Jesus Won't Save Us From Our Fishes?

December 18, 2019

Elder Barrus from Idaho Falls with Elder Barrus from West Jordan

Just so everyone knows, in Spanish, the word for sin (pecado) is very similar to the word for fish (pescado). So when you ask someone if they want to be clean from their sins, don't ask them about their pescados. Definitely didn't do that in a fake lesson this week x)

Anywho, that kinda leads into the big thing of the week. (Also I'm still in the MTC so these emails won't be super exciting but I'll try to keep them interesting) We have started teaching people! And by people I mean our Spanish teachers! x) Right now Hermana Cruz is pretending to be an old lady named Margarita, and Hermano Rueda is pretending to be a mid 20s dude named Christian. We have discussions with them and give invitations to them to read the Book of Mormon and be baptized, so that's been really interesting. We're learning about how to make small talk with investigators, teaching them how to pray, teaching them about the Atonement and the Book of Mormon, and so forth. It's been really good because instead of memorizing thousands of vocabulary words (which we're still doing) we memorize vocab words about the lesson we're going to teach! (That's when I learned that's it pecados and not pescados.) So we kinda feel like real missionaries now but within the confines of the CCM.

My Spanish is coming along pretty well! As far as vocab goes, I know a lot of words, it's remembering them when I'm teaching a lesson that's tricky. But when it comes to conjugations I'm not a pro at it :P Basically there are two tenses for past tense, preterit and imperfect. They're basically the same thing but really not. Honestly a lot of it comes down to practice, and believe me, we have quite a lot of time to do that. 

We went to the temple today! It's really cool, it kinda looks like a Mayan temple on the outside. But on the inside it looks EXACTLY like the Jordan River Temple. I looked it up and it was dedicated in 1983, which is two years after the Jordan River Temple was, so I guess that makes sense. Although the real big moment came before the session when we got these super sick ties x). Literally, every missionary knows to get these ties before going to the temple. They're knit and super cool and I love mine, I'm wearing it in one of the pics. Basically we get there and all the guys sprint off the bus to get to the store. It's stupid hard to find because it's on the other side of the temple and inside this super obscure hole in the wall that I missed like twice. It's super small, probably as big as two rooms in my house. And forty missionaries are crammed in there, it's a madhouse. When we got there all the ties were boring and striped, and I was very disappointed. But then the lady behind the counter got out this big bag of ties and poured them out into the tray and then everyone got a knit tie that they wanted. Especially me :)

Mexico City Temple

Our district at the Mexico City Temple

We had a surprise devotional on Monday! Sister Bingham (Relief Society president), Sister Jones (Primary President) and Sister Craven (Young Women's second counselor) and their husbands all came down and spoke to us! We also go to to hear from Elder John C. Pingree, who is our General Authority Seventy and they were all so good! It was really neat because Brother Bingham, Brother Jones, and Sister Craven are all converts to the Church, so they shared their conversion stories. There were sooooo many good points from the talks! It was two hours of straight spirit, I loved it! One of the messages I loved was from Brother Jones, who was a convert. As part of his conversion he went to early morning seminary, but none of the kids talked to him because he smelled like cigarette smoke because his parents were heavy smokers and drinkers. But he wasn't. One day he went to Church, and the Bishop pulled him aside and talked to him about the Word of Wisdom and asked Brother Jones if he smoked. He said he didn't, but the Bishop didn't believe him until he told him his parents smoked. The Bishop felt really bad, then took him to the 16-17 year old class and said "I believe we owe this young man an apology." None of the kids had talked to him because they thought that he had been a smoker. He then said "The best thing you can smell in Church is alcohol or cigarette smoke- because that is the smell of someone trying to change." I loved that so much! It reminded me to never judge anyone based off of their looks or what we think they are doing.

Another great talk was by Brother Craven, who was a mission president in Charlotte, North Carolina. One day he got a missionary speaking French who was waiting for a visa for an undisclosed amount of time, despite there not being almost any French speakers in the mission. She was very frustrated (understandably so) until she went knocking on doors a few days after she had gotten in the mission- she found a family that only spoke French. So she went back to Brother Craven and said "We need some pamphlets and a Book of Mormon in French from Salt Lake!" But the next day one of the missionaries were cleaning out their apartment and found a French Book of Mormon and all the pamphlets. That sister taught that family and got her visa soon after, serving in North Carolina for exactly one transfer. It was a fantastic reminder to me that the Lord knows how we can be most effective much more than we can. If you want a scripture on that, look up 3 Nephi 14:9-11. That's all from the devo I'll tell you about, if you email me individually I'll give you more insights in those emails ;)

And that's kind of it. The CCM is wonderful and I love my district, but I'm a little bit ready to go out in the field (or at least I think I am x) 

Hope you guys have a wonderful week! I love all of you so much!!

Our Christmas tree with presents underneath it