To my family 7/02/2012

Badump.  It comes around again.  I´m currently in a different cyber (internet place) so I can use apostrophes.  It appears to be an American keyboard, just with Spanish as the language, like the MTC.  It really isn´t a very good keyboard however.  It´s fairly frustrating.  Need lead fingers for it.  And the computer is slow and being dumb too, a bit.  But so be it.  This week went by well.  Last week was tough because we had a whole slew of meetings come up.  This week we didn´t have that so much, which was good.  We are finding new people to teach, and things go fairly well.  It really all focuses on a few key things the investigators need to do to be converted.  Read the scriptures, especially Book of Mormon, pray, and attend church (and keep the commandments in general).  Those are a start, and very good indicators if someone is doing what they should be doing.  And, of course, they are the same things you look and ask for from those people who are already baptized, to the recent converts.  The very base blocks to gaining, or keeping, a testimony.  I really enjoyed this last general conference because it pretty well emphasized the need for action from church members.  Less passive, more involvement.  I especially liked Elder Bednar´s talk from priesthood.  Quite straightforward.  The reference to D&C 58:29 was also quite blunt.  In seminary verses 26 and 27 are scripture mastery, but it sure isn´t bad to read the verses before and after it.  All we have to do to break our baptismal covenant is do nothing.  Verse 29 is good to describe that.  All in all I can surely emphasize how grateful I am to be on a mission.  It makes things much clearer when you are in the position to teach them to someone else.  Even if it is in a different language.  And if you ever want to study something interesting, just study the plan of salvation using only the quad.  In Sunday School it focuses so much on the whole drawing, with the chart and all of that jazz.  But that really isn´t the plan of salvation.  Moses 6, towards the end, gives what was revealed to Adam as the plan of salvation.  It is all centered on Jesus Christ and his Atonement.  I´ve got a long way to go to understand it perfectly, but it was sure a good study session earlier today.  Now my challenge is thinking of how to describe it simply to investigators.  And to my companion, because the huge majority of members grew up with this picture of the plan of salvation as that drawing everyone does.  In the mission of one of my MTC teachers they weren´t even allowed to draw that picture when teaching that lesson.  An interesting insight that took me a bit to come to terms with, especially because I´d used the drawing the day before to teach the lesson to him.  Another interesting food I ate this week - morcilla.  Known to gringos as blood sausage.  Regretfully, I ate it cold.  I really don´t like cold foods like that, so I didn´t really find it enjoyable.  I don´t even like pizza cold.  Hot it wouldn´t have been too bad, I don´t think.  I´m trying to think of other interesting things to talk about.  This week I feel like I have a bunch of free time because I don´t have a letter from y´all to read, and I finished my other duties rapidly.  The drain in our shower has started clogging up.  We´ve tried to unscrew the screw and remove the drain cover thing, but we are lacking a screwdriver.  Even with the screwdriver it might just be impossible to remove.  So we were going to check if anywhere around here had that liquid drain cleaner magic stuff.  See how well translating that will go.  The shower head itself is also a poor fixture.  I might tinker around with it as well.  Our vacuum, as well, functions not.  It´s a star head bit, so I´m thinking we might just take it somewhere or talk to someone about fixing it.  So many things I want to fix, but I´m primarily lacking time, and the tools.  I´m afraid it will be like this my entire mission.  Take it as it comes.  Most nights all I want to do when I get back is sleep.  Means we walked a good amount that day.  I am most definitely just writing whatever comes to mind right now.  But time comes to an end soon.  So I believe I´ll just finish it off here.

Mom - One more thing!  That quote is directly from almost every episode of Jackie Chan Adventures, if you were wondering.  I don´t know how to spell the other quote because it is a Chinese chant.  Ty might understand it.  Either way, I´ve forgotten to write about this for the past three weeks here.  But it is a good thing here to have photos from home, to show to people here.  I have that sheet of pictures that is magically put together, but it would be a swell thing if you could send some choice photos over here.  You can just send them as attachments so I can put them on my SD card and eventually print them out on photo paper.  Like 15-20 photos if possible.  Pictures of family, of home, of pets, of activities, of things like that.  Me playing tennis, if that exists, just something.  You have decisive eyes.  And because I´m currently unwilling to look at sent mail, I might be resending information.  But if you ever try sending a package, make sure that you look at the mission blog first.  It has a section on how to send it right, so I don´t have to pay for it or something like that.  The preferred method, I´m told.  Just to note.