Thursday, September 5, 2013

Letter from September 4, 2013


Man! P-day is the bomb! Just got back from a great day at the temple, it was a bit sad because I realized this is the last time I'll be able to go for 23 months or so! But on the way back driving through the city, saw a fire-breather, a truck precariously stacked full of propane tanks, and Elder B leaned out the window while we were stopped in traffic and bought a bag of chips for 3 pesos. So that was cool. I can't wait to get out into the mission though!!!
 Answering questions: The laundry sitch here is great. Big fancy machines that do a great job, it's like a Laundromat! My shirts are great; I haven't had to iron any of them more than once. Except for one short sleeve shirt that I think I might have packed by mistake. Seriously, that thing wrinkles up in a light breeze. RJ is doing great! Seems to be on his feet and having a good time. Same with Emily. Her schedule is super out of sync with mine so I hardly ever see her though.
So once a week, we have a thing called TRC, which translates into something in Spanish. Not sure what. But basically members of the church from outside the walls come in and we teach them, like the missionaries teach a short lesson to the members back home after they have them over for dinner. So it's low(er) pressure and usually pretty enjoyable. Elder J and I were teaching a lesson on Thursday about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon for personal revelation. Before we started, while we were waiting to get called up, he started fretting how we hadn't prepared enough and worrying what we would do if we got a nonmember to teach. I just told him to calm down, and I'd give him a peso is we actually had to teach a non-Mormon. So we walk in to our lesson, it's a Mexican lady  and her daughter, F. She's super friendly and we're chatting a bit, and I ask her if she's a member. She goes, "No." Whulp! Turns out her husband is and she wasn’t, but she's going to be baptized in two weeks. Wow. So we ended up teaching a really powerful lesson to her and ended by challenging her to read the Book of Mormon daily (because she hadn't.) So that was great! And I had to give Elder J a peso.
So I don't think I 've mentioned this before, but we started a district choir! I’m the choir director, which means I'm responsible for keeping everyone on track and focused. We (8 elders, 4 Hermanas’) are singing a variation of God Be With You Till We Meet Again; on the last Sunday at church right before we all leave. Should be a serious tearjerker! The first verse, the Hermanas’ start and the elders join, then we all come together. That's in English. The second and third verses are the Hermanas’ and the elders respectively, Spanish.  And the final verse we split into 5 part harmony and sing all together! Should be pretty dang awesome. We're hurting for experienced singers, so much so that I'm filling the tenor part even though I'm technically a bass... oh well. It's fun though
Other random things... Yesterday all our elders did Elder Holland hair. So we all did the severe comb over with the distinguished part, it looked pretty good. Mine was ok, but Elder M's hair was seriously perfect. Wish I'd had a camera. All the Hermanas’ agreed we looked very professional.
We taught another group of missionaries the other day, they'd been out for two weeks and apparently the district has been having some unity issues. So I gave a lesson to one of the Elders, and focused on really getting to know him. He really opened up about his struggles on the mission and the things he was worried about, so I was able to give him a fiery call to righteousness that he came up and told me really helped him out. The strength of my lesson was definitely due to me following the promptings of the Spirit, but my Holland hair also probably helped.
 Not sure how exciting this will be to you, but you know that hideous red-green tie you had RJ bring me? The one that Uncle Pei gave to me like 5 years ago and I've probably never worn? I was doing some tie trading the other day and some chump thought it was the coolest tie he'd seen. So I got a pretty nice yellow one for it! Stoked!

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