July 25th 2013

Hola Familia!

Como Esta??

This week has been way rad and it's been a blast learning more about the gospel, the language and myself. Every week we celebrate Espaniernes (Espanol + Viernes) which is where every Friday we try to not speak a single word of English all day. It's hard but I can tell that it helps so much! The language is actually coming along really fast and it's not nearly as much of a barrier in lessons as it used to be. Of course, our teacher speaks very slow but still, it's getting better! I asked my teacher to speak full speed and I understood maybe 10% of the words he spoke! hahaha It's cool having a teacher who went to Monterrey because he has been teaching me and my companion stuff about the culture. He shares little stories about the different types of people and taught us how to whistle at people politely. For example instead of saying "what's up" to caminojeros (which are basically cholos haha) you do a certain kind of whistle at them as you walk by.

We have a new "investigator" this name y se llama Santiago. Things are going way good with him. Me and my companion are learning how to be more short, sweet and to the point which helps a lot! In the second lesson with him we challenged him to read, pray, come to church with his family, be baptized, and teach his family the lesson we just taught him, and he accepted all of them! Another cool thing is getting to break down all of the lessons in English first and then learning the necessary phrases in Spanish. The devotionals here are also sooo awesome! We've got to hear prom Richard Hinckley, not sure if I already told you that but it was way cool. this week we heard from an emeritus general authority and he talked all about missionary work! He had some really cool insights to share. On Sunday we had a devotional about the pioneers but it was pretty boring to me hahah but I did get to watch the Character of Christ after which is a devotional Bednar gave to the MTC a few years back. If you haven't seen it I encourage you ALL to watch it. It'so powerful! A district in our zone left this Monday so on Sunday their district sang in our sacramnet meeting and it was so cool.

There are also some funnier parts of the MTC. I came into my room this week to find the creepiest baby doll ever tucked into my bed. Apparently my companion found it outside and thought it would be funny to terrify me...it worked haha but now it's kind of our zone mascot. There's also a tie trade black market hahaa. Every few days teh whole bottom floor is covered in people with their tie racks. They are so funny in trying to convince each other that their tie is "totally a 2-for-1 caliber tie" haha. I also ran into my cousin Landon Ball! He's a Spanish teacher here and we accidentally went into the wrong computer lab but he was just sitting there so we got to talk for a bit!! I'll send a picture of him later. It's way fun being able to see people I know, especially Elder Blume and Purcell!!! I also got to see a ton of other kids from my school. Elder Frost, Elder Line and Elder West got here yesterday and I got to see all of them! The food is getting really old and sometimes it's a bit risky. Everyone knows there are some foods you definitely don't eat unless you wanna be suffering for a couple days.

Con Mucho Amor,

Elder Chase Connell