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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