September 11, 2012

September 11, 2012 Hello Family! Well, this was a rougher week! I finally broke that barrier we call "crying" here in the MTC haha so did most everyone in my district though. It was our toughest week as a District for sure! We have teachers, and then we have zone resource teachers, and they each do one-on-one talks, and then companionship discussions concerning our lessons. This week I had my first meeting with a zone resource teacher. Her name is Hermana Doxey: she's really great! All the elders in my district are in love with her haha they try to get her to help them all the time. But, anyway, she set up an appointment with me just so we could talk. And I thought "Great! I have some Spanish questions I really need answered!" We've been learning some tougher grammatic principles that I needed help on! Well, I go into the appointment and she gets talking. She kept it on a very personal level--what's been hard about the MTC? how is your companionship? how do you feel about this and that? And, eventually, as we finished discussing some things, I broke the tear barrier haha and I let out some of my frustrations to her. She was really understanding! I was really grateful for the discussion. I didn't even know I had that much emotion in myself, though I knew I was stressed. I promise you though that I'm doing fine! No tears since, and I don't plan on having more. Last night Elder Acor and I taught our "investigator" Li. HAY MUCHACHO!! We haven't decided if it was successful or not. We went in with the plan to talk more about The Book of Mormon, and ended up explaining a lot of things to him about it. But he was really pushing our Spanish by acting like he didn't understand a lot of things in The Book of Mormon: names, places, and all these things! I was really frustrated because I didn't know how to say so many things, and eventually I just looked down at my Spanish Book of Mormon and thought for a minute. Then I looked up and bore my testimony to him that The Book of Mormon contains all the answers we need to our questions. I told him about the experiences I had with prayer and scripture study when we thought dad might have had cancer. He began to cry, and though I was frustrated and confused by the language, the Spirit was there. Again, we don't really know how successful this lesson was, but we are hoping that at least our testimonies were enough to create some progress. Hermano Finley--who acts as Li--had a talk with me the other day, before this lesson, where we talked about Progressive Investigator. I knew he was going to make it hard on us. Do you remember that missionary in my district who believes God creates aliens, according to the multitude of his "mysteries?" Well, we had quite the week with him again. I can honestly say I've never met a person I did not understand more than this elder. This week we learned from him that his patriarchal blessing says he is "bullet proof." Elder Acor and I also taught him about exaltation, and he just sat and argued with us about it. Basically everyone in the district is annoyed with him, and he is definitely the cause of a lot of turmoil among us ten elders. He is a weight lifter and, apparently, a cage fighter, among other things. He eats "healthy" haha I wish I could remember what it was he was eating the other day. But he always tells someone how unhealthy they're eating, and how he eats according to the food pyramid. He'll point out that on his plate he has 1-fries, which meets his needs for starch and vegetable, 2-chicken nuggets, which meets his need for meat, 3-an apple, which meets his need for fruit...ON and on. Then he'll eat a salad one day and he'll say "I need to get some real food." But the funny thing is, he doesn't eat healthy. We have another elder in our district--Elder Larson--- who has to eat healthy because of his kidneys, and whenever this elder who is a cage fighter says we're eating unhealthy we just direct him to Elder Larson who has grape nuts cereal and other food and ask him why he doesn't eat the same if he's so health conscious. It's so crazy. I wish I could explain in greater detail the things that this elder does. Ummm...I can't think of much else that has happened this week. Elder Acor got a package from the primary this week haha and in it there was a picture from one of the kids. The kid had drawn Elder Acor in this big swirling purple thing, and in letters below it said "I drew a hurricane, hope you're okay!" HAHA very funny. I can't wait to get to Puerto Rico. We talked with one of the teachers who served there and just recently got back this December. He told us a lot of cool stories, and he told us that it's basically impossible to NOT get out to the islands, but that you can only stay on one for six weeks because of visas. Well, I love you all! I know that God is aware of each of us--and He knows what we are doing. I know that the only way to please Him is by living His commandments. As Christ said: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Please pray for me to increase in faith! The Lord is mindful of all our prayers. Love Elder Cevering