Hey everyone!
Thank you all so much for all the love and emails and DearElders and letters and support. It really means so much to me and I love y'all so MUCH and I'm so glad to have y'all in my life.
So This week has been really interesting. A good week but a long one at that.
So this week we started teaching people and real investigators in the Spanish Language and it is rough man let me tell ya. So Elder Moser and I have this investigator named Diana and she is from El Salvador and she currently works in the MTC in the custodial services and she is super riendly and nice and fun to be with. But we figured these things out the second time we taught her. The first time we were so nervous and we kinda paniced while teahing her. we tried to teach her about the restoration of the Gospel and it didnt go very well, to say the least. So we were super discouraged by that but I did some reading in the Book of Mormon and there is this one chpter in Jacob 4 that really hit home to me and helped me through a lot of the challenges that I was facing. Its Jacob 4: 7-10 if yall get the chance, look that up, its great. But we taught her the next day and it went so much better. We were able to talk to her about her life and her family and her joys and fears and laugh and feel the Spirit of the Lord to gether it really rocked. So that was a huge pick me up in the grand scheme of things.
So our room had four elders in it. and that was fine and dandy, but on wednesday, there was such an influx of Missionaries (i think it was 752 missionaries entered that day) that we had to give up those two extra beds and get two new elders in our room. I mean I was a little disappointed at first because six guys in a 15x30 foot room is kinda tight... but they are actually really cool guys and I think that they have made a great addition to our room in the grand scheme of things.
A couple of fun things from this week. So we started playing this Spanish Vocab training gmae in our dorm that is super intense and I am really good at. So there are two people at either end of the room and a thirs person yells out a word or phrase in English and the firstone to say it correctly in Spanish gets so shoot the other with this massive rubber band. I have only been shot a handful of times, while my opponents........ lets just say their Spanish is improving in both quality and speed. Its a super fun game that anyone can play. Also, Spanish is really messing with my English skills (I mean they weren't good to start but still) like grammar and sentence structure and like regular conversations are becoming spanglish and Spanish more and more. Which is a good thing, but it's still kinda spooky and funny. Also there's and Zone Leaders in our zone becaue enthe old ones went to the field, so the new guys are interesting... during volleyball one day our Zone Leader, Elder Lyons, was trying to hit a ball and he called it and then he tripped and landed face first in the Sand and then the ballnlanded like a foot from his head
We also got to go to the Provo Temple this morning realy early and it was SO MUCH AWESOME. The spirit you can feel as a missionary in the temple is so much stronger than I could feel before it rocked. I really love the temple and everything that happenns there. We then went to the Cafeteria in the Temple and it was awesome. We went with a bunch of people form our zone so it was really a great experience.
My Zone and district also got to help with the tours of the new MTC and it was really fun. I also saw elder HOLLAND LIKE WHAT THE HECK THAT WAS AWESOME. But we got to go around and testify and help people with their questions and other things as well. It rocked.
Also, My district did something that would make my brother in law Tyler so proud. We did a cereal challenge. We ate an entire container of cereal. 7 guys. About 5 bowls a piece. Thirty Minutes. Eternal Glory.
ALSO. I kinda feel bad about this, but one of the elders in our district, MCBEE, has a girl friend back home and all that he talks about is her a lot. So some of the guys wanted to Fake Dear John him and it was gonna be a good plan. So they recruited me to actually write the letter, they knew what they wanted to say, but I write in cursive and apparently my handwriting is pretty similar to that of a 18 year old girl so thats always fun... So but we wrote this beautiful, heart wrenching, letter to McBee, and then when he got his mail he was really excited because MAIL. But as he began to read it, his face went white. He skimmed the rest of the letter and quickly grabbed the envolope to check the return address. since we couldnt know where she was from, we didnt put one. As he discovers there is no address, he starts laughing and was really a good sport about the whole thing. He thought it was really convincing and really funny. He is going to keep it so that he can compare it to a real letter he may get from his girl friend hahaha
So but really everything is simply wonderful here. I love yall and miss yall every day. I can feel the spirit of the Lord and I can feel the Gift of Tongues beginging to kick in for not only me, but also the entire district. Everything is possible here. I love this Gospel and I love the Church.
I want to end with something I said that was apearently very profound that I said just to be annoying (as many of you can attest, I often do). As we were walking back from the temple this morning, there was this bird that was walking on the sidewalk. It didnt fly away as we approached it and it just stood there. and then walked away. I was like "I can relate to the bird. I could fly away, but i am just gonna walk" and Elder Butler was just like that was deep man. I thought about it some and it was kinda profound. I could fly away from and escape my problems, but instead I choose to face my problems head on and stand strong.
As always,
Elder Tracy
PHOTOS: Cereal Challenge
with Daniel Swingle
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