MTC, Week 3

Hola!

It feels like just yesterday I was writing a letter home. Time blends together so much here. I have no idea what I did yesterday and what I did three days ago, it just feels like one gaint day. But it's good, I'm loving it. I'm definitely looking forward to teaching real people instead of just actors, but it's still fun.

On Fridays (or maybe it's Saturdays, I really don't know) we do a "zone teach" where a companionship from the zone teach another companionship from the zone. They help us learn from other missionaries and have them give us feedback. Sadly, it seems that I usually learn more of what not to do from the other companionship than what to do. But I'm sure they learn what not to do from me too. Yesterday (or maybe three days ago, who knows; whenever it was) our teacher had the other companionship pretend to be Miguel. He was a 16 year old boy who the rest of his family had joined the church and we were trying to get him to. He loved futbol so Elder Kelly and I came up with this awesome futbol analogy with the the plan of salvation. I'm pretty sure any 16 year old boy from a latino country would join the church after hearing that lesson ;).

Español is tough. We have learned everything that you learn in two years of High School spanish, by next week we will have learned everything you learn in four years of High School. I´m definitely not that good at speaking it yet, but I´m working on it and I know that the Lord has helped me. There is no way I could speak even close to as well as I do (which is still pretty bad) without His help. I've just got to keep pressing forward and trust in Him to help me.

On Sunday (that was yesterday, right) we had our first really Sunday. The other weeks have been different because of the Mission Presidents and it was fast Sunday last week. So in the morning we got to watch Music and the Spoken Word. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is awesome. They sang a bunch of really good songs, my favorite was a rendition of Down to the River to Pray. For church every missionary writes a talk on a certain subject in español. Then after the sacrament the branch president announces who will give the talks, they have no warning or time to prep, just stand up and talk. Fortunately I wasn´t called to speak; we haven´t really learned a bunch of sentence structure so I´m sure my talk made no sense.

Sunday night we had a fireside, as always. Yesterday is was Jenny Oaks Baker (Elder Dallin H. Oaks daughter) who is a very very well accomplished violinist. She spoke about how music had changed her life and strenghtened her testimony. She would tell a story and then play a song related to it. Some of the songs were: Amazing Grace, I Need the Every Hour, Be Still My Soul, This is the Christ, and I Know that My Reedemer Lives. It was really good, both because she is an amazing violinist and because the spirit was really strong. I'd forgotten how powerful music can be. There really is no better way to feel the spirit than through the influence of music.

So I don't really remember anything else that happened that I would want to tell everyone about. It was a pretty normal week: class, lunch, class, gym, dinner, class, sleep, repeat every day. My district is really cool. We all get along really well. I would say more but the computer keeps freezing so I'm just gonna send this as fast as I can.

Con Amor,

Elder Gardner

"As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way and who will wear the robe and crown good Lord show me the way. O sinners let's go down, come on down, don't you wanna go down. O sinners let's go down, down to the river to pray."