, can you come over on Tuesday?" YES!!! We are back in business!! It was definitely the highlight of my week. That morning, my companion and I had been really let down with the work. We were both reading in Alma 31:31 for personal study, and when we came together for companionship study, it was a really weird experience. We just looked at each other and cried. If anyone is wondering if my tear ducts are working, they are. :) But, she told me something that really made me think. She said, "Hermana, the Lord sent you here knowing both your weaknesses and your strengths. He didn’t send you here to fail. He knew that you weren’t going to be perfect, but he sent you to this area because he knew your strengths. There might be some days where you won’t find a new investigator, but maybe you will touch somebody with a song you sing, and help them feel that God loves them."  And just later in the day, look what happened! It was such a tender mercy for me. But it also made me realize that it isn’t just true on a mission. God doesn’t send us here to fail, he sends us here knowing exactly where we need to be in order to succeed. Of course we won’t be perfect, and we are going to make a lot of mistakes, but if we didn’t have those, there would be no room to grow. I sang again on Sunday with Elder Wiscombe, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of the Army of Helaman in these days. So back to what I was saying earlier in the email, there definitely are a lot more harder days than I imagined. Some days in and of themselves are trials, but I know it will help us grow. The lesson I learned in our little Hotel Barcelona is that you have to look for the miracles each and every day. If you spend your days dwelling on what little success you had, then you are going to be miserable! To finish our week, we went to Park Guell and see some of Guadi´s amazing architecture. It was so fun to be able to just enjoy being in Barcelona. I can’t wait to tell you all what the next week will bring.

Les Quiero!!
Hermana Hopkins