Tuesday, May 5, 2009

So Sebring you took the SAT and you did well. That's exciting! Tell me the results as soon as you get them ok!

That is great to hear about Bryton. It is really inspiring and because of his determination he'll be a great missionary.

I know I won't be able to call for mother's day. Not in the MTC, so sorry but maybe if I have time in the airport. I don't know if it is allowed but I'll have to ask someone.

It's amazing to think it's already been 2 months. I can't wait to get to Argentina though.

Paul Hawkins, that is so exciting about your mission call. You'll have a lot of fun with the language. We have all of the Japanese missionaries right above my class room and it's tough because of the differences. It's really hard to go from English to Chinese. You'll have a blast though!

It was great to hear from the Lepperts and thank you so much for the advice. I'm learning a lot from my campainon and I know that I'm going to be a better missionary because I was assigned as his companion.

Now to finish a Day at the MTC. During class is where I think I'm at. During class we work on Spanish mostly. We actually just got to past subjunctive yesterday, which is supposedly the hardest grammar principle to learn in Spanish. I understand it now. The hard part is using it in my Spanish. My Spanish by the way, has kind of clicked in. I happened about two weeks ago. Before that I was not getting anything. I wasn't able to talk much in Spanish and I was struggling with understanding people in Spanish (well that's still really hard for me for some reason). But all of the sudden, all of the grammar I had been studying so hard, just came together and now I'm able to speak it alright. Now I just have to add subjunctive and a few other tenses into my speech, and really work on my vocabulary and I'll do alright (I probably won't be saying that in Argentina however). The Lord has helped me so much in this. I know that through the spirit I have learned almost all of the Spanish I know now. Without the spirit I would still be using almost no Spanish only Lo siento.

Aso in class we will go over gospel topics and how to teach and other things in PMG. That stuff isn't so hard because it is in English so I feel pretty comfortable there, though I have a lot to learn that's for sure, but I know enough to get around if you will.

After class in the afternoon is dinner which is pretty good here. Almost all of the food I really enjoy! I still haven't gained any weight which is good, but I eat a lot. After dinner is most of the time another class with a teacher. After that time on Tuesdays and Saturdays we have service which is now about to change. The MTC is getting some major updates in a lot of areas and now the gym is getting that. So, I'll be missing the inside gym for the rest of my time here. But for service we used to set of chairs, put down the mats, and set up the stand. I have some videos on my camera of us doing this. Eventually I'll get those sent. Now we have to do chairs in 1M which is the main building for administration and stuff. I have no idea how we're all going to fit in there but that's what the rest of my district was saying.

I hope there will still be choir. It is really great to go to choir here. The conductors are amazing and I get to get away from my district for a little bit. After service, or I should say before service, we will have planning. Planning here I'm sure is quite a bit different than out in the field. I keep Elder Stout and I busy with tons of teaching appointments. We have 16 just by ourselves and we both need two more with other missionaries in the district. After planning we go back to the residence which I have to say sometimes is really annoying. You'll be full of the spirit and then you'll go back and everyone will be just messing around the entire time, and just killing that spirit. So I do my best to try and engage in activities that keep the spirit. Oh I forgot devotionals. But I'm running out of time so I'll talk about them next time.

Keep the spirit with you always and you won't do hardly anything you'll regret. Thank you for all of your letters love and support.

Love Elder Sands