30 August 2017

Maybe I need to try emailing later, because the only email I have from you this week is one that would result in my death if I tried to have that be the only one I sent you this week. Anyways, it's been a pretty standard week. I finally really got preterit vs. imperfect down, and that took me forever. I'm not a very big fan of Spanish grammar. Conjugations are all over, and almost all of the really common verbs are irregular. This language is going to be the death of me. Also, I found out how the guys in my district have been getting stuff from their families. Apparently, there's some link or path on the CCM (MTC) website where you can select items to send to your missionary, and the way it works is that they send out someone who works here to buy all the stuff and bring it back. If you decide to do that, beef jerky. That's pretty much all I want. Lots of beef jerky. Anyways, we had Christmas again this week. I gave my secret Santa person a roll of cough drops that look like they might be candy, and got a pen that has a weird knit covering. (Yes, the gifts are supposed to be stupid.) We also had a surprise visit from Santa himself! ​
​I don't know how they got the hairnets, and I'm not so sure I want to know how we got the fake fire. It's still sitting in our living room. We got some new people in our house this week because all of our three week program people left, and we got to meet them. Their first night here was our party, so I think they're a little scared of our district. We've only got one more left in here, so we have to make it count. I'm super happy that we're almost done, there's only so many times you can teach your teacher and make it feel like an investigator for real. Speaking of real investigators, we had our first TRC this week! I think it stands for Teaching Resource Center.  Basically, a whole bunch of volunteers come in from around here and they just are themselves. It can be investigators or members or less actives. We taught two lessons in that about prayer, and it was super cool. The first one was a grandma and her granddaughter, and that one was really nice. Our second lesson was the less active mother of said granddaughter and her other kid. You could really feel the spirit, and it felt a lot more real than trying to teach Hermano Trejo or Gayosso (my teachers). I'm just impressed that people would volunteer to come in and be taught in really, really bad Spanish stuff they probably already know. Oh well, it really helps us.

We did have something really sad this week. One of our guys went home to take care of some stuff. He's a really good guy and we're all proud of him for having the courage to do it, but it's sad all the same. He said he wants to come back out and serve as soon as he can. He broke his watch by dropping it earlier this week, and so I gave him mine (sorry mom) with a really cheesy line: "This is so you know when to return to the field." I know, it's bad, but it's all I had. He seemed really happy with it anyway. I think he was mostly just happy that he had the support of his district. That's all for this week, so I'll write again later! 

(And mom, I want some news from home!) 

I can check tomorrow, but I can't write back. And this is my last opportunity to write today. And in random news, thanks to my companion pushing me really hard, I can run here! I used to run out of breath really fast because this is 10-11 times the elevation of Fishers, but I did my first 5K today! I don't know the time because neither of us have a watch, but I did pretty well. You can tell Uncle Michael that when I get back I can run them with him! (Oh yeah, and we're trying for a 10K next pday because I didn't feel like this was too hard. We'll see how it goes.) Bye until next week!