Saturday, September 15, 2012

Three Weeks In

                                      Elder Kaleb Erickson with Nicole, Aubree, Hailee & Ethan

                                                 Kaleb arriving at the MTC  8-22-12


September 13, 2012   3rd Epistle of Elder Kaleb Erickson

Hola!
 
He aprendido muchas cosas en estos tres semanas! Learning Spanish is so crazy. I was talking to my companion last night and we were discussing how crazy it is that in three weeks here we are already teaching full lessons in Spanish and, given a moment to think, can pretty much say whatever we need to say in Spanish. But best of all, the whole conversation we had was in Spanish. I'm largely confident that we said a lot of things wrong, but we understood each other and most of it made sense, so I'm not overly concerned.
 
Well, in the last week I have had all sorts of adventures. We went to the Training Resource Center last Friday, where volunteers come in and we get to teach them a short lesson in Spanish. It was cool to talk to real people for a change. Even though they were all members already, it was still nice to talk to real people instead of fake investigators. I saw a girl from my tap dancing class in one of the rooms and said hello to her. Apparently her mom is from Chile and so she speaks very fluent Spanish. I could tell because I hardly understood what she was saying, she spoke so fast. But it was a fun time in the TRC, I'm excited we get to go back and teach again tomorrow.
 
As of two days ago, I have been released as District Leader. I have served my time and they put in a new guy. It's kind of nice not to have the responsibility anymore, but I'm so used to being in charge of everyone, sometimes I forget that I'm just a peon again. It was also fun to go get the mail for everybody. Because that's all the District Leader really is, a glorified mailman. But I will relinquish my job if I have to. It means less meetings on Sunday mornings, hurray!
 
We are still teaching our same two investigators, Ezequiel and Matilda. Ezequiel loves the Gospel and we committed him to baptism a few days ago. The problem with teaching here is that we only get 20 minutes for each lesson so there's hardly ever enough time to get everything done. But we do what we can and then finish up the lessons on the next visit. We've only taught Matilda once, but she is a tough one. She isn't really interested in the Gospel as far as we have noticed and I forgot to leave a commitment with her on our first lesson, so I have to make up for lost time on this next one. We teach her again tonight, it should be an adventure. Oh and it will be really exciting because there's a new factor involved. We had three sisters in our district going to Guatemala. They were supposed to leave after three weeks to go to the Guatemala MTC. Well two of them left. But the third doesn't have her passport ready yet. So she's still with us as a solo sister. Meaning that once she gets to class, we have to assign her to a companionship and they are her companions until the end of the day. It was annoying as district leader to always be in charge of that, but not my problem anymore. So anyways, she has nobody to teach with. Our teacher asked if I would be willing to take her and let her teach with us. I was still district leader at the time, so I was kind of the first choice. I agreed, but I'm a bit concerned about it. My companion and I had just barely gotten used to teaching together. We're pretty good now. But throwing a third person in the mix could potentially be rough. We don't know how well she can speak Spanish or how well she can keep up with what's going on. We also have to get used to the new dynamic of teaching with three people. It's going to be an adventure tonight.
 
On Tuesday my body thought it would be cool to get sick. I have had a pretty nasty cold the last few days. Which might not seem so bad, but you'd be surprised. I was talking about it with another elder in my district, Elder Durkin, about how when a girl gets a cold, it's no big deal. But when a man gets a cold, the world is over. A simple cold can destroy a man's soul to live. Not because we're complainers, but because colds afflict us worse. Thats what we decided at least. It was horrid. I could hardly focus on anything, I just wanted to sleep. First thing Wednesday morning we had to teach Ezequiel. Things were looking rough because we weren't really prepared, I was too busy blowing my nose to study) and we were dead tired in the morning. But we sucked it up, said a prayer, and headed in. It was really neat, the Lord helped us out a lot with that lesson. For the 25 minutes we taught, my nose was fine. We could remember the things we had barely looked over before going in and we were able to teach a pretty solid lesson on the Word of Wisdom and the beginning of the Plan of Salvation. Of course, my nose reverted right back to true form as soon as we left, but it was nice to not have to deal with it while we taught.
 
Oh and Mom, thank you so very much for the care package! I have literally never been so excited to get a package in the mail. Four bottles of Dr Pepper is more than I could have ever asked for in the world. I did a dance when I saw those bottles in there. I'm loving the trail mix and redvines too, thank you so much!
 
So anyways, that's pretty much most of my life here. I don't think I mentioned, but everybody and their dog has told me not to gain weight here from all the food. So far I've managed to lose 15 pounds, so I think I'm doing alright. If I keep this up, you won't even recognize me by the time I get to New York.
I hope all is well at home!
 
Love,
Elder Erickson

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