Dearest family and friends,

How are all of you?! I received some letters from most of you this week and it was the greatest! It was so good to hear that you are all still alive and doing well! I miss and love you all. Everything here is good! I love my companion, teachers, and district. I don´t always love the food haha but I am surviving. I actually feel like I might be getting fatter just because we eat and sit all day. I am really excited to get out into the field so I can walk every day and choose most of my food!  This past week has been really great. The highlight of my week would definitely have to be proselyting in the Parque de Retiro. The night before I was really nervous just because the week before wasn´t very successful. So I said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father for one miracle. I just wanted one person to be interested in our message. We started off in the park and I was feeling good and excited. And guess what? So many people listened to us and we were able to place many Book of Mormons! We saw many great miracles throughout our day but the one that stands out most in my mind was with a young woman from Brazil. We were walking when I noticed her reading on a bench and I felt like we needed to go talk to her. We quickly found out that she did not speak Spanish but Portuguese and luckily some pretty good English! We introduced ourselves and then found out that she was on her way home to Brazil from Greece and was just waiting in Madrid for a connecting flight. And she said she saw many missionaries in Brazil and even had a church right down her street.   She then told us that she had always been curious about our church! Golden. It was so awesome to be able to answer her questions and bear testimony to her. What an answer to my prayers! It was truly a miracle that she was put right in our path. I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers if we go forward in faith.

Last Thursday we had the best P day ever! We went to Sol, Madrid to go shopping! One of my favorite teachers took us to some of her favorite clothing stores. She is very fashionable so it was really fun. And  I ended up finding a couple of cute shirts! But that´s not even the best part of the day… We then went to the most famous chocolate y churros shop! Oh man it was amazing.  It´s charming little place, surrounded by old beautiful roads and architecture. So they give you this really thick dark hot chocolate (made with olive oil) along with these deep fried churro things (nothing like churros in America.. way better) and you dip the churros in the chocolate. YUMMM. Haha I was in heaven but it was so semi sick after because it was so rich! It is for sure a one time deal because if you ate those often you would be very large. If we go tour around Spain someday I will take you there!

Sundays here are quite the marathon but I love it. We had a wonderful fireside done a couple who were some of the first missionaries in Spain! We have only been able to preach the gospel in Spain for about 40 years. Before then Spain had a bad dictator and everyone was pretty much forced to be Catholic. But it seems like our church is really growing here! This couple told us that they couldn´t have even imagined a stake here let alone a temple. The Madrid temple was built in 1999 I think. The temple here is beautiful and I love it! It is such a blessing to have the opportunity to go every week. I will miss it once I leave for Barcelona! Speaking of Barcelona… I leave in on the 30^th! YAY. Well I hope everyone is still doing good! Te quiero mucho!

Xo,

Hermana Brooke Benson