As you can see reflected in my e-mail subject line, a large majority of my day-dreaming time here in the MTC is spent wondering how great that new Star Wars movie will be. But nevertheless the overwhelmingly great thing that happened this week is I learned how to speak Spanish goodly! Trying to learn the first week in Spanish can only be equated to attempting to drink water from a fire hose (which in fact, is something I tried once and was exceedingly difficult). Now that I'm a hardened 2-week veteran of missionary training I feel so much more comfortable with Spanish and life in general. Though it is in some part true that days are the same (wake up, eat, class, eat, class, gym, eat, class, sleep) I will attempt to talk about unique experiences each week.
This week, as I said was a huge step for my Spanish skills! But not because I all of a sudden I got good, but closer to a prueba de fuego (trial by fire). Elder Babble and I are teaching a real investigator now....IN SPANISH! So we're kinda forced to get good at Spanish because English is tabooed in our meeting room. Yet, it wasn't actually that hard because our investigator is AMAZING. Her name is Maribel and she's a grandmotherly lady that Elder B and I love teaching, because she's always so sweet to us (and also because she bakes us treats every time we meet and Elder Babble and Elder Jensen LOOOVE treats). It's a part of a really cool opportunity we have in the MTC called Teaching Resource Committee or TRC, where local investigators come and listen to brand-spanking new missionaries like struggle to give lessons in some hybrid form of Portu-Spanglish where only like every 3rd word makes any sense. But I love it, she's really receptive to the gospel and already wants to get baptized so Elder Babble and I are very happy :)
On a serious note, we had the General Primary President give a devotional this Sunday and it was AMAZING. She gave a talk about how when we're down or worried we can't turn inward and complain about how miserable we are, but instead we have to turn outward like Christ did and show love and serve others. She talked of how after having 3 of his apostles fall asleep on him he told them not to worry, after being betrayed by one of his own he was concerned about one of the Romans, and how that after he hung on the cross he told his Father to forgive them. It was such a powerful lesson because sometimes days in the MTC are super duper hard, but we get through them by stopping feelings of worry, sadness, and fear, and in the immortal words of a great Disney classic, we have to keep moving forward :)
I love you all muchos!!
Elder Jensen
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