October 2, 2012 Hello Family! Well, this is it! I am FINALLY leaving el CCM in less than a week. I cannot tell you how incredibly happy that makes me: and sadly, I really have almost nothing to tell you from the past week. It was ROUGH. And it was incredibly uneventful. I am excited to finally get to Puerto Rico--I leave next Monday the 8th, and I stay in the mission home until Thursday of next week. Cool right? Alright, so this past week our investigator Li revoked his baptismal commitment. We had our awesome lesson with him, and then our next lesson he just blew it all off. Elder Acor was pretty angry. I was frustrated, but I didn't get as mad haha but it was one of a few things that made the week tough! There's a sort of wall you reach at the MTC with the language that's impossible to pass without immersion in, and practical use of, the language, or so I believe. I feel like I've reached that wall, and now I'm just pushing against it. There are some things I still have to work on (you can never do too much memorizing :)). But I'm really just ready to get out and talk with real Spanish Speakers. There's no substitute for that. We got to watch the Brigham City temple dedication last week, and that was really cool! I thought President Packer's talk was powerful. Dad, will you tell me the significance of the historical artifacts being placed in the cornerstone? I'd never heard of that until this dedication. Besides that, the only thing I can think of to tell you is about my email title: There's an Elder in my district, Elder Larsen is his name, who does incredible impressions. His best one is of Batman :) haha I wish you could see it. But he also likes to do impressions of the first counselor of our branch, whose name is Brother Bradford. He's this bald guy with a double chin that dangles on his shirt and quivers when he talks. He says some pretty awesome things like this: "I'm sure if we could get all you missionaries into a room with some truth serum, we'd be able to get you all to confess you're just here cause you didn't want to see your mama cry!" Well, we all like to have a good laugh about that every once in a while, so we'll joke about truth serum: then Elder Larsen will do this double chin impersonation that's pretty great. That's a lot of background information for this story: but we were in class with Hermana Eyring, and Elder Larsen did this impression of him. We were all laughing and she smiled and asked "Elder, is he your branch president?" And Elder Larsen said, "No, he's more like the court jester." And we all laughed even harder at that. It was hilarious. I wish you could share in my enthusiasm over that. We stole a little basketball hoop from one of the Elders in our district. We've been playing PIG every night, and I've been doing some winning :) Elder Acor got SO much candy and food for his birthday last week, so we have had quite a time with that. But despite all the food and the sitting around, guess how much weight I've gained: none! I've lost 4 pounds since coming here. Would you consider that unhealthy? Haha. Oh well, it's better than gaining 12 pounds like some elders have already... Thank you for sending me salsa mom! And tell grandpa thank you for the LDS news and his and grandma's letters! A missionary's favorite thing is getting something in the mail. It's almost stressful to not get letters haha. Now that I'm a missionary I look back on the past year and feel terrible for not doing a better job at writing my friends. Alright, to answer some questions: the MTC has actually upset my stomach a lot, but it's been much better the past week. I blame the food though, because I was fine for my first three weeks here. I'm positive I'll be perfectly fine once I'm out of here and the food isn't so bad. I will be flying to Puerto Rico next Monday, the 8th! I'll be at the airport at around 4 in the morning, and my plane flies to Texas at 6. So I can call you between 4:30 and 5:30, or I can call you once I get to Dallas. I'll be in Dallas from 9:30 to 12:30. So whatever you want me to do I'll do. But you need to send me the phone card. I don't know what I would want in a package. Dad offered jerky, and that sounds great! I'd definitely go for some of that. Besides that, don't send me much because of how soon I'm leaving. I have a question about the family pictures we took: when do I get to see them? I want to see how they ALL turned out, including mine :) I love you all! The next time you hear from me will be from the airport :) I love the people of Puerto Rico, and look forward to becoming a Puertoriqueño soon. Elder Cevering