Hola del MTC!
Thanks for the letters, Bros, Mom, Dad, BG1 YW, and Eyres! Its really nice to get mail.
Hayden drove a little bit? Sounds a little scary! haha Hayden, of course I want to hear about everyday stuff! Dad, go ahead and invite CG to the blog. no problem.
The first day we came, they immediately whipped us into full-fledged MTC scheduling. We went to an orientation, met our teacher, Hermana Vance, the whole thing. Hermana Vance is our Spanish teacher, and she speaks 100% in spanish. the whole time. Yesterday, she only spoke English when she talked with each companionship and missionary about planning and goals and stuff like that. She's such a great teacher, and everyone is really motivated to learn to speak the language because of it. Most of the people in the class (our district) didn't come in speaking spanish at all, so I've been the translator for the class the past few days. Everyone is progressing pretty fast, considering it's our 3rd full day.
My companion is Elder Gehring. He's pretty cool, and we get along pretty well. I tried sending pictures of us and our district, but these computers won't let me. So you'll have to wait. Elder Gehring is from South Orange County and played football and golf in highschool He speaks a little spanish from school and from the streets of SoCal. His dad is really high up in Coca-Cola, and appartently while he was at UVU his family moved to Toronto, Canada.
You know how you were talking about near-death stories before the mission, dad? Well I've heard some wayyy better than my brakes-going-out-on-the-highway story. Elder Jones fell 10 feet and landed straight on his back on jagged rocks on a river and just bounced back to his feet without a scratch, and Elder Gehring was working in a jewelry store during an armed robbery with 3 huge black guys and had a gun pointed straight at his face, he ducked, and in the end, 2 of them were severely injured and the biggest one that pointed the gun at Elder Gehring was shot 3 times in the chest with a huge gun and died. Crazy stuff before the mission.....
Yesterday, Elder Gehring were able to teach our first "investigator," Diego. It had to be all in spanish, too. we started to read straight out of PMG, but then 15 minutes into it, he asked a question, so we (I) had to explain our purpose and answer his questions and stuff off the top of our heads. I was surprised at how much I could get accross, but I also realized how much I still need to learn, especially Gospel-Spanish. It was cool tho.
First day I ran into Elder Stephen Patterson, Elder Peter MacArthur, and I've also seen Elder Pugh, Elder Carlson (FHE dad), elder Fitzpatrick (eqp), and a few others from BYU while in the cafeteria (the food is kind of like the cannon center, but a little worse). Strangely, I don't have as much of an appetite, but don't worry mom, I"m not sick. It's been really fun here! I now know what they mean by "days feel like weeks, but the weeks only feel like days." On Thursday night, I was like, "wait, did we do that this morning or yesterday?" and Elder Gehring, after much thought, said, "I think that was this afternoon...." haha.
We met our branch presidency the other night. Our branch president served under monson's mission presidency, and one of the counselors is pres. Monson't nephew! pretty cool, eh?
Well, I have no time left to write on the computer. Love you all and miss you!
Hasta Jueves,
Elder Moffat
