Hey family and friends!
Woo, what a week! Bradley once mentioned to me in a letter that he thinks a mission is just a two year spiritual high. Lamentably I´d disagree, but it is definitely worth it, so don´t worry about it. I´ve thought about keeping track of good days verses bad days, but it´s more of an hourly rollercoaster, so oh well haha. But overall looking back on the week, it´s been a good week. Woo!
Corey told me that she has a friend who was on the same cruise as you! How crazy! What a small world!
A few quick requests: Lacey, add ´the Hobbit¨ to my movie list for when I get back. There´s a poster here in the mall and it looks stinkin awesome... haha. Can you check to see what my skype name is? I´m pretty sure it´s T.J.Long, but do the caps matter? Mum, if you happen to have a few spare minutes, could you send me a scan of a few of your ESL lesson plans? I want some worksheets that I can give people as homework during the week. ¡Gracias!
Oh, also speaking of skype, our mission president mandated that we missionaries skype the 24th. That will be my P-Day. Can you still do it 9am Vegas time or would later work better? Let me know! I still need to somehow coordinate with a family to see when I can use their computer. Ha, international coordination is difficult without frequent communication....
This week has been filled with things tempting me to get oober trunky. Ha. We had an amazingly delicious barbeque with our bishop on Monday evening because he wanted to thank us for our hard work this year. The ward has had 18 baptisms. Wahoo!! We had super tasty carne asada--it tasted pretty close to how Dad makes it. Yum!
Then of course there´s all the Christmas stuff going on (not nearly as much as in the US, but still an occasional Christmas song). We missionaries are helping in the stake Christmas choir, but the entire time we sang I just kept thinking about how much I want to be standing next to Dad and singing in our ward choir. Good times.
This past week our toilet was clogged for 4 days. Ha. The plumbing is just a bit wack down here, and apparantly in our new house you can´t flush toilet paper. So we now have a trashcan in which we have to discard the used paper. Yummy. We´ve had some pretty epic adventures with that toilet....
Speaking of really strong smells, the olfactory sense is the strongest memory humans have. On Tuesday during ward council I got a whiff of perfume that smelled exactly like Denice and Joylynn. I always love that smell. So full of great memories. Send the aunts my love!
Quick update on investigators: we´re teaching the son of our recent convert family. He´s been living in Conce while he plays for the university´s soccer team, and he visits everyone once in a while. He´s stinkin awesome. Now that he´s on holiday vacation, we can fully teach him. The other night he told us that he feels that everything we teach and everything he´s seen about the LDS church is true. I can´t even describe the immense joy I felt! wahooo!!!!!!! His baptism date is scheduled for December 22nd, along with a few other progressing investigators we have. His dad received the priesthood on Sunday, so we´re obviously aiming to have him baptize his son. What a fantastic eternal family this will be. They are ´´investigadores de oro!´´
Just remember that you don´t have to be full-time missionary to feel this great joy of seeing your loved ones (friends, family, neighbors, colleagues) accept the Restored Gospel and receive the remission of their sins by being baptized by someone who truly holds the authority of God´s priesthood. What a blessing..
Have a wonderful week! Write your letters to ´´El Viejito Pascuero´´ so he´ll bring you your Christmas presents!
Much love,
Elder Long :)
No comments:
Post a Comment