It has sure been exciting here, if that is the right word. As my companion says, "The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like weeks." The day seems really long because we get up at six and go to bed at 10:30 and study the whole time. I can hardly every remember what I did that morning. But the weeks are flying by. It is crazy to think it has already been two weeks here at the MTC. My Spanish is greatly improved. I got to meet my mission president on Saturday. He is really nice. Him and his wife are here getting their training for being mission presidents. There was a world-wide broadcast on missionary work on Sunday. Did you go to it? I tried to be in the choir but there were too many missionaries so they had to tell probably two hundred of us that we couldn't be in the choir. It was a little sad, but hey, I can sing on my own. The two sisters in our district were in the choir and were on t.v. That was cool! I can hardly believe how much I had learned here. I think back to what I could say two weeks ago.... oh yeah, absolutely nothing. Except "Hola" and "Como esta?" Now to think I actually know what we say that and what parts of speech they are.... it is crazy. I have been trying to pray very specifically lately for the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. My mission president said that we should pray for specific things, so I did. I have been praying for help in remembering and retaining all the words, and I have been praying that I can understand the grammar. It is so much easier this week than it was last week. I am not the best spanish speaker ever born, but I am feeling pretty alright about it. Back to my mission president - he grew up in the Federal Way Area. It was crazy because when he got his call he emailed church headquarters to ask if that was the right place. His parents and extended family apparently still live up there. The people went and asked the Quorum of the Twelve and they said "Yup! That is an inspired call!" So here we all are! Going to a mission where our mission president has spent nearly all of his life! It turns out that one of the elders in our district, Elder Ballard, just happens to be from our mission! He is going to Spain. He grew up in Ording (or something like that). It is just south of Federal Way, right smack in the middle of my mission! He got on the interactive map on the church website and he showed us the area and his house. He is pretty excited. You would think he was called there! Right! We were talking about my mission president. Him and his wife have two missionaries out right now. One is in the MTC and we just met her when we met President Eaton. They are very nice, real people. I think they are kind of goofy :) They just joked around and were very kind. Sister Eaton brought banana bread for us. The area I will be serving in will only be about 45 minutes wide, I think. Unless more spanish branches open up. The entire mission is about 2 1/2 hours in either direction. I enjoyed meeting them. They are just normal people who are trying to serve the Lord. I think that they will do a good job.
Let's see. What else is new? My district tried to do an "English Fast" on Friday. That was interesting. We all did a service project that morning. Hermana Biggs and I shined the trashcans in a building. Interesting service project, huh! I think that maybe they have a few more missionaries than they know what to do with...... We looked up trashcan in the dictionary and promptly started using it in our language ("escoria"). Later that day we went back to our classroom and were talking to one of our spanish teachers, Hermana Wilson. She kept asking us what we were talking about when we were telling her about trashcans. Well.... apparently we don't know how to use a dictionary because she told us the real word for trashcan. The one we had been using meant "worthless people". Phew! That could have gone bad in a lesson. Besides that the Spanish is going pretty well. The "English Fast" helped me learn a lot because I was forced to only communicate in Spanish. I can speak a lot better than I thought I could. I am beginning to feel more comfortable teaching and explaining gospel principles to investigators. We finished teaching "Constantino". Guess who it was? Our afternoon spanish teacher, Hermano Bulloch! The day after we finished teaching him he started teaching us in class. The teachers all just choose someone that they actually taught in their mission to be to give us practice teaching. They all do a really good job of being someone else. Yesterday we went to knock on our new investigators door "Nicolas". Nicolas (Hermano Bulloch) opened the door and the lights were off and he had just gotten up from a nap. He was really tired because he goes to classes all the time. We started getting to know him and teaching him about Christ and what do you know but his dogs start barking like crazy! (Hermano Bulloch put dogs barking on his phone and had them go off). We just keep teaching along, wondering if we should say something. I told him about Sparty, as best as I could. Sometimes it can be hard to pretend like they are real people. But then I think "If I can teach with the Spirit to someone who already knows the Gospel and believes in it, I can definitely teach with the Spirit to a real person!" That is probably the hardest part. I have been teaching a lot for the last few years of my life, but it is a different ball game trying to teach the Gospel. People don't just listen and take what I say as truth. I really have to try hard to work with my companion and bring the Spirit to testify. It is really hard! It is getting easier as I learn more spanish because I don't have to think as hard.
Like Justin Meyers said, we really do get to play beach volleyball all the time. Hmmm... anything else? Not sure. Like I said "Days are like weeks and weeks are like weeks." I can't think of anything else, yet I know I have done a lot of things in the last 7 days. Well. I guess that is it!
Love you tons!
Hermana Clark
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