Yes my Spanglish is still way terrible- I can't control when I speak English or Spanish, and the city of Houston has decided to take a winter vacation in the 40 degree range, while navigating the Texas forest Elder Palacios and I ran into a baby and adopted it as our own, and the Houston Texas South Mission is still the greatest mission in the world :)
So in the last 13 weeks I've gotten half decent with Spanish. Six weeks only speaking Spanish with a Peruvian native really helped a lot! But see herein lies the problem: when to use which? It's difficult because we're still in the States but everyone around us speaks Spanish! So most of our days are an 80-20 mix of Spanish to English. So we were sitting in the lounge area talking to some members of our ward (ballpark estimate 40% of them speak English so odds are when you talk to them in English they'll understand) and I wasn't thinking and just start talking in English to Noe, one of the members. Elder Jensen continues talking for literally 5 minutes about his day, what he learned, typical annoying Elder Jensen stuff, right? So I look up at him after 5 minutes of silence and he's looking at me with this blank stare. Then I remember he doesn't speak a word of English and I spent the last 5 minutes talking to him and all he understood is that Elder Jensen is insane. Then I walk down the hall, confidently in Spanish mode and start talking to this kid in the English ward in Spanish. Moral of the story: Elder Jensen is a crazy person.
Better, more happier story of the week: Elder Palacios and I were both assigned to train a new baby missionary fresh de la fabrica :) And get this...his name is Elder Newby. Every member of our ward has a good laugh with that one, poor kid. But he's awesome! It was quite funny the parallels between receiving a baby missionary and taking care of a baby in real life. After receiving the call from President we celebrated a little, then called MY trainer-dad and told him he was a grandpa, had a lunch together to celebrate, then Elder Palacios and I spent the entire day sanitizing our apartment from the last 6 weeks, deciding what language he would speak, which parent would talk to him in what language, when we were going to let him take the car out for a spin, how early we were going to get up and take him out to exercise every morning and all the fun things that come with growing up.
Our week was a blast, we received so many blessings and help so many people. We served at a local care facility and helped low-income kids keep their smiles, we went downtown and handed out food, and decided that the world is just great. A few weeks back I talked about not being like Lot's wife and regretting our mistakes in life but to look not behind us. But I want to add something to that. I think it's such a good lesson to learn but it is missing a key point: It's not enough just to not look behind us, we have to look forward too! There's a prophet in the Book of Mormon named Alma who says we need to keep an "eye of faith and look forward". We can't just not look behind us, we have to have faith and hope and keep moving (and looking) forward.
Miss you all lots!
Elder Jensen
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