Week 7 July 23, 2010

Dear family,
We've been getting the Spanish down pretty well now. We have an English fast every morning and so that's helping a lot. We had our last TRC on Monday and I could actually understand most of what he was saying. We got to teach part of a lesson to some more natives and it was really interesting to see how they spoke the words, and if they said this or said that, see what kind of accent they had. I think I finally understand how James felt on his mission at the beginning. We were "investigators" for two Hermanas that were teaching and I understood most of what they were saying, but since there wasn't much to say, they probably thought I didn't know Spanish very well. Oh well.

There's an Elder in our district who was trying to say "Yo espero" (I hope), but instead he said "Yo esposo" (I husband) and our teacher was laughing for about a minute straight.

Apparently, there was also another Elder back home from our stake that was also going Spanish-speaking from the Eldersburg ward. His name is Elder Rigby and I met him while I was just walking around and I saw them studying.

The temple's been closed for about a month now, but it'll be open on Monday so I can go next P-Day. Since the gym is also closed indefinitely, I've been going outside and playing softball with our district. It's more fun as we get more people from our district to play. I was a host missionary on Wednesday and that was fun. Everybody said it was hot out, but I didn't think it was that hot. I got to host 3 Elders and 1 Hermana. With the Hermana however, we were only allowed to escort them to the Sister hosts and they would take it from there. I remember that first day for me coming into the MTC was really fast and I remembered how I only came in with Dad. There were a lot of Elders that had like 10 people with them.

There's an Elder in our zone named Elder Rasmussen who was supposed to leave before we got here, but he's been having visa problems since he's going out of state and so he moved into our district about 2 days ago. This is his 16th week in the MTC! He was joking with some Elders in our zone about how he's been in the MTC longer than they've had their call. You don't have to worry about me getting a visa because I don't have to get one because I'm going state-side. In fact, I got my travel plans yesterday and I'm leaving the MTC at about 5am on August 3rd, but my companion is leaving at 3am the same morning, and I have to be with him!

Anyway, I love having Elder Rasmussen in our district because he always tells us the records for stuff that's not really that important. He's also been asking missionaries where they think Joseph Smith is buried and we've got some pretty funny answers:
-Heaven (God took his body)
-Palmyra
-Independence
-Kirtland
-Nauvoo (I know it's Nauvoo because we saw it when we went there 7 years ago)
-Peru
-Carthage Jail

That's weird that you guys had an earthquake. I never thought that Maryland would ever have an earthquake. I thought that MD was the isolated spot where nothing happened. I guess not. You guys seem like me, just sleeping through everything, even an earthquake. Well, I gotta go.

Elder Meiners