Week 5

Hello All! 

To those who asked, yes I am definitely feeling better thankfully. It sucked being sick. I Leave from Mexico to Reno where my mission actually is in just a couple days! :) Which is super crazy. I think I may not get to email next week though since I arrive the day after Pday is in my mission. Who knows though, I very well may be able to email real quick or call to let you guys know i made it safely. 

Worst case scenario you guys hear from me in a week and a half so no biggy. I heard that supposedly I get to email on either Saturday Sunday or Monday though before i leave. 

So last week, like i said right after i emailed i went off to cut my hair and my companions. Mine was super easy, my companion wanted some really weird stuff done to his hair and i warned him in advance that i had only ever cut my own hair before. He wanted me to only use the buzzer one the sides and back and then use the scissors for everything else. I did really good actually until the very very front. Suffice to say i buzzed the rest of his hair too hehe :) He got over it very quickly though. 

There's been several thunder and rain storms this past week which has been awesomeeeee reminded me of home. Except the rain smelt a lot different than Washington rain but oh well such is life. 

This past week my companion and i taught a lady who has been a member for only 2 months, she's a volunteer and she volunteers to get taught every week. It was probably the first time i really felt like a missionary actually, she had tons of questions for us and she kept writing down notes about what we said in her little Book of Mormon. I did most of the talking because my companion.. well.. he can speak church Spanish alright but he doesn't know like anything that the lady was saying and well. My Spanish is pretty good so yea. As for things with my companion, he's being a little bit better. I don't know though, sometimes he will randomly just take everything super personally and be mad at everyone. 

8 Guys that were in my zone left on Monday early, that was pretty sad they are a ton of awesome guys. They are headed to McAllen Texas which happens to be where one of my friends is serving! so that was kind of cool when i realized that. 

I am still going to the gym 6 days a week with my roommate elder Craner at 5:30. on Saturday we went and there was 2 girls there which was weird because we've never seen ANYONE there when we are there so that was strange. Right as we left at 6:20, 6 guys walked in. Fast forward to Monday, we went at the normal time at 5:30 and.. the girls weren't there.. BUT. guess who showed up 10 minutes after us? the guys from Saturday. 45 minutes before they were there Saturday and not only that, they brought about 15 other guys with them. and then today same thing a ton of guys came Hahahaha I had a good laugh at that. They came earlier to see if the sister missionaries were working out again. Ridiculous. It is annoying though because then I have to wait for people that don't know what they are doing to finish on machines or with certain weights. 

I wanted to join the mens mtc choir here but no one in my district that's a guy likes to sing so i couldn't join. On Monday we took our farewell pictures!

On Monday during our daily gym time we always play volleyball because that's all my companion ever wants to do. And I noticed 2 Mexican guys trying to pull out some trees out of the ground, and they were having a lot of trouble. The trees weren't too thick, only like 4 inches wide or so. And i asked if they wanted help and then I helped them pull it out, and then they asked if I would help them with like 5 more trees. it was kind of entertaining actually. There are a couple missionaries I met that are going to my home mission Everett WA!

I traded a couple ties of mine last night actually that i never wore. I got some sweet ones though in return.

I leave in 5 days for Reno! :) As for the spiritual stuff I have spiritual experiences all the time. I cant help but just be amazed at some of the things I've thought about. Like as for Christ's ministry, how could people doubt when he healed people and raised them from the dead? how could you possibly ever doubt that? I have been really interested in reading joseph smiths journals. Any time we watch joseph smith videos... man. I cant even comprehend what that must of been like. Whenever it gets to the part when he is in Carthage jail and with Hyrum it just is a really powerful feeling. I think i already told you guys when we were standing in the temple visitors center watching the video on families and it was talking about grandparents and i got the most overwhelming feeling that pa was standing behind me with his hand resting on my shoulder. That was... crazy. It was so weird because I never knew him that well. But i just started crying and i couldn't help it. It was crazy.

 

I'm trying to think of some of the things. There's been a ton. Most have been just like little feelings or something. We were talking about the tree of life one time and i had a random thought that i really liked though. So in that story everything is symbolic right? I have never heard of anyone relating Lehi to anything but.. Lehi is like Jesus Christ or the Prophet. Beckoning for people to come take hold of the iron rod and partake of the love of god. 

I have learned a lot of interesting things that I didn't know before. Such as the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Did you know that the fruit literally made the health of adam and eve degenerate? and that they were cast out of the garden because if they partook of the other fruit of the garden, it would made their health get better and then they would have to die in their sins. That's why they were cast out of the garden. Thought that was really interesting because I've never heard of that before. 

A couple other things i can think of off the top of my head. Our teacher hermano cruz who is awesome. he shared with us a scripture that indirectly talks about the heavenly mother and we talked about it for like 30 minutes. He said not to share it with anyone other than close family though. Its hard to explain over email. 

Another just thing that i thought was cool too. So the phrase endure to the end. I hate that phrase because when i think of the word endure i think of... well i cant think of how to explain it but the dictionary meaning is to hold out against. In Spanish the phrase endure to the end is perseverar hasta el fin. To persevere until the end. I like the word persevere better. It just has a stronger meaning i think. I don't want to just endure my trials and challenges I want to conquer and persevere over them. you know? I'm sure there are more things I could say though. I have extra time today because i may of typed my general email out the other day :p hence why I was able to go huge email on you. There's a lot of funny stories that happen.