7th week's P-Day email from the MTC

Hola Familia!
Just finished my 7th week here, and as always, blazing by. The majority of this email is going to be about Thanksgiving probably, cuz that's like the largest part of what happened this week, definitely a great week for sure.

So last time we talked I believe I had just seen Elder D.Todd Christofferson which was really awesome, 2nd apostle I had seen. Then when Thanksgiving time came around, everyone was muttering, or to use an LDS term "murmuring"(haha), about who was coming for the early morning Thanksgiving devotional, cuz normally for holidays they get apostles to come, like Christmas is supposed to crazy, but I wont know about that because I'll be out of here before then :) So right before it starts, we're all sitting outside in the hallways writing letters and talking about who we think it's gonna be, and we made sure to get there early in case it was an apostle, and then we found out it was ANOTHER APOSTLE! Elder Russell M. Nelson came, and it was awesome. He talked all about the history of Thanksgiving because you have to realize that there are lots of international people here who have never been to America, let alone know what the heck Thanksgiving is, haha. I'm sure they just wonder why people here set a day aside to just eat a ton of food, watch football, and eat more when we just do that everyday haha. So that devotional was awesome and we ended up sitting like 4 rows from the front, so he stared at me like the entire time, crazy intimidating but crazy awesome. At the very end of it was definitely the best part and my favorite part for sure. He had the staff there play a rendition of "Halleluiah" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and it only had like 2 words in the song, but he told us to think of all the people, things, and everything that we were grateful for this Thanksgiving, and I closed my eyes and thought of every member of my family individually, and pictured each of your faces, and the Spirit was really strong. For sure, I am very grateful for all of you, I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for your love and wanting the best for me, and this is definitely the best for me right now, I promise, and I've learned that fact here in these last 7 weeks. It was really powerful, and I really want each of you to know how much I love you, individually. Oh and the day only began there haha, we had a "real-ish" Thanksgiving dinner at like 2:00, turkey, potatoes, pumpkin pie, the whole shabang and it was actually quite good, some of the best food I've had here. Later we had a massive MTC-wide service humanitarian project where we had table upon table laid out where we assembled accident-kits and that was actually pretty fun, hung out with Grant there a bit and tricked a bunch of people into thinking we were twins :P And we even switched nametags for a few hours so I was English for a while haha, I FELT SO DIFFERENT! Then we ended the day with this cool like "Thanksgiving story" fireside thing where we had a missionary skit thing of the first Thanksgiving, pretty funny, I took some pictures. Then ended the day watching the new LDS movie, "17 Miracles", soooo good. Like, the church makes really good movies, for sure. And they even gave each of us our own bags of kettle corn for the movie which was so delicious. So that was my Thanksgiving day, pretty exciting. I missed normal Thanksgiving with all you, and the Turkey Bowl for sure Bishop Romero :) Thanksgiving just isn't the same without us running around playing flag football in the cold morning.

Ok I want to talk about one experience in particular that happened this week, that I may inflate a bit but it was really special to me. Elder Swasey and I were about to teach a lesson as we always do, and it was my turn to pray outside the door like we always do, so I started praying. And I can't really explain it, but it honestly didn't even feel like I was speaking a different language, that's how easily the language and vocabulary came to me in that prayer. Seriously, I finished and said "Wow..." it's like it was 2nd nature, and because of that blessing I received of "el don de lenguas", I went into that lesson more confident, and the language came to me really well in the lesson too, it was just an overall amazing experience, and that to me shows not only how much I've learned here in such a short time, but how much the Lord will bless you for little things like that when you put all of your faith in Him and not in yourself.

Oh! another cool thing that happened this week: I was finally able to put my memorization of "La Primera Vision" to use during a lesson, and I said it slowly and calmly, and stared into his soul! It was so awesome, there's so much power in that experience.

This week also made me really feel good about my Spanish that I've learned so far because we went and talked to guys that were new to Spanish and had only been here for a couple weeks, and Swasey and I have already convinced like 10 people that we're fluent in Spanish, mostly English speaking missionaries though haha. And then we go and talk with other advanced missionaries, and we can understand them pretty easily and then we respond, which yes, is harder, but I'm able to get my point across, and they always say they're impressed with our Spanish. Another Spanish thing was they have a video on lds.org I've watched a few times where its a temple dedication video of the El Salvador temple, and they interview a family there (awfully close to Panama...) and the whole video is in Spanish, so I just sit there and look at the countryside they film and their accents, and I can understand the majority of what they said, and I just feel so much love for those people. That, I'm starting the believe, is the reason why I was called to Panama, because I develop love for those people so quickly its ridiculous.

Dedos cruzados (fingers crossed) I think I am getting my flight plans today!!! If I do I'm gonna be so excited. So close now I can taste it.

Yesterday we had the awesome pleasure of hosting the new missionaries. I got to be the host for a sister missionary first, going to Rochester NY Visitor Center, English speaking. Then the next guy I got was really depressed, hard to talk to him easily, his parents were both crying, he's headed Spanish speaking, New Mexico. Then the last guy was the coolest, his dad had a slicked up curly mustache like an evil villan haha it was so sweet. He's headed towards Atlanta, English speaking. Pretty cool, made me think back of how I felt on the 1st day: Completely overwhelmed but excited. And that's pretty much how i feel now about leaving, but only really excited.

Oh, last thing I want to say is my testimony and love for the Book of Mormon. Seriously, this book is crazy good, and you can quote me on that! I'm so close to finishing it now, and I've highlighted like the majority of the book haha. I've developed a bit of a system for how I will go about highlighting scriptures, and I will use that mostly for my Spanish scriptures, already started on that. It's a pretty cool system if I do say so myself, I can just flip through and know exactly what the scripture is generally about just by it's color :P I'm blazing through now, read through all of 3rd Nephi and 4th Nephi in 2 days, now I'm starting Ether. It's so entertaining. And don't worry, I have some scriptures for you all to read that caught my attention the most this week :)

So this was a good week, taught good lessons, Spanish is going well, ready to "skeedaddle". Thank you again to everyone who's been writing me. It's really nice getting letters.

This week's scriptures I have a few cuz I read through 3rd Nephi and Mormon, and both of those books are amazing. Mormon 9:24-25:34. And definitely my favorite of the week is 3 Nephi 14:22-23. Enjoy everyone.

Love you all. Que tenga una buen semana y continuen con fe en nuestro Padre Celestial y Jesucristo. Leen las escrituras muchisimas y mediten en esas siempre. Les amo todos