Saturday, September 20, 2014

9/18/14 To reach a goal never before attained, you must do things never before done!

We usher every week, on Tuesdays and two or three on Sundays. I'm warm and fine.  Yeah, the computers here have a temperature thingy so I saw it has been hot there.  Sorry.  I've written in my journal every night but it gets repetitive.  We went to the temple today but it is under renovation so we really just got to go in the visitor center.  Here are some pictures that I took while we were there.


  
 
The guy in jeans es nuestro maestro hermano Gomez.  Today was his day off (since it's our p-day) but he met up with us there, he is really cool.
You were asking about the food, here is a picture.  We had a good lunch today.

There are so many people here, they stack houses on the hills.
It rains plenty

It's a pretty nice looking place 


though odd.

The New York thing is just something made by New York Times that we use so we can think of what points we would focus on in teaching the people because we "teach people not lessons".
As you saw in the early pictures the visitor center has this thing where you swipe a book of Mormon in whatever language and the screen shows what countries have missions that speak that language.  I didn't get a picture but it's funny how the Arabic one has 2 countries which is funny and sad considering how many more countries than that speak Arabic.
I memorized part of the first vision in Spanish this week from " there came a pillar of light" (vi una columna de luz) to "hear him" (escuchalo-- the computers don't do accent marks when it's typing in English by the way) with like one sentence cut out. 
I gave my first talk in Spanish on Sunday.  They said "one more" after everyone else had spoken "Elder Berkeest" or at least that's what it sounded like haha. 
I suppose I would rather have doughnuts than cookies,  are you planning on sending some or something?
I had two short emails from Holden and Austin, they were just like,  hey what are you doing? It was good to hear from them.  Yes, I have a great time with my district.  Most of them are from Utah but one is from George, Washington.  That would be pretty cool to say (he's the one who has pole vaulted 15 feet, also I guess while pole vaulting he tore the meniscus, and ACL, and one other thing in his knee from falling and his spikes sliding in the pit) 
I'm starting to learn how to actually construct sentences rather than just follow the patters for how to pray and bear testimony in Spanish, which is good.  ¡hasta luego! te amo.
Oh and umm, I just started 2nd Nephi, just about where he's quoting Isaiah 51 to his brothers.  (I had asked him where he is in this reading so I can read along with him)
(I asked him if he is speaking up and this was his reply) I still usually prefer listening. I speak up sometimes though. They often ask me to explain how Spanish works (either me or the hermanas) I'm happy, yes. I don't think I need anything. 
Oh and this Monday was Mexican Independence Day so we had this big thing where we watched a bunch of Mexican dancing and performances and stuff and since our district ushered we sat in the back in chairs just outside the auditorium.  We were standing up with the teachers and they were teaching us the dances and having us shout viva Mexico and arriba in unison.  They said we could have our cameras for it but they didn't tell us until dinner so i didn't have enough time to go back to the casa to get my camera sorry. It was pretty fun.
Here is his email to Brad...
haha classic Weston. (Brad had told him about Weston's soccer game and how Weston had said, "yeah, and nobody knocked me down!")
In a talk this past Tuesday Elder Scott said "don't just have a good mission, have a blast!" he also said--to those learning languages--"to reach a goal never before attained, you must do things never before done" and the talk was majorly about prayer so I'm going to focus on those last two things (I've got the first one down just fine) 
oh and we have Costco pizza on Tuesdays....
 Yeah I've got to work on relying less on the arm of flesh and more on the power of the Lord which apparently in Spanish is el Señor which was odd to get used to, I just think of it as being like when he's referred to as Master since sr. is like Mr. and mister comes from master like master of the house.  Also many times, especially in the Old Testament, where it says the Lord, in Spanish it says Jehovah (like Psalms 23).  Of course that's because, if I recall what "Jesus the Christ" said all (or at least many, I don't remember) of the times it says the Lord it originally said, "Yahweh" in Hebrew and they made it The Lord to avoid repetition which is funny because that's also part of why YHWH was made Jehovah instead of Yahweh.

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