Week...what? oh yeah halfway.‏
From:
Shae Morgan (shae.d.morgan.mes@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Tue 7/21/09 5:05 PM
To:
morganet@msn.com; shadanielm@hotmail.com
Familamily...so life is pretty darn good here. week 4 is coming up and as of this coming friday I'll have hit the 1/2 through the MTC...which also means only 23 months left :(. Real quick thing to note: Mom, and family if you could dearelder me long e-mails that would be better for me, because I'm spending about a third of my total e-mail time reading and then I have little time to type...even though I'm a beast typist (humble too). :) Ooook so week three hmm...yeah mom you're right we did start lesson 2 in spanish. we're not really supposed to until week 6...but what the heck :) So the first time we taught it, we were smoother than butter out on a hot day. The next time, we thought we were up for a challenge, so we asked that the "investigator" have a little deep problem something they really want help with. This was an ABSOLUTE FAILURE. We started getting to know the guy, (a native speaker by the way) and he was telling us something was bothering him. After assuring him we were there to help, and give a message of peace and comfort, he told us that his father had passed away, but that wasn't necessarily his problem...except for the fact that I thought he said that his problem WAS that his father had passed away. Soooo I jump right into how families can be together forever, and how God made a plan so that it's possible... we get to the end of the lesson, where we can ask for feedback, and he was like...I told you that my father passing away wasn't my main concern. And it turns out that his scenario he had been given was that he had cancer...so that was just a total failure for not getting to the heart of the problem. Oh well all is well. Todo esta bien :)Mom, I have a short little fun note for you. this week I learned that the "haré finca" means "I will do/make farm" so yeah...I feel pretty stupid now for saying that so much. ONE MORE story. So two of the hermanas in our district are gone now, but we still have Hermana Voigt. She was having a really bad day, and at lunch she was kinda just blowing steam and saying why everything was going so horribly....Shae stupidity instincts kick in...he reaches his arm out....moves it in her direction as if to comfort her with a side arm hug....then realizes he's a set apart missionary and that he really can't do that, freaked out, knocked over his cup and fell out of his chair.yeah. felt pretty stupid about that too. OOOK so about the work. It's awesome. Lesson 2, down in spanish. ok so it still needs a TON of work. But it's getting there...I can mumble through it and mostly conjugate all the verbs the right way. We still listen to general conference talks in spanish, and that's been a great help learning vocab and just getting used to how different people say stuff. Elder Reid and I are doing great...which is a major answer to prayer. I know God hears our prayers and even desires of our heart. This week, we've really straightened things out, and set some high goals. Just yesterday we had this ridiculous goal of "contacting" 100 people. Which entails introducing ourselves, getting to know them a little bit, and concluding by bearing testimony of some principle. and guess what? we did it. at 9:35 at night we bore testimony to a whole beginner spanish district and put our number at 108 contacts for that day. I feel really great about bearing testimony and stuff like that. Speaking of which. We taught lesson 2 a 3rd time in spanish...and I had a great experience. We were in the very beginning just talking about how God loves us...and out of nowhere I just spewed out "Do you understand that God is a real being who loves you?" Now...I don't know how to say that...I could piece it together now, but it just came out then. And then whoosh, and peace. the whole room was quiet...and this missionary, this human being, felt the spirit of the Lord testify that what we were saying is true. If he didn't, I sure did. And it was the first time I've really felt the love of God obviously manifest in my spanish teaching. One more quick thing. Every Sunday, there's a devotional, and then the opportunity to watch 1 of 4 church films. This week we watched The Testaments. And I think that everyone needs to watch that again. It's amazing. :) Thanks for all you love and support and prayers. I love you all and I miss you tons. But I'd miss not being here more :) -Elder Morgan