Week 2 in Spain!

¡Hola de España!

Well I've made it through two weeks of the CCM so far and its going wonderful! I can't believe how much I have already learned and grown. Just as a quick update on my spanish skills, I now always pray in spanish, we sing all of our songs in spanish, I can actually have a decent conversation with people in spanish, and I have already given 13 half an hour lessons to our fake investigators purely in spanish! I have been learning a great deal of spanish, a lot about my self, and even more about the Gospel. My testimony continues to grow day after day while I am here. So as I said last time, we get to take trips on our P Days to cities in Madrid! Last week we went to El Sol which had some amazing historic buildings that we got to look at and tour around a little. Hopefully I'll be able to send some pictures of them to you. One funny thing that happened while I was there was that I wanted to buy a Real Madrid jersey but they were all something like 35 or 45 euros which is a dang good amount of american money. So I found these street vender guys that were selling them for 20 and talked him down to 15 in spanish which I was pretty happy about. Right after I bought it though, I heard the guys whispering something about ''la Policia'' and they hurriedly packed all of their stuff up and started walking away at the same time that a couple of police guys started walking up. I looked at my companion and just started laughing becuase I may or may not have just illegally purchased something haha. It was a great day though and I had a wonderful time.

This week has been amazing though. On saturday, we went to El Parque Retiro again and contacted a buuuunch of people sitting on benches and walking around! My companion was Elder Allen for the time we were there and although we didn't get a Book of Mormon handed out, we did get a referral! I had a blast and got to try out some more spanish which helped. 

I looove being here at the CCM because of the amount of time that we get to spend out side of the CCM building. Every day we get to go outside for actividad física and play futbol or volleyball which is great and then if we ever have free time and need to go buy something, we can walk across the street to the little tienda. It is so much fun though and the food, although we don't exactly know what it is, is really good. I remember just two days ago we had this soup stuff and as we were eating it I asked an Elder sitting across the table from me if he knew what the purple mystery meat was in our soup and he said he had no idea but it tasted great!! A lot of the meals we have here involve some sort of seafood which I love, but some of the other missionaries don't enjoy it as much. We dooo have peanut butter which is fantastic and there is always a big jar of nutella as well.

Something else really exciting happened just yesterday! So Elder Dunn and I walked down to our class and the President called us out into the hall. We were obviously super nervous because the President rarely does that. So we go out into the hall and the President introduced us to our new companion! He's straight out of some crazy city in Russia, and doesn't speak a lick of English or Spanish. I've never really felt a language barrier this big before but we get by with a lot of hand signals. His name is Elder Dolgolobov, I think, and he is super nice and is always really happy. The best thing about him is that he never gets frustrated without being able to talk to us, and he always just laughes it off. He has a translator and isn't with us when we are in class so its going good! Every time I hear him speak russian though it reminds me of how Ryan is learning and speaking that same language! I honestly have no idea how Ryan does it becuase it is soo hard! We've learned a few russian phrases and he has learned a little english which is great.

So today we finally got to go to the temple in Madrid!! I literally look out of the window every morning at it and now we finally got to go inside! It was absolutely amazing and it has really started my day off right. I can't wait to learn so much this week and I know that I have the Spirit working with me on my side. I have seen so many examples of the Spirit helping me learn and grow its absolutely amazing. My memory has never been better and I have learned more spanish within these first two weeks than I have in three years during high school. Coming on a mission has been the best decision I have made in my entire life. Its also the hardest thing I have done but I know that I can get through it and change the lives of the people that I teach. I am going to the famous Prado Museum today with the enitre CCM and its gunna be free which is great too! I am so lucky to have been called to this amazing country and could not have asked for a better place. I am loving all of your emails so keep sending them! The mail is pretty slow but it does come in around 7 days usually and I love getting letters! Thank you to those that have sent some. I love you guys with all my heart! Stay faithful in the Church.

 Love you guys!

Élder Franklyn