HOOOOOOOLY COW YOU GUYS! I ONLY HAVE 3 MORE WEEKS HERE! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Time is going by waaaaaay too fast! We're entering cram mode to be able to speak spanish as best we can, but more importantly learning how to teach to people's needs more. That's the big push of our teachers, they don't teach us much spanish, because if we understand the doctrine, and understand our purpose of why we're out here, then the Spirit will help us to speak spanish way more, and we will be able to teach with that spiritual power.
We taught the first time in Spanish last night, the first lesson. It was awesome, the investigator, Mr. Jacobs, had a hard time accepting the
Book of Mormon, saying that the Bible is all we needed. We testified of the truth of the words to him, and helped him to understand that we need a prophet to decipher scriptures, so we don't have all the messiness that happened with the Bible. We also talked about how the people in the Americas didn't really have the bible, the New Testament and such, and so God called prophets for them and helped them out by giving them this record.
I've learned so much about the scriptures since I've been here, I'm beginning to see how amazingly deep these words are. My testimony has grown immensely as well. There is simply no way that an uneducated farm boy at the age of 20 could have written 531 pages, detailing a history of a peoples for 1000 years, without any major glaring flaw, without being unequivocally proven false yet, it's insane. The more I hear about the history of this people, the more I love them, and want to serve them with all my heart, might, mind, and strength.
It sounds like
Alex is doing awesome! I've noticed he is not speaking very good english in his letters :P. I hope that doesn't happen to me, but I also hope that it does. That way I know that I'm really a part of that people. I've already noticed myself typing/writing spanish words where it should be english, even in my talking. You might notice a couple times in the tape I'm going to send. OH YA! I'll be sending that off today, hopefully it's a good thing. Let me know what you think. I hope you got the pictures I sent off yesterday, and the CD that goes with them. I knew our family would want some sort of digital form of them for emails and such :).
DAD! I don't care if you have nothing to say! Just keep sending stuff! I love hearing about all of your days, thank you so much mom for keeping on sending stuff and your newsletters! Some of those pictures are awesome! Dad was such a dork back then! Hahaha, but it's so great to hear from all of you. How are Ben and Than doing? The last thing I heard Than was giving a presentation to Marvel that went really well. I don't know anything, because they haven't sent me any letters! I KNOW! I need some parental repreimands here :).
Carnival, ya, I've heard about it. Simpsons had an episode on it, and everyone was in those creepy big head suits.
Should I speak more spanish? Less? Should I do a spanish section in my tapes? Is better know a zone a good idea? OH HOLY CRAP! I just remembered, ahahha, Dad, they put you in all your positions here for 4 weeks, then swap with someone. So Sr. Companion for 4 weeks, then you're the Jr. I was released as District Leader, and then immediately asked to be Zone Leader with my companion, Elder Tibbits. He's the blonde one with glasses in the pictures. Sometimes he doesn't wear them. So that's been fun, we just started interviewing the District Leaders for the first time two hours ago. We need to prepare a lot of lessons during the week, and go to a lot more lessons, but overall it's a lot easier, at least for me, than being District Leader. Don't have to correct people's behavior :P.
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY MOM! President's day killed any proposition of sending a card or something, so I figured I would just send something here, and in the tapes. THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the sacrifices you have made for me. I honestly would be such a terrible person right now without you! I love you so much! Please don't cry about me being out here, because I'll know and will be very dissapointed :P. This is the best thing I could be doing with my life right now, I have grown so much, matured so much, and have, at least I hope, lifted up some other Elder's out of some cycles of depression they have been experiencing. I love you taaaaaaaaaan mucho! No puedo decir todas los cosas que quiero, pero lo amo. En serio.
Oh, my last adventure! We were at the temple, and President Clegg gave us the names of members in his family from like, the early 1800s. He's the first councilor to the President of the MTC. We were like...OK....so some of us got to stand in as children for sealings, and the others did endowments, and we were able to do all the work for him, plus some. It was great. But we were supposed to take the cards back to him, and one Elder forgot to ask the worker for the card, so when we went to give them back the secretary just gave us this look, as if to say, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!? But then she just smiled and said, it's OK, they'll take care of it. Some people here are tricky. It's easy to forget they are real people and make jokes....
Adios! Amo todos detus!
Elder Newell