Hello everyone. I hope that you all had a great week. I am loving life here and everything has been going great.
This week was a good week and had a lot of great experiences. It is weird to think that i have been here for 7 weeks already. I have really learned so much and have been able to grow into a better person. The experiences I've had here already have changed my life, and i look forward to the rest of the experiences I will be able to have here and in Mexico. We had our first full week with our new teacher Hermano Goodrum. He is a really great teacher. It was sad to leave Hermana Tate and she was great, but we have been able to really learn a lot from Hernamo Goodrum in a different way, and I am thankful for the opportunity to learn from his taechings and experience.
Spanish is definitley coming along. I am beginning to feel more comfortable talking, but i know i still hvae a very long way to go before i can say anything that i want. There is so much vocabulary and phrases that are unfamiliar to me, but i feel like i am beginning to get the basics down a well enough that i can at least communicate what I feel and bear my testimony relatively well to a native, though I probably still couldnt keep up with anything that they are saying. It is fun to learn and to grow and i know that i am being helped by many sources and by God to continue to grow and to learn all that I need to learn.
This week in our TRC the man that we taught was a Buhdist. This went a long well with the exercise we did last week where i played a Buhdist monk. This man was a little more down to earth than I had played and was interested in all religion so he knew the basics of Chirstianity. It was a good lesson and me and Elder Thompson felt like we did a good job at teaching the person instead of the lesson, but as i found out later this week, we still have a lot to learn.
Sunday was a great day. I was able to teach a lesson of the restoration of the gospel. I started out talking about our goal is to tell everyone about this great knowledge we have. That the gospel and authority of Jesus Christ has been restored. I related the states of apostasy and restoration to the school year and summer, where the school year is the restoration. I dont have time to tell it, but i'm sure you can make the connections of how hard we work, and the excitement stages. In sacrament meeting i bore my testimony, and it was probably the best ive ever spoken spanish. When i talk about Christ and when i bear my testimony, I am helped by the Spirit to speak clearer, more fluently and express my thoughts and feelings so much better, and it is a very comforting feeling.
Also on sunday when i went up to the temple as we do every week, my district decided to walk around once before we left for dinner, and as we walked around the far side, I turned my head and saw Chelsea, Sierra and one of their roommates sitting in the grass. I am not sure if they were there on purpose or not, but it was definitely a surprise to me. It was nice to see them and to talk to them briefly about how everything was for me here and how things were for them at school. I spoke a little bit of spanish, but it is kind of hard to do it on the spot. It was weird to see them and i kind of understand the awkward rm feeling a little bit, and understand how big it must be when i get back.
In class the main thing that i learned this week was to try and break down the spanish barrier. OUr teacher had us close our eyes as he said the name Jesus Christ and then he had us do it again with Jesucristo. It was much harder to have the same thoughts and feelings when he said the name Jesucristo as it was when he said Jesus Christ. I am working at breaking down this barrier so taht i can be a more effective missionary and share more of my feelings and joy of this gospel.
Yesterday was the first day that i would consider to be a challage. It was brought upon by varrious reasons that arent really taht important to focus on. The thing that i came out with at the end of the day is how blessed i am to have the knowledge of the gospel, and to have a savior jesus christ. He is my savior and i can always rel y on him though any hard time. I have to always remember to be strong and to be an example of the church. Today is a great day, and every day is a great day because of the blessings taht we have in our lives. Some days, as yesterday was for me, it is harder to see those blessings as we focus on ourselves and our problems. We need to humble ourselfs and need to take a step back, out of the world, and see how truly blessed we are to be here and to have the opportunity to have trials to become more like our savior and to choose to follow him.
I love you all and am so thankful for you love and support. I hope that you all have an excellent week and that you will be able to be guided by the spirit always and act. I love you and will talk to you soon
lOve
Elder smith
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