Semana

This week was absolutely nuts and I'm a little worried that my letter will suffer as a result!I meant to write down the topics I wanted to include throughout the week, but I lost it at some point. I'm going to try to remember what these topics were...

Firstly! I met an Elder Loosli, who it seems knows our California Lillywhite's! he says he was in Wade and Kimberly's ward back home. He's going to Poland, and learning to speak Polish which he says is "Like Russian but with a cold" his companion is just barely learning English, he's from Germany and going to Poland too, he knew enough English that he could talk with us a little, but mostly he just looked a bit confused. I can't possibly imagine having to learn two languages here, but it's fairly common--all the foriegn missionaries who are going to non-English speaking missions are encouraged to learn English anyway, and I've met a couple of people who are having to stay here for 3 months to learn two languages (Dutch & Russian or French and Haitian) I feel SO lucky that I get to learn Spanish, because it's really such a simple practical language. I don't mean to says that I'm already this incredibly expert, because I'm REALLY not. But I at least understand the principles of Spanish and many of the rules and grammatical things seems to come pretty naturally too me.

It made me think of President Monson's story about the Missionary who said he "couldn't learn Spanish" and was sent to the Japanese class for a visit. Our Zone studies on the same floor as some Japanese and Togalog speaking zones; I think it was done on purpose because those are probably two of the most difficult languages here. Finish is still winning in over all opinion as the most difficult, but Japanses is terrifying to me, I passed by an Elder doing some language homework on a little white-board, and it looked more like math than something you coudl actually speak! And Togalog sounds like a bit of a nightmare too, the written words are too long for them to even make proper "Togalog Nametags" those missionaries just wear English ones, because it wouldn't fit on the little black plate if they wrote it out in Togalog.

Speaking of Namestags! One of mine broke--not the very first one I got, but the spare nametag that they gave me later, so I went to go get some new ones made! I told her I was Spanish speaking, I SAW her write Spanish on the form, but they gave me Portegeuse.

At first I was going to go ahead and tell them about the mistake, but the difference between the langauges is subtle enough that I think I'll go ahead and keep them and just try not to loose my only Spanish one. My Maestros got a kick out of that, and it is pretty funny... Hermana is the same but instead of Jesucristo it's Jesus Cristo and then the reast is totally different.

We got a new District in our zone this week! And Excitingly, we got FOUR new Hermanas. Two of them (Sister Bell and Sister Fitches) actually moved into our room with the three of us! They are such nice girls, but their having a really rough first couple of days. At first they seemed completely fine. On Wednesday, when they first showed up, they had that overwhelmed but giddy look that all of us have on our first day. We kept asking them how they were doing and they kept saying "Fine! It's great, I'm not nearly as depressed as I thought I'd be!" etc. But by the end of th efirst night they were both like "We're. Not. Fine. This is NOT okay."

It's good though, you have to have that moment of relatiy when everything looks daunting and you're not sure you made the right descision, it'll help you appreciate it later when you understand how important the work is, and what a great descision you made to come. Anyway, that's what I told them on Thursday night when they came 'home' a little depressed and confused. They're really lucky though, because they've got Hermano Richardson teaching them, along with another teacher who I don't know very well, but who I've heard some REALLY great stuff about. The two of their teachers were companions on their missions, and it sounds like they both have a very similiar passion about missionary work. Hermana Bell already told me that when she was a mess yesterday (in tears in the middle of class) Hermano Richardson did his best to comfort her, and he was able to help her feel a lot better. It's hard sometimes because you really want to hug people, but it's not allowed! I talked a little bit about that 'no-touching' rule last week jokingly, but it really is kind of rough sometimes. We've all grown so close, so fast. Hermana Gurney pointed out to me that we (in our Zone) are becoming like family, meaning that we're being more of ourselves around each other. This leds to a lot of bluntness. We've got some companionships that really don't like each other! But like family has to sometimes, we all put that aside and manage to go to work. For example, we've got Elder Master and Elder Wadsworth in my district. These two HATE each other. They have very different personalities. Elder Wodsworth is really laid-back. He's passioante about spiritual things, but his sense of humour imbues everything around him, which gets on Elder Master's nerves because, as Elder Master will tell you himself he's "very serious". He shouldn't be though, because he's actually really annoying to the point of making all of us laugh from exasperation sometimes (you know the type).

But the two of them are amazing together! I thought of them last night... You see, I've always had a little problem with Paul. I know that he's one of those prophets who other prophets just LOVE. But I always kind of thought he was a jerk. I'm not sure where this animosity for Paul came from, but I decided since I've been here that I really need to get over it!

AHHH! That is so frustrating. I just got into this cool story about my scripture study from last night and I've got to sign off! Okay, well, I'm goign to have to finish this epistle in a hand-written letter. Let me give you the gist of my epiphamy, maybe you can figure out what I was goign to say before you get my letter next week.

Gist: Elder Wadsworth & Elder Master = Barnabas & Paul. The Prophets of old had to go through the same hardships as we did, plus getting stoned and all sorts of junk.

ANYWAY! I Love you all, so, so much. The church is true, the sky is blue! I've gotta sign off!