Thursday, September 24, 2009

Week 3 at the MTC


Hey all!

Wow, 3 weeks down!  It feels like 3 days.  Does that mean that 104 weeks will feel like 104 days??  Hmm...

Everything is well here.  Just pluggin along, learning more and more every day.  Jeff I'll make time to write you your own email next week, but I'm short on time this week.  Don't worry, it will happen!

Mom and Dad

Can you send me more labels with my address on them?  I only have 4 left after today!  I'm doing some serious writing haha.  Lots of people to talk to!  I got my raincoat, thanks for calling them.  I also got your package with my jeans, paraguay shirt, and spanish hymn book.  Thanks a bunch, I really appreciate everything you guys are doing, really.  And the See's candy is already half gone!  Hehe.

Will you also send me my Paraguay addresses so I have them to give to my friends here?  Thanks!

I'm good with the money situation.  Still have quite a bit of cash, we get 50% off here at the bookstore, so everything is really cheap.  The most expensive thing I've had to buy was a watch, because mine broke, but that's it.

Papa Bear, good try with that Spanish!  You were close.  "Creo" means "I believe", "Yo sé que" means "I know that", so say you know it instead of believe it!  Here's what you were trying to say:  Hola, me lammo Danny Moore.  Yo se que Jesucristo nos ama.  l sufrió para nosotros y quitó nuestros pecados.  ¿Le gustaría más acerca de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días?"  Close though!

We're speaking more and more Spanish outside of class now.  Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, we're not allowed to speak English during meal times.  Everyday at breakfast we speak Spanish.  We always sing in Spanish, and whoever gives the spiritual thought before class starts has to start doing it in Spanish now.  It's a lot to handle, but the more we hear and speak it the faster we'll learn it.

My companion and I are getting really good at teaching the lessons.  In the TE where we teach a teacher who acts like a progressing investigator, he said we taught him one of the best first lessons he's heard in a long time.  We just taught him the plan of salvation 2 days ago, and he said he actually wished we would have committed him to baptism because he would have said yes.  So I guess we're doing well haha.  He tries to play out different scenarios that we'll encounter in the field, like last time he started asking all these random questions in the beginning and getting off topic to see if we could focus him back on the lesson we were supposed to teach.  When he said "Let's look up your last name in the index!" we were pretty sure we knew what he was doing haha.  It's really weird, this John Arpeggio character that he made up is really real to us.  Its incredible how you can have such love for a made up character and want him to know the Gospel even in a simulated situation with a made up person who has a made up life.  I think it's because he might be fake, but his problems are real problems people have and we really have come to love that character.  It's amazing.

They're teaching us a lot of things on how to improve our lessons.  We're learning to ask a lot of questions, it's much more like having a conversation rather than teaching somebody about Jesus Christ.  We learn to ask them about themselves before we start and pick up on little tid bits of information about them to really discern what their concerns and needs are, and we adapt the lesson to their needs as we go.  One time, we entirely changed the lesson on the fly because we got a question out of left field and what we had planned to say just wouldn't have done any good.  We're taught "Don't teach the lessons, teach the investigator".

Where's Brother El Halta moving to?  Tell him that I wish him and his family luck!  And tell Rick that I'm sad I'll be missing the day they ordain a Bishop Rick.  Hehe.  We have an Elder in our district named Elder Bishop, so if he's ever called to be a bishop, he'll be Bishop Bishop.  Kinda funny.

My district is doing great though!!  We all get along sooo well now.  People think we're weird because we're always laughing at lunch and stuff.  We're like family out here.  My companion wasn't doing so well though, but he's doing better now.  He has a girl at home he misses, so that's something we talk about a lot and kinda have in common.  I gave him lots of advice about that.  All is well though, we all love each other so it's a blast.

Again, thanks so so much for all the Dear Elders everyone is sending.  They're one of the best parts of my day, I love hearing from everyone.  Sorry I can't respond to everything everyone says in them (doing the Lord's work is a busy job!) but I try my best.  Please please keep them coming, I love them.

That's all for this week.  Love and miss you all so much!  Hasta luego!

Love,
Elder Moore

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