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