Going Strong and Steady

Letter #4
Sept. 16, 2013

Well, Mom to answer your question, my companion and I are getting better at teaching, but we have to teach in spanish, which is harder :P  

Also, I have been writing these things in my journal, but I'm mostly just writing the spiritual stuff because I don´t always have a lot of time to write. September 15th was the Mexico Day of Independence, which we watched on TV, but I really liked the Saturday night event better than the independence day video because they had youth members, from around the area, come and dance Mexican dances. And they had some guys doing dance things with machetes!

   So,

1) The MTC does serve its meals like a buffet-type thing, but they have the main course handed out to people who go up to the "hot food counter". My favorite meal is every tuesday night, when I can get my favorite food :) (you know what it is!)--[note, Scott's all time favorite food is PIZZA]... but other than that, i like the hamburger/cold-cut sandwich counter where they make burgers and sandwiches, then they decided to start putting the burgers in the sandwiches :)

2) pues, nosotros estamos aprendiendo muy bien, pero algunas personas en mi distrito tienen problemas con cosas en la idioma :P

translated: well, we are learning really well, but some people in my district have problems with things in the language.  (Note: I had asked Scott how their district was faring with the language, since he had some in his district that had struggle last week.  I also asked if the native Latinos were used in helping them learn the language--which his answer is below).

We haven´t been doing very good about actually talking to the natives since the other native Latinos left, but my dormmates and I liked our latinos who arrived last week, but one spoke english/spanish (the one that we helped stay on his mission) and the other basically learned english while here.  Also, our newest set of elders got here tuesday evening.  we spoke with them that night, but they usually stick to themselves....

                                                           My Dormmates

3) we have taught our 'investigators' every day this past week, but when you are down to the last 2 weeks in the MTC, the routine changes some.  They have you pretend to be an investigator for another companionship (along with having the 2 other investigators). So some days we teach 2 lessons, other day we only teach 1, and on p-day or on Sunday, we don't teach any.

4) The weather is still great. We do get rain, and we hear awesome thunder because when it hits somewhere in the valley, it echoes all over :) but, apparently there´s a hurricane headed towards my teacher´s family (they live near the coast).

 Dad, i´ve been here 4 full weeks, not 3 :P Yeah, time is flying... it´s sunday, then before I know it, it´s tuesday (pizza night), then the next day is Christmas Eve (day before p-day), then it is Christmas (p-day), then it´s sunday again before i know it...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning)died... it just doesn't launch anymore...(note--not sure if Scott is excited about this or not).

Boy, I'm just thinking of how it will be for me to see how big all of my nieces and nephews are when I get back :P  (Scott is uncle to 4 who really don't communicate because they are 18 months and younger, so in 2 years they'll be walking and talking).

Well, recently my district has been doing stuff other than soccer because some people were lame and took the balls back to their dorms and/or houses, so there were none left... so we played a little tennis, which is hard because, though i´m not really good, I am better than the rest because they don't really know how to play well... and we played Ultimate frisbee with other districts in our zone. So there is this tradition that is pretty cool...The district that currently has the frisbee (that we use for Ultimate frisbee) had gotten it from another district, and this frisbee-owning district will be leaving this next monday, so as a "Christmas Eve" tradition the frisbee gets passed on to another district.  But before passing it on, they sign it. So they gave us the frisbee yesterday, and we plan on playing ultimate frisbee a little later:)      until next week...

Elder Dye