Teaching With The Spirit

Hey,

Haha, that's Elder Kidman's mom, that's cool that she tried friending you. Apparently she's been stalking my profile. There's 3 of us that should eventually be going to Argentina: my companion, an Elder Evans, and me. That's way cool that you're an official jewelry supplier for that foundation! And thanks for going to court for me! And yeah, I got Andrew's email last week, I found it. Thanks Dad for the spiritual thought, that was cool. And the fears thing was cool too. Sorry, I'm trying to address everything you guys said, but its hard to answer/comment on everything. Oh and I should be finding out my temporary reassignment on Thursday or Friday, and it should come with travel plans. They'll let me email you a short message once I get the assignment, so I'll be able to tell you where I'm going and what time I'll be leaving. So that's how that should work...hopefully.

Anyway, this was a way cool week. First of all, Elder Kidman and I had our best lesson yet. It was way cool. We were teaching Santiago (who is played by our instructor, Santiago is someone he taught on his mission, so he treats us how Santiago treated him). Santiago is always super appreciative, says he feels good when we're with him, and in his prayers with us always says thanks for our lessons. Anyway, during our lesson he was telling us about how his friends and everyone in his family was making fun of him for listening to us and thought he was crazy for even thinking about changing his life. He felt like he had to change but wasn't sure if he could do it because of them. I opened my mouth to respond to his worries and that's when the spirit totally told me what to tell him. I started to explain that he would be setting a good example for them through baptism, and he asked how that would help, and I told him it would help because then his friends and family would be able to feel good/feel the spirit when they were with him just like how he felt it when he was with us. The whole time I was telling him this we were just staring into each other eyes, and when I had finished, Santiago/our instructor was literally crying and told us it was exactly what he needed to hear, and that he was willing to prepare to be baptized. We all felt so great! Even though he isn't a real investigator it felt so real. And it all happened in spanish!

Another cool thing that happened this week was during TRC. We have TRC once a week, and its when members volunteer to come in and let us talk with them/teach them for half an hour (we do it in spanish with members that know spanish). Last week we got to do it differently. We skyped with native spanish speakers! Elder Kidman and I got to talk with a Sister from Spain. It was kind of hard because the whole time she spoke to us conjugating all her verbs in the "vosotros" form, which we weren't really used to, but we could understand a fair amount of what she was saying. It was pretty funny when her mom walked in to talk to her for a second though, because all of a sudden she started talking like 4 times faster than she had been talking to us. Haha, we had been feeling pretty good about understanding her at all, but we couldn't understand anything once she spoke in her normal speed! Oh well, we'll figure it out eventually.

So this week's scripture is 1 Nefi 3:7. I thought about choosing a different one, mainly because it seems pretty lame to choose a scripture mastery, but I like it. I've also decided I really like reading the scriptures in spanish. Over the past couple days I finished reading 1 Nefi in spanish and its cool because its hard to translate everything exactly, and I like to see how they say it in spanish. Sometimes I'll be able to think about something in a new way because the word that its written is spanish makes me think of different ideas than when I read it in english. For instance, we noticed a couple days ago that there's a verse in Ezekiel in the Bible that says to "turn yourselves" in english, but in spanish it says to repent. We thought it was cool that they translated it that way. Plus, I kinda just think its cool that I read 1 Nefi and understood almost all of it in spanish. It's a bit confusing because the scriptures use vosotros form a lot too, but I'm getting more used to it. Which is good, because I've heard they sort of use a form of vos/vosotros in Argentina.

Oh, another cool thing. For our last week, our district has a goal of doing 200 contacts/lessons. Basically, we want to share 200 scripture/mini-lessons with random people in the MTC. That means 50 per companionship. I think Elder Kidman and I will be able to get our 50, but I'm not so sure our district will get the 200 overall...but we're trying our best! Haha, during our last lesson that we did last night, the missionaries we were talking to gave us a bag of like 10 cookies for sharing the lesson with them (and because they were about to leave the MTC and couldn't take them with them). Haha, funny/random little blessing for doing our best, I guess.

Well, its been a great week and I'm excited to find out where I'm getting reassigned to! You should hear from me later this week about it.

Hasta Luego,

Elder Webster

PS- oh, and good luck with the house!

PSS- saw Elder Flores from Irvine a couple times. Slightly jealous that he already knows spanish so he only needs to be here for 2 weeks. Oh well