Update August 25th, 2013

Hey you guys!  I got my itinerary.  I leave Monday at 9:25 pm and get to Santiago, Chile at 6:50 am!  Super long flight!!!!  I have a way long layover in Santiago. At 11:30 am I'll fly to Puerto Montt.  From there I take a bus to Osorno, Chile.  Chile!!!  I can´t believe I'm finally going to Chile, it's so crazy!!!  ha-ha I don´t know Spanish! :)  Today has been the best Sunday ever; the spirit has been so strong and it's just been great!  I hope all you are doing great.  Not sure when my p-day is going to be so not sure when I'll get to email again.  Packing has been fun, not sure where to put all my books!  I'm way excited for the flight down there.  Everyone going to Chile is on one flight so all the elders in my district are on the same flight!  There is going to be 30 something missionaries on one flight!  Sweet!!!  Hope everything is going good there! Hope your Sunday has been as awesome as mine has been!  I'ts crazy how much I've changed in 6 weeks!  I've grown super close to the Lord and I love the scriptures!  Make sure everyone reads the Book of Mormon at least once a day on your own and as a family! :)

August 22, 2013

I'm ready to get out of the MTC; I'm bored and I don´t know how much more subjunctive I can take!!!  After attempting to talk with natives, I've decided I can´t speak Spanish!  They can´t understand me and i can´t understand them :).  Chile is going to be a shock but I am so excited!!!!!!  Studying is good I'm still reading the Old Testament, which is difficult but it has some awesome stuff in it!

The temple this morning was fun I took a picture with everyone in my district!  No new video yet!  Bummer!  I understood a lot more then last time though, which was good!  Teaching is good, we committed both our fake investigators to baptism and we were the first ones to do it!

The wedding sounds AWESOME!!!!!!  I wish I could have been there!  I think you and dad should go to the temple every week!  I sure wish I could!  It sucks not having a temple I can just go to!  Thanks for the pics mom.

I am always tired!  Then I play fútbal or ultimate frisbee super hard and then I'm more tired ha-ha.

There was another huge poisoning a little bit ago, which was bad!!!!  I won´t go into details.  I'll just say all night long.... :) I didn't get it though!  I sorta have stomach problems now but not too bad, it's the first time since I've been here!  I still don´t know when I leave!  I think I can email Sunday if I find out.

Sorry it isn't more, just a short email.  I'm sure ready to get to Chile! :)

Me, Holt, Magee, and Baldwin just pullin' a beatles :)

Last night we were bored so we started catching mosquitoes   We had caught probably 30 of them.  There is a kid that sleeps in my dorm that reacts really badly to mosquito bites and it seems like they all go for him so we thought it would be funny to let them go in his room :).  I feel bad cause he is swollen up pretty good hahaha it was hilarious!!!!  Hahaha dumb missionaries with too much time on their hands and this is what you get! :) We put all of the mosquitoes in the big water jug.

We found a bunch of couches and we studied here for awhile but they got rid of them eventually.

This is my ministerial card I got. Supposedly the date on there, June 30th, 2015, is the real date I go home!

This is everyone in my dorm.  We are all going to Osorno except elder Beach, the one next to me :).  I'm so bummed, he is so cool!!!!

This is my new favorite spot to "study" :)

The comedor was full so we just ate outside it was awesome!!!!

My district in front of the temple!!

The first pic is me and elder Holt, the second is me and the zone leader Baldwin with Treuhafts forehead in the background, and the third is me and elder Fulton.

1 - me and elder Horsley, he is awesome we are way good friends, I'm bummed he is going to Rancagua.  2 - me and Treuhaft he is a zone leader. 3 - me and Maxfield, He is really cool I like him a lot.  He is the other zone leader.

1 - me and Adair, he is pretty crazy but he´ll be an awesome missionary!  2 - is Loveridge, he is hilarious. 3 - me and Magee, he is way cool!!!!!

I'm so bummed they are all going to Rancagua, Chile except Baldwin and Holt.  They are all awesome!  Baldwin is going to Colorado and Holt is coming to Osorno.  I couldn't take a pic with the sisters 'cause it's against the rules or something.  Some old guy I've never seen before yelled at us.

This is a pic of elder Moore, we took it last night.

August 15th, 2013

I have 2 teachers, hermano Miller y hermana Baum.  They’re both Americans that went on Spanish speaking missions so they’re not native, but they don´t really speak English to us.  They are my investigators; they take stories of people from their missions and role play as them.  I teach one of them each day and then someone from my class everyday; so I teach people twice, its good and I love it tons!  It's awesome having the spirit so strong sometimes because it really does bring things to your remembrance.  I will think of scriptures and quotes while I’m teaching and it’s awesome!  It’s all in Spanish so it’s awesome practice!  I love it a lot!  Teaching by, with, and through the spirit is awesome.  A lot of times it really isn´t me teaching, it’s the spirit!

I’ve gotten way better, still a little stuffy and runny nose but I’m fine.  Talking about getting sick, I have a story for you!  Let me start off by saying that thankfully I didn´t get it but a lot of people did!  They think it was food poisoning from dinner last night but there was a lot of explosive vomit and diarrhea!!  Only one kid in my district got it but it hit him hard!  He was up all last night!!  The food here I’ve decided is pretty scary! They have to cook way too much food for how big the kitchen is so a lot of it is rushed I think.

My departure is getting close, I’m so excited!  I can´t wait to get to get to Chile.  I haven´t gotten my itinerary yet so hopefully that comes soon.  It’s going to be almost an 8 hour flight!  And then probably a super long bus drive!!!!  I think sending your emails on Tuesday worked fine, I got them on time.  It will be interesting to see when my p-day is in the field.

I love “Preach My Gospel”!  It’s awesome.  I love studying it!  I’m studying that and then reading the Old Testament, Jesus the Christ, and Our Search for Happiness, which is awesome, but I’ll have that one done today; it’s not very long and really easy to read.

The MTC is awesome but I’m definitely ready to go!  The language is coming fine.  I can teach most of the lessons ok.  The classes are what are killing me, I just want to go!!  The last two lessons with my investigator have been awesome.  We did a lesson about the Book of Mormon and then the atonement it was so cool!  It’s awesome just listening to the spirit and letting it take control of the lesson, it’s great! It’s cool how it can bring scriptures to my mind so easy!

Today I’ve pretty much been playing sports all day.  Earlier I had 5 goals playing soccer that was fun! And then we played ultimate Frisbee with a volleyball.  That was fun except that I fell pretty hard and hit my head so I have a headache and my back hurts.  I showered and that helped a little thankfully!

The spirit is so awesome here!  Tuesday we watched a live broadcast from Provo; it was the first devotion to be broadcast all over the world.  Elder Scott gave an awesome talk on prayer and the power of it!  Then at the end he gave everyone trying to learn a language an awesome blessing!!!  I got an apostolic blessing of the gift of tongues, how awesome is that!!!!!

This is my branch president on the right and the first counselor on the left - pres. Suaste and pres. Flores

I took a couple pics on Sunday!  Sundays are awesome here, I love them!

And yet there was more rain, ha-ha!  I'm pretty sure Mexico is a reflection of when the great flood happened!

I didn´t eat to much of this, not sure what it was! ha-ha

August 8th, 2013

Thanks for the emails!!  I heard from Nana that it was crazy hot there!  She was saying it’s one of the hottest Julys ever!!! In the mornings it’s about 65-ish and the hottest part of the day is probably 80 here, the temperature is always so nice!!!!  It’s the humidity that kills!!  Playing soccer I didn´t know that I could sweat so much in 80 degree weather!!  When I’m playing sports it feels like its 200! Ha-ha.

Sorry to hear about the Gummersalls.  That’s sad.  That letter from the guy on your mission was pretty cool!  It’s awesome he found you and sent you an email!  Sounds like your sink experiences were pretty fun! Ha-ha that sounds hilarious!!!  The MTC is growing like crazy; there are so many people here, it’s ridiculous!  President Pratt announced at our devotion Tuesday that the Argentina and Peru MTCs are so full they can´t accept one more person so everyone else is going to come here!  By next Tuesday there will be over 800 missionaries here! Pres. Pratt was saying that is hundreds more then what they were expecting to have right now! Ha-ha we won´t fit in the auditorium anymore so we have to go into the gym!

Either Monday or Tuesday about 2:30 we were just sitting in class studying when the earthquake alarms starting going off!!!!  I was so excited to be in an earthquake!!  So all we went out onto the safety circles (we joke around they are the spots certain Nephites were translated ha-ha:).  So we got outside and just waited a little bit.  When nothing happened, we thought it was just fake so I got all bummed!  And then a security guard came by so we asked him about it.  He said it was pretty far away and it was small so if we did feel it, it would be tiny.  Nothing ever happened so I was bummed!  Oh well, I bet I’ll feel at least one while I’m on my mission!

I’m so happy I’m half-way done!  The MTC is awesome and I love it here so much but I’m getting bored, it’s frustrating sometimes and I know I’m going to have to relearn everything when I get down there!  Ha-ha.  Ben has family that live down in Chile.  He was talking to Pres. Pratt because his family wants to meet him at the airport.  So Pres. Pratt asked him if they spoke English because he said that all the Spanish he learns here is useless and he won´t understand anything! Ha-ha. So I just want to get down there and start learning for real!

Classes are fine, I can sorta teach all the lessons and I’m getting better at saying what I’m thinking but I’m still super far away from being able to really teach people in the field, ha-ha, that will come with time!  Day to day it is almost the exact same but the devotionals we have are always really good!  It’s crazy how fast time flies here.  I can´t believe I’ve been out for three weeks already!  It feels like yesterday I was super exhausted driving on a bus with a bunch of guys I didn´t know to the MTC!  Now we are all like best friends!  I’ve been keeping in touch with Aaron and I emailed Nate today, hopefully he is good!  I tried looking at the blog but I can´t thanks for doing that.  It sounds awesome!!!!  Thanks for everything, love all you guys tons and tons and tons!!!!!!!  By the way how’s Dallin doing?

We have earthquake alarms all over and they went off yesterday but it was a small one and pretty far away so we didn´t feel anything. These safety circle things are where we have to stand!  Ha-ha it was cool and I got really excited! They said it was in Guadalajara or something like that.

Ha-ha, this kid in my room brought a portable ping pong net so we had a big tournament last night and I won!!! Ha-ha

This is my dorm building.  I’m not sure if I’ve sent a pic yet or not.

Last one, just me in front of the CCM sign!  It’s so beautiful here!

August 1st, 2013

What’s up, glad everything is going well!  Yesterday we did this insanely hard thing called TRC.  The MTC brings in volunteers from wards around the MTC.....so they are completely native and don’t know how to speak English!!!!!! And I had to teach them :) it was next to impossible :).  I’ve started to read Jesus the Christ and that’s amazing!! I love it.  It’s been weird but super nice here; it hasn´t rained for a whole week!  Which sucks because it stinks pretty bad every once in a while!  I’ve been pretty sick the past two days which has sucked!  I´ve been going to class, it sucks though because I can´t pay attention at all. I’m just barely starting to feel better today.

Thanks for the family history and the email!  It’s crazy how fast time is flying here!!! Today we played soccer with a bunch of natives.... that didn't go well.  There are a total of 12 missionaries that I know of that are going to Osorno!!  For the most part the food is super awesome!!!!!!  There are some things that scare me though! :)   A few nights ago we got a patty of meat... at least I think it was meat, it was disgusting!  And for breakfast they like to give us chopped up hot dogs in salsa soup! :)  Thankfully they have cereal :).  When I speak Spanish I try to sound like the natives but usually it just turns into a bunch of jumbled noises coming out of my mouth :) I like it though, it’s fun!  The MTC is huge!!!! There are a bunch of houses and dorms, it’s so cool!!!!  And the plants are awesome!  There are pine trees and palm trees!  There are tons of birds all over.  By my dorm there are a bunch of these green parrots that seem really stupid and they are annoying.  My favorite part here is probably soccer but I really like the classes on doctrine topics and it’s way beautiful!  I love my district a lot!  It stinks ‘cause they are all going to Rancagua, Chile.

This is where my district and I play soccer, it’s the coolest thing ‘cause it’s on a basketball court, I love soccer!!!!!!! 

Breakfast with the district this morning!  There was no syrup.... it was all gone.  The syrup they use though is awesome, it’s the kind you put on ice cream - the strawberry and chocolate syrups!!!!!

All the name badges from my zone.  It’s just two districts we are all really close.  Now we have like 5 districts.

This is where we play.

We were so bored in class the other day we wanted to surprise our teacher!!  Ha-ha it was funny.

When it doesn't rain there are some awesome sunsets.

I thought the sunrise was way cool!!

These signs are everywhere...... I would hope “No Smoking”!!!!!!!

I have like 50 books and this tiny little desk!!!! :)

The only way in or out and the wall. :)

This is a pic of a couple days ago, we all wore red ties! It’s my district.