Hola hermanos y hermanas. es aquello tiempo otra vez para escribir mi nota a Uds y compartir mis experencias aqui en Utah. Yo quiero escribir todo de mi nota en espanol pero yo se que uds quieren que yo no lo haga y entonces yo cambiare mi idioma a ingles. Les dire, cuando yo hablo en espanol por un tiempo largo sin parar, es un poco dificil a cambiar y regresar a mi idioma normal, pero les quiero Uds y yo deseo que entiendan mi mensaje.
So yeah, that's how I feel right now. When my brain realizes that it needs to speak in Spanish, it does it, and then I start to translate everything in my head to Spanish. It's a pretty awesome feeling listening to people speak in English and knowing that if I wanted to, I could take what they said and translate it, given time.
I'm so excited for Panama, it is seriously here now, I leave in 4 days and soon I'll be sweating in the sun all day everyday, and I am so excited. We got our flight plans last Thursday, right after I sent off my email, and that was so cool. It was really awesome to get to my classroom and see that I had them on my desk when Elder Goodson put them there. Everyone was so happy. If you don't know about when or how I'll be flying, ask my mom, she's got all the details :) But yep, leaving Monday morning super early, have to be at the travel office here around 6ish and my flight leaves around 9 or 10.
I really can't think of what to write, that's so weird, I just want to speak or write this in Spanish because it's hard to write in English a bit. Anyway, lets think of what I did this week or what was eventful. Mostly this week was just realizing that this was our last week here, and it's all hitting us cuz at this time next week, all of us, including the hermanas, will be in different places teaching. The hermanas didn't get their VISAs though, so for now they are gonna be reassigned to another place like Temple Square or something until they come and they can go to Spain. We have actually all made guesses in our class so see where they're gonna end up going next week, I said that Hermana Johnson is going to Temple Square, which I think would be really cool, since it's Christmas time and the lights there are crazy beautiful. And for Hermana Marshall I said Pocatello, Idaho haha cuz everyone there is LDS. I've met the other 4 elders in our travel group the past few days, and they're all excited to leave too, there's only the 7 of us in our group.
This week has honestly been a blessing as far as speaking with more native Spanish speakers from all over the world. I've talked to elders here in the MTC from Columbia (2 people, right next to Panama), lots of cities in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Spain, and they're all different. But the best part of it all is that they're all genuine and they all appreciate us trying to speak the language they love and have grown up with. We taught a lesson to 3 advanced district elders here, all native Spanish speakers, and it was just a first lesson door approach thing. And at the end we asked them about how we did and one of the elders said to me, in Spanish "You had Spanish experience before your mission, right?" and I was just like "Uhh...not really, I barely understood any compared to what I know now" and he was just really impressed with how well I spoke and comprehended the language. Really awesome compliment, and it made me really happy and more prepared for the field.
Yesterday we got to host the new missionaries again which was really cool. I hosted 2 missionaries both going to crazy languages and countries, Cambodia (Cambodian obviously) and Germany (German...obviously...) haha. I feel so lucky that I am only learning Spanish haha, those sound crazy hard. But today we also did a thing called "Demonstrate Teaching" to the new missionaries, where they went around as like a group of 60ish missionaries, and there was an "investigator" in which we would knock on the door, he'd let us in, then we would teach and begin teaching in front of all these new missionaries. It was crazy, and hard because I've never taught a lesson in English, so honestly it felt outside of my new comfort zone, and it made me appreciate Spanish so much more. So that was pretty fun, we only talked to him for like 15 minutes, get to know him kind of questions, and then we would leave and the new missionaries could stand up and teach the investigator what they thought they needed. We did the same thing our first day here, now we got to do the missionary teaching aspect of it haha.
Oh! I know what to write about to ustedes! I finished the Book of Mormon! AHHHH! So cool, first time reading it, front to back, all the way through, on my own, and I feel great. I have learned so much from reading it this time, literally putting the "feasting" aspect of reading the scriptures in perspective. You should see my scriptures now, some pages look like a coloring book, because I've developed kinda a system of my scripture marking. But when you read the LdM with a purpose of seeing what you can learn, wow, I learned so much and I loved it alot. Now I've started on the New Testament, and I also want to read alot more books in Spanish to get my brain flooded with the language instead of just sprinkled with it here or there.
One thing I definitely want to write about is a quote that a teacher here told us during class a few days ago, related to the parable of teaching a man to fish, and I really liked it. He said "You read a man a scripture, he's blessed once. You teach a man to search the scriptures himself, he is blessed for a lifetime". I just thought that was really cool, because that is our purpose as missionaries to invite others to come unto Christ and teach them about how important the Book of Mormon is to their comprehension, and testimony of the gospel.
It honestly is crazy how much I've learned here and how much I've already been blessed. There are days obviously when I think that I don't know much Spanish, and I'm gonna drown in Panamanian language, but then I look back, and really think about how much I've learned here and how comfortable I feel now talking to people in Spanish and carrying a conversation with people, it's literally astounding. I've decided that I am gonna stick to doing my personal prayers everyday in Spanish, because it's great practice and it makes me realize how much I've learned here in 8 short weeks. I'm really gonna miss these people here. I love them. They're part of my family now, and I have relationships with all of them, elders, sisters, and my teachers. But I know that they're going to do amazing, and they will be blessed and bring many people to the knowledge of the gospel. All of them have their own unique personalities and interests and click with me personally, so there are specific reasons why I love each of them. I know that we will continue our friendships after the mission is over, and by then Swasey and I will just chit chat in complete Spanish and have it be completely normal, so stoked.
Thank you everyone for your letters, packages, love, prayers, everything. Really you all have helped me alot, and you learn to appreciate your loved ones so much more when they aren't around and you are unable to talk to them everyday. The rest of this week is going to be crazy busy, between packing, cleaning, getting everything I need for the field, and taking tons of pictures and saying goodbye. I'll send home a bunch more pictures soon, and my mom can put them up on my blog for all y'all.
I love you all very much. Wish me luck. This time next week I'll be in a strange new country with people all speaking Spanish, AHH! :)
Scripture for all of you this week is Helaman 5:12, I believe it is a scripture mastery actually, it's amazing, and you should all check it out.
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