Familia y amigos,

Hola! ¿Cómo estás? How is everyone? I miss you all! Time is really starting to fly here in Madrid. The first two weeks were slow, but now here I am with only 2 weeks left in the MTC. Mia Madre! Haha that´s an expression one of our teachers told us to use. It´s similar to like oh my goodness, etc. I miss the good old Salt Lake but I am really loving it here. I really love my companion Hermana Ashley Hopkins! She is great and we are already bueno friends. Really all the sisters here in the CCM (what we call the mtc in español) are really great. We recently were given the calling of Coordinating Sisters… Haha yep.  Our main responsibility is to check on the girls each night before they go to bed (really make sure they are in bed haha). It´s kind of fun! I´m really tempted to do some interpretive dancing while my companion sings for them… Idk we need to work on it. Haha just kidding. It gives us the opportunity to branch out and get to know all of these great Hermanas.

Last weekend was wonderful because it was filled with a lot of conference and a little bit of tracting! Two of my favorite things. I have never enjoyed or gotten so much out of conference before. I think it has something to do with the fact that I´m a missionary haha. My favorite part of conference was the general young women´s meeting. I´m not in young women´s anymore but I still felt like it was perfect for me! If you haven´t watched or listened to any of the talks I would challenge you to do so. The spirit was so strong during this meeting. It  was kind of bitter sweet because it made me miss my favorite sisters and mom mucho! But as I listened the spirit really testified to me of the love that the Savior has for women. He loves us so much. And we as women have such an important role not only on earth but throughout all eternity! I would not trade being a daughter of God for anything. What did you think of conference? Did you have a favorite talk?

 Ok tracting… We went to the Calle de Goya this time. Downtown Madrid. Lots of people. Big buildings. Weird smells. This time was a little more rough than I have been used to! The Lord has blessed me with many great experiences during previous weeks. We did hand out a lot of pass along cards but people were not super interested. They would talk to cute, friendly American girls just to be nice haha. But we did have one pretty good experience. As we were walking down the street trying to let the spirit guide us to someone. And then it came… We heard some English! YAY, what an answer to our prayers.  We stopped these two guys and introduced our selves. Like this: Hola!! Como estás? Haha. Where are you guys from? They ended up being from Scottland. Pretty cool. I know they speak English there but they were semi hard to understand haha. One of them was Catholic and the other was Protestant. So they shared our belief in Jesus Christ! Perfect. We had the chance to share with them a little bit about the gospel. They were mostly interested in why we were on missions and what we did. It was fun to share my testimony with them and talk about why I was on a mission. They didn´t seem to be very interested in learning more which was a downer but I really felt like we left them with a good impression of Mormons and missionaries! And they promised they would be nice to the guys who knocked on their doors back home haha.

I don´t have much else to say other than I know that this gospel is true! And I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and he died and suffered for us so that we can repent and live with him, our Heavenly Father, and our families again! I can´t wait to share this with the people of Barcelona! The world needs the gospel. And I am so grateful to be part of this great work! I love and miss you all! I would love to hear from all of you! I hope and pray you are all doing good!

Amor,

Hermana Brooke Benson

 Xoxo