Dear family and friends,

Hola everyone! Can you believe it´s my third week here at the Madrid MTC? I can´t! The days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days. Everything is going pretty well besides the fact that I got a cold this week and I miss you all! But my Spanish slowing but surely improving. I love my district and my teachers! They are all great. I have a teacher from Spain, Peru, and Argentina, it´s really great to learn and hear different accents. I am learning to speak in the Spanish accent… The best one! You pronounce all the c´s and z´s with a thhh sound. And no it doesn´t sound weird! I absolutely love it. The hardest challenge with the language is teaching a lesson in Spanish. Rough. But I am getting so much better at it! I´m actually getting pretty good at talking about gospel related things but talking about regular every day things is another story.  

Happy late Easter! I hope you had a wonderful day! It was weird to not be at home eating yummy candy. But I still had a great and spiritual day. We had a church marathon… Wait we have a church marathon everyday haha but I love it. We woke up, studied, went to relief society, sacrament meeting, Sunday school with our districts, lunch, devotional, studied (we do a lot of that), dinner and then a fireside! My favorite thing by far was the Easter devotional. We went through the Easter story in the scriptures and watched some video clips of the story. I also had the chance to be apart of the choir. The spirit was so strong! I could feel the Savior´s love. And my testimony was strengthened. I´m so grateful for Jesucristo and his atonement.  I love Spain because they have what´s called Santa Semana or Holy Week.  They actually celebrate Christ not the Easter Bunny! They have large processions commemorating Jesus Christ´s atonement. 

So as you know every Saturday we get a chance to proselyte in Madrid! It is always the highlight of my week.  Last Saturday we proselyted at the Parque de Retirlo ( I think that´s how you spell it!) It is the most famous park in Spain! And it is full of people! People from all over the world come to see this park. It reminded me of the gardens at Versailles in France. Beautiful.  My companion and I had a few great experiences. We got regected quite a few times haha but that´s just how it is. We did run into a man named Peter from Ghana who spoke a little bit of english and a little bit of spanish so it was perfect! He was a golden contact. He had a testimony of Jesus Christ and said that he wanted to change his life. So we took down his contact informantion so hopefully he will be contacted soon by some other missionaries. After we were finished proselyting we sang as group infront of a pretty fountain in the park. And it was my job to go talk to people while they listened to us. It was a little scary but great!

Today is P day so we had the opportunity to go to the Museo del Prado! You all know how much I love art history so it was basically the best thing ever. I saw some of the most famous paintings in the world!! Las Meninas by Velaquez, The third of May by Goya, a Rembrandt painting. You should look them up so you know what i´m talking about. It was so great. I feel so lucky to be a missionary in Spain! I am so grateful for this opportunity I have to share the gosple with these beautiful people. I find a lot of comfort in knowing that this is exactly what Heavenly Father wants me to be doing right now. I feel as though it is already blessing my life and I can´t wait until I can go to Barcelona and really teach! Yay. I love and miss you all so much! I would love to hear from you via email or letters!

 

Mucho amor,

Hermana Brooke Benson xo