Week 10

 Week 10 October 14, 2024

Hola everyone! I never really know what to say to start these off so here's the highlights:

-Oh my gosh, thank you guys so much for all the birthday wishes. I was having a rough week leading up too my birthday and y'all lifted my spirits so thank you! For those of you who messaged on Facebook I'm not allowed to answer, but I'm so grateful for you too!

-Zone Conference was this week. I'm sure the talks were awesome but I couldn't understand them. I also got to see some of the Elders from my CCM district so that was cool to catch up

-Spanish is still so rough but there was one lesson this week that one of the lady's that we were teaching was talking with words that I knew almost the whole time and I could understand almost everything she said without too much difficulty which was so cool

-It rained

-I gave my first blessing this week! It was a blessing for the sick and it was cool. The kid that I gave it to was not as hyped for it i think, cause he was screaming the whole time, but it was good.

-I saw a big metal man

OK so I'm gonna be honest right now. I'm not gonna go in too deep but I was having a really hard time last week with being homesick. It was a combination of general conference and my birthday coming up and Spanish and it made it so that I wasn't really looking forward to my birthday very much cause I just thought I would be missing home all day. But every message made that day so special for me so thank you guys so much for that. 

Zone Conference was last week. That was a wild adventure and a whole lot of traveling. I think it was like a 4-hour bus ride to get there and we got there a day early to have interviews with the president, which was cool. Oh yeah while waiting for my interview, I got to play spikeball for like an hour which was another tender mercy that made missing home more bearable. Anyway, we had zone conference the next day and I took such a good nap during the president's talk. It is honestly so impossible for me to stay awake when listening to Spanish right now. I was trying so hard to stay awake while listening to all the talks, but the more I try to understand what they're saying, the more sleepy I get, and then I wake up and don't know how long it's been. I have been good about not falling asleep while teaching lessons but I've definitely dozed off a few times. 

It rained so much on my birthday it was insane. There was just a mini river down the side if the streets and raining so hard it was crazy. 

So right now, when I'm trying to understand Spanish I can understand a lot of words during lessons because I've heard them so much. But when someone starts telling a story or asking questions I get lost really fast. I understand like what words they're saying but it is not enough to know what's going on. Right now here's how most of our lessons go: We start teaching them whatever we feel to teach them, I start dozing off, then Elder Baldwin will look at me or get my attention when he thinks I'll understand what they're saying and I can make a comment or something. Then, when he's finishing up he'll usually look at me and be like, ok bare your testimony, then I give my testimony and we finish up. Then Elder Baldwins like, alright who should we have say the closing prayer, and of course all the people we teach pick me. I wish I could say my ability to come up with good prayers on the fly has gotten better but I don't think it has. So many of the members still kinda make fun of me for not understanding them when talking to me.

OK one more funny story before I finish up. So yesterday we went to a party that one of the members was putting on, and we were just chillen there for a long time. Like 2 hours we were just chillen there, I'm sure Elder Baldwin had fun talking with people, but I was already too Spanished out to try to talk to people. So then one of the ladies get us all together and she says a bunch of things and all I hear is birthday and then she brings me, and another lady in my ward who's birthday it is, a present. Then they bring out cake, and apparently this party was a birthday party for me and the other member. So I had a birthday party and I didn't even know until it was over, so that was lit. Oh yeah, and the present that they gave me was a hymn book. 

Alright that's all I got for this week so I'll talk to y'all next week. 

Peace  

-Elder Larson