Correction..... CUBA is open for missionary work!

haha I'm a dork. I accidentally wrote Haiti las week instead of CUBA. Haiti has already been open for a while!!! But CUBA is open as of in like 10 days or something. As of what we know right now, they'll send the spanish missionaries. we'll see!!!

This week I thought I'd write a little bit about the people and culture. There are some FUNNy things really. It's ridiculous sometimes. haha.

Ok so the people here are actually like african americans, but there are also people here that are kind of white. It throws me off. So they all speak very loud and energetically ALL the time. SEriously. Even in sacrament meeting. Oh and even though they are quite poor here, like their homes are concrete floors with tin roofs, their clothes are always very nice. My sisters will appreciate this... they all have super cute jeans!! haha it's funny actually. My companion says that they are "vanity" haha, it's the only english word she knows to explain it. Oh and the girls have black girl hair and so they only wash their hair once every 1 or 2 weeks and when they get their hair done, they put it in a dew rag and sometimes a shower cap and walk around the town to keep their hair nice. My companion does this all the time. It's hilarious. Oh and ladies will walk around the town with huge curlers in their hair, waiting for their hair to dry and it's completely Normal. haha. Basically, even though they have humble homes and situations, they all are very aware of their looks. It's quite funny. 

I'm so thankful for this gospel. 

I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

Hermana Limb

HAITI IS OPEN!

HOLA!!! I just wanted to tell you this excited news! I don't know if you have all heard this yet, but this week they ancounced to us that Haiti is open to missionary work! It will officially start on march 17, our next transfer day. From what I've heard, they'll take missionaries from this mission and probably the other Dominican Republic Missions and the Puerto Rico mission. I have no idea how it all works opening a whole country, but I'm guessing they take a few natives... espcially because of Americas position with Cuba, I don't think many Americans will go there. Well anways, we'll see!!

Everything has already gotten better, especially my attitude. I'm also learning so much patience it's ridiculous. really. You need a lot with a foreign companion. The people here never have any sense of a hurry... haha really... you probably understand. My companion really is a good missionary and so I'm learning lots. Lots and lots. My spanish is also improving tons. Really. I don't know if my speaking ability is really tons better, but my ability to understand is wayyy better. I can actually understand some of the things these crazy natives say here!! Haha. I'm also at the point now where I can almost understand most scriptures. I can read the book of mormon and actually feel like I'm benefitting from it! haha. That might give you an idea of where I'm at. 

I'll tell you a little bit about my schedule, so you can know how my days go...

6:30 wake up and exercise

7:00 get ready and eat breakfast.... not enough time AT ALL

7:30 study personal 

8:30 companion study

10:30 service or planning or whatever may be

12:00 lunch

2:00 language study... but for some reason my companion always thinks we should do something else, so I have little language study time basically... ever

3:00 leave to teach

9:30 return to the house to plan and go to bed

10:30 go to bed.

so we get 2 hours for lunch but no time for dinner. Kind of interesting. The town really does close down from 12-2. My companion says that mealtimes are VERY important here and you are never in someone else house during meal time. 

- Hermana Limb

Adjusting to the new life

OK, I thought I wasn't going to be able to write again this week because we didn't have electricity when we left our house today. I was really really praying that somehow I'd be able to and I could!!! SEriously, little things like that really affirm how much Heavenly FAther cares about the little things for us. 

I don't have as much time to write this week, but I want to let you all know that I am doing lots better. I am getting adjusted and I feel like I'm starting to enjoy it more. It has been kind of hard, especially because Hermana Olsen the other Hermana that came with me to this mission actually went home this last week because she was sick and honestly was having too much of an emotional time. It was pretty hard on me. It made me realize how fragile the mission really is. I keep on thinking about how long the mission is, but at the same time, I get frustrated at myself for thinking that, because I just want to enjoy the mission! I think I'm gradually starting to really enjoy everything more. I'ts just taking some time to adjust to everything. It's definitely different living with a foreign companion. We have different customs that she thinks are weird. It's kind of funny actually. Like she won't eat broccoli or carrots because she thinks they're dirty because they grow in the ground, but she will brush her teeth with the water here. Haha, seriously, that doesn't make sense to me. And she thinks its weird that I walk around when I brush my teeth and don't stay in the bathroom, ahah. Anyways, we're getting used to eachother and it's gradually getting better. 

Their culture is definitely different. A good way to explain it is... they are very loud and basically... bossy. yep, haha. you could see how they would be hard for me. Everyone has their opinion about EVERYTHING. sometimes our lessons go on and on because the people just talk and talk and talk. haha. Seroiusly, the people love to talk. I'm learning to be a really good listener, or at least look like I'm listening, because I can only understand about half of what they say, haha. Although, my spanish or at least ability to understand definitely is improving. I can understand way more this week than I could the first week. 

As for mom's questions... Yes we cook for ourselves and we do our laundry kind of by hand I guess. there's a machine that kind of mixes them around with soap for 15 min, but you have to take it out and wash it again and rinse and rinse and then you put it in this other machine to spin dry it and then take it out to hang dry. Definitely a longer process, but I'm getting faster at it. As of right now, I'm just grateful we have hot water in this house. Seriously... that is something I'll have to get  used to when I get transferred. It's not always super hot, but not freezing cold. I'm starting to learn the schedule of when we have electricity too. It's usually friday and sunday mornings and other random mornings when they forget to turn it off I think. I literally am super grateful when we have electricity. Oh the little things. I'm going to be in heaven when I return. This last week started out rough, but it really has gotten better. I can feel your prayers. Thank you. Really. They mean a lot of me. I know Heavenly Father is aware of each and every one of us and I'm so grateful for that.

Also, this last week we're really been focusing on getting the members to read the Book of Mormon. I have such a strong belief that the book of mormon can literally change someone's life. I'm so grateful for it. I know there's huge power in reading the book of mormon every day. Our family has confirmed that to me. Thank you family for being so awesome and writing me! I don't have time to write all of you back this week, but I'm VERY grateful for the letters!!!

LOVE YOU!!!!

Hermana Limb

Constanza! The mission has officially begun!

2/15/112
Ok, the first couple weeks in the mission. Where to start. It´s been hard, but at the same time, it´s gotten better as I´ve gotten used to it. So, we are actually the very first hermanas to be here EVER. The branch is way excited to have us here, so we hope that actually converts into wanting to help us a bunch as well. The church is this tiny building with tin roof. About 30 people come every sunday, but yet, we have 16 pages of members. There are lots and lots of inactives here.


As for the actual area, it really is BEAUTIFUL! the drive up here is a little much, because of the windy roads, especially when you´re in a guagua´¨ with 20 other people... but I´ll have to explain that later. The town is pretty much an agricultural town. Definitely not as city like as Santiago. The people really are humble here. Most homes are tin roofs, with concrete floors and walls pieced together with pieces of wood. Only the really rich have tile in their homes. Although, the people really are so friendly. They ALWAYS invite you in and ask you to sit down. Kind of gets rid of the door contact part, but at the same time it´s kind of hard, because everyone says they´ll do whatever you say, but when you return they never do any of it. It´s hard to know if they´re actuall interested in the gospel or just like the visits from you. I don´t think they´d ever actually tell you they didn´t want you to return. That´s the tricky part. Although, we have found some investigators and made some progress. Oh when we got here,
we had 1 progressing investigator. Who knows what the elders were doing here. We heard that Constanza is kind of the place that the elders go to be lazy and not do much. It makes sense to me know. You could definitely see it when we walked into the house the first day. That first day was a little overwhelming. Although, after much cleaning, it is much better now. The house is not too bad. Definitely better than the other homes in this area. Our house is probably the nicest in the neighborhood. All of our neighbors have tin roofs. I´ll try to send some printed pictures soon. We have hot water, but that is if we have electricity. We really don´t have electricity very often.
It has taken some getting used to, but I am definitely getting more used to it.


The whole city is in a valley in between beautiful mountains. Really, look it up if you get a chance.
Ok, now for the reason why I couldn´t email last week. Ok, so constanza is about an hour and half up in the mountains and then once you get to the bottom of the mountain, it´s about another hour or 2 to Santiago, depending on the waiting time in between guaguas. Guaguas are cars that they basically cram as many people as they possibly can and take them to other cities. I can definitley say they are my least favorite part. I´ve had old people, little kids, live chickens (not kidding), and barfing people. Oh and guaguas breaking down or running
out of gas. Well, we´ve had to go to district meetings, interviews, p'day in santiago and this last weekend again to santiago. Well our very first day to the zone meeting, we left our cell phone in one of the guaguas, so we were without a phone until yesterday. Then Wednesday, our zone´s turn to go to santiago, we went, but by the time
we got there and did everything we needed to and then tried to go use the internet, the place was closed and we had no time to search for another, because it was already almost 4 and it would take about 4 hours to get back to constanza. When I realized that I wasn´t going to be able to email, I couldn´t handle it anymore. The foreign country, the spanish , the people yelling at me every time I walk down the street, seriously, i couldn´t handle it anymore. I got in the back of the guagua, for our ride back to santiago, squished with all sorts of strangers and just sat there and bawled. Seriously, that was the hardest point in my mission to this point. I couldn´t take it anymore. I just cried and cried. Although, I had an ensign and so I started to read it. I swear every time I read one of those, it´s exactly what I need. I started to feel better. I really could feel the comfort and love from Heavenly Father. I had been praying for comfort this whole week. Oh and I had been praying for patience, side note... don´t pray for patience unless you really really want it, because Heavenly Father will for sure give it to you, haha. Anyways, I started to feel better. I knew this was just a small moment in the grand scheme of things and
I could handle it. I realized that I just needed to try as hard as I could and do the best I can and Heavenly Father will literally take care of the rest. I don´t need to worry. Especially with the spanish. Basically I´m ALWAYS confused about what is going on. My companion isn´t always good about explaining what we´re doing and when she does, it´s in spanish, so i´m usually still confused. Despite all of that, I´ve felt much more comforted recently. If´you´ve been praying for me, I can feel it. I really do feel like I´ve received extra strength recently. The mission is hard. But I know I can do it. Also, I was just thinking about all of the other things I could be doing right now
or other places I could be and I wouldn´t rather be anywhere else, doing anything else right now than right here in Constanza, sharing the gospel with people. It really is an awesome time in my life. This last weekend, Elder Bednar came and spoke to us. It really was an AWESOME experience. My companion and I went Sunday afternoon and stayed with Hermana Olsen and her companion. The next morning we had a 3 hour question and answer conference with Bednar. It was awesome. As he walked in, I was like 2 feet from him and he turned and made direct eye contact with me. Pretty cool.


Overall, with all that has gone on, I think I´m getting the hang of it. I´m getting more used to things and I´m more at peace. Pray for me. I´m praying for you guys!!!
LOVE YOU!!!!

Hermana Limb

Finally in the Dominican Republic MTC

Sorry this is such a long post, I just kind of got behind on posting her emails and since it was Christmas time, as well as the time that she was transferring to the Dominican Republic MTC she was able to email us a lot. So here are bits and pieces from all her emails since last time.


12/25/11
As for Christmas today, it started off with my companion and I doing some scripture study then we went and had breakfast.(cereal for breakfast on sundays in the MTC always... even on Christmas). Then after breakfast, we went back to our classroom for a little but with our district and then went and waited in line to get into the auditorium. First we watched the spoken word by the tab. choir and theeeen we had our sacrament meeting with David A. Bednar! It was an awesome meeting. He talked about learning of Christ and not just about Christ and how we can truly be Christstlike and completely forget ourselves and serve others completely and by forgetting ourselves, we will actually come to find ourselves. I thought that was way awesome because that is actually something I have been thinking about lots since I've gotten here. He also talked about truly using the Atonement and how it amplifies our abilities and gives us power from God, making our own abilities even stronger and so we can overcome certain things. I was semi-close to the front and there were times that I felt like Bednar was literally staring straight at me and talking to me. It was pretty awesome. Especially when he was talking about the atonement, it just hit me. I'm getting soo excited to go to the Dominican Republic and meet the people and start sharing that message. Seriously so excited. 


12/26/11

Today, I just have been reminded sooo much of how much our Savior loves us. I know he does. I know we can do anything because of the atonement of the savior. I am so grateful that I am aware of that in my life right now. I am so grateful for prayer and how much it comforts me every day. I know he loves each and every one of you SOO MUCH!!! MISS YOU!!!

Tomorrow is my last day in the Provo MTC, weird!! Wish me luck!!

12/28/11

They gave us just a little bit of time today to be able to write home and tell you that I made it here!! All is going well so far! We got here at about 10 last night. I just remember the first step that I took out of the airport, I could istantly smell it and feel the air was different. It was pretty exciting. We were all walking out and they had some people waiting for us from the MTC. When we got to them, they had a bus come to pick us up with all of our stuff and there was a trailer hooked back to the bus and so they went to go open up the trailer and so we could put our luggage in the back and as soon as they opened up the trailer, the door fell off. It was pretty funny. They just kind of looked at it and was like, ""well... oh well I guess." and just continued to move the luggage in the understorage bins and in the bus. They then drove us to the MTC. It was crazy driving through the city. I wished really bad that it would have been in the daytime so I could see everything. We drove through some city and next to the ocean. The thing that surprised me the most was the piles of trash on the sidewalks in the middle of the street. Other than that, it's beautiful. We got to the MTC and found that it shares a parking lot basically with the Temple. I can see the temple right out the window right next to my bedroom. It is beautiful!! As soon as we got here, they had some food for us and talked to us. So there are 19 of us that got here last night from the Provo MTC and we are the only missionaries in the MTC right now. There are more Haitian missionaries coming tonight. It will be pretty fun to meet them. The MTC is basically on the 4th floor of a building. Everyone lives up here and there are a couple classrooms for us. Only the cafeteria is downstairs. It's not very big. Just big enough to seat about 30 people. The food has been pretty good so far. Today for lunch, we had rice, beans, fruit, veggies, pasta, meat and rolls. They said that rice, beans and meat is their "bandera", their national meal, which also represents their flag, which bandera means. Well, we have to go back to class now, so I will write you more later!! Love you lots!!

12/29/11

Ok, so I will tell you the rest of how it's been here. Overall, it's been awesome. Especially every time I walk outside, I feel like I'm in heaven. It is seriousliy the perfect temperature here right now. Feels soo good. That might change once summer gets here, but we'll see I guess!! Today, we have a prep day and so I just got back from going to the temple! It is beautiful! All of the American Missionaries did an endownment session together. They did the session in English and had headphones for other natives that were attending the session also. Also, the Haitian missionaries got here last night! Most of them were receiving their own endownment today. They weren't in our same session, because they speak creole, but it was still pretty cool to see them there getting ready to go. I can just imagine how different this is for all of them. They got here last night with only 1 teacher that can speak creole to them, so he translates everything for them when they give us instructions or anything. There were about 10-15 of them that came here and 3 sister missionaries as well. We also found out that most of them are actually around the ages between 22-25. They usually go when they're older because of their situations. It was interesting to hear that. I can just imagine how new and different this is all for them. It is really cool to see them though. It's kind of funny, because when the me and the other American Hermanas walk in the room, they usually stare at us. Sometimes they aren't even sneaky about it. I just find it funny. 

A random fact that I found out since being here: there really aren't many wild animals on this island, because there was an indian tribe that inhabited it a while ago and killed off most of the animals and so there aren't many left. Just an occasional small squirrel or small animal. I don't think spiders are included in that, though; and I don't know about snakes either. I sure hope they are included in that. I would be totally content with never coming across a snake while on my mission. 

 

Oh and the mission president also said they usually try to take the American missionaries out to kind of see some of the historical sites around the area to experience it. I didn't realize this before, but the Dominican Republic is actually one of the first places that Columbus stopped. He stopped at Cuba and then here I think, so this island is actually a huge historical site. Santo Domingo is the first city that Columbus established I think. Pretty interesting.

I already love the people here! Seriously, they are very friendly and nice. All of our teachers are natives and some of them don't really speak that much English either. Pretty much most of our lessons are in Spanish, with them trying every once and a while to try to say it in English so we understand. It's pretty funny sometimes, because the teacher will ask us a question, and none of us realize they're asking a question and so we just stare at eachother until the teacher starts laughing because they realize we didn't understand. The teachers have to make a conscious effort to talk really slow for us. Last night our teacher was explaining to us that we are learning Dominican, not really Spanish. He said it while kind of laughing the whole time. He said that when we go home, we'll think we can speak spanish and we'll try to talk to someone in spanish and they'll wonder what language we're speaking. He was like, "por ejemplo, come esta usted, es come 'ta 'tu?" haha. It was pretty funny. This will be quite the adventure to learn!

1/5/12

Ok, so in this MTC they get a new batch of American Missionaries every 6 weeks and they rotate between the latinos and Haitians while we're here also. Right now the Haitians are here and will be for another week and then after they leave, native latinos will come in for probably 2-3 weeks as well. I wish I could explain how fun it has been to be here with the Haitians! They are seriously some of the most loving, fun, people every. Every time I see them, I just wave and say Hi and I usually get this huge grin back and usually they just start laughing at me (I haven't quite figured that one out yet, haha) But there are 3 Haitian sister missionaries and they love to talk to us during meals and teach us how to say certain things in Creole and we teach them things in English. Some of the other elders too try teaching me things, but I can never understand them. It's quite hilarious. They'll say it in Creole, then translate it in spanish(which I still can't really understand very well) and then I just give them this funny look and they are like, "you don'know spanish?"" ahah and I just laugh and say, ""pocito"". haha. In general though, they seem to have fun no matter what they are doing. On Sunday, we had ice-cream and they were all acting like it was the best thing in the whole entire world. A bunch of them had 2 bowls and were hiding their 2nd under the table. IT was hilarious. Oh and during gym, I love wathching them play basketball, they look like they're having the absolute best time of their entire lives. Some of their smiles just get me every time. There is one elder called Elder Excellent and always has a huge grin on his face. We can only take pictures on prep day, so I'm going to try to get some pictures today to send to you guys.

Oh yeah, so this morning, there was a earthquake here. I woke up to my bad shaking, until I realized it was an earthquake. It wasn't that bad of earthquake, though. Later, I found out it was a 5 on the scale, but it seemed less to us, beacuse we were on the top floor of an earthquake proof building. It didn't affect anything though. Although, during breakfast, I could see that some of the Haitians were acting pretty sad and kind of somber. We realized that it probably brought back a lot of feelings and emotions from the earthquake and tsunami that hit them last year. I can't even imagine going through that. I bet they didn't like the reminder at all. I know one of the sisters said she got baptized just a little over a year ago, right after the tsunami. It was seeming to affect her a lot today. It has been very humbling to be here with the Haitians. I know that a lot of them have come from very humble circumstances. but to feel their love for us here has been such an awesome experience. I feel super grateful. This last sunday, we had fast and testimony meeting. During every meeting, they have a translator that translates for them. During the meeting, whenever one of them got up to bear their testimonies, a leader would get up, stand right next to them and translate what they said right after they said it. Even though we could not understand what they were saying, the spirit was sooo strong. I learned that the spirit definitely has no language barriers. It was such a neat experience. All of their testimonies were all so simple, yet so strong. It was such a testimony to me. This has been such an awesome experience.

Ok, so this last Friday, we went out in the city!! we went to a park right outside of a baseball stadium and handed out pamphlets. We walked around with our companions and just talked to people walking around. I was kind of scared at first, but I honestly loved it. The people here are so friendly. They all were very nice and just started talking to you right away. Some of them we only just briefly talked to, but a few of them we talked to a little longer. One guy at the end knew a tiny bit of english and so through our broken spanish and his broken english, we communicated with eachother and the conversation ended up going to prophets and the godhead. It was such a neat experience. most of the time though when we went up to talk to someone, we would do our little introduction, give them a pamphlet and then as soon as they said something, we couldn't understand it, so we would just say, ""lo siento. Nuestra espanol es no bueno. Estamos aprendiendo espanol ahora." and they would usually just laugh at us. Usually they knew a little bit of english and so we could kind of communicate. It was awesome, though.

If you would like to mail her letters she would LOVE it and here is her address:

Avenida Bolivar #825

esquina Calle Genesis      

Los Robles

Santo Domingo

Republica Dominicana

Happy Christmas Eve Eve

Happy Christmas Eve's Eve!!! I hope all of you are enjoying your time at home and/or with the in-laws! Christmas in the MTC has been pretty great so far. We've had a couple different firesides/devotionals about Christmas already. This last tuesday, the president of the quorom of the 70 came and talked to us. On Christmas day, they told us that an apostle is going to come speak with us and we'll have our church with him. I think we're also going to have some sort of Christmas eve festivities starting tomorrow night. I'm pretty excited about that.


As for another thing that I'm super excited about, I'm leaving for the D.R. in 4 days!!! I think that Dominican Republic MTC will be WAYY smaller and so I'll probably get to know most of the missionaries there. I think it should be pretty fun. Yesterday, I was looking at a google map on the LDS. org website of where temples and church buildings are and I saw where the D.R. temple was. I know the MTC is right next to the temple, and from the sattelite picture, it looked like it was just about half a mile from the ocean. I really hope I get to go see the ocean at least once while I'm in the MTC. I heard that in foreign MTC's, a lot of times they will send you out with missionaries to proselyte and teach real investigators. I'm pretty excited about that. It will be way good experience. I'm also not sure if I'll stay with my same companion or get me a new one when I'm there. I've heard that a lot of times they put you with a native right away to try to get you to learn the language faster. I guess that would be good help, even though it is kind of intimidating to think about!  


So, I am sitting here in the laundry room, waiting for my laundry to finish drying. And I was trying to think of a funny story to tell you guys, and so I was asking the elders in my district what I should tell you and one of the elders, Elder Hansen wanted me to tell you about he beat prayer boy at gym time. So every day at gym, the EXACT same kid says the opening prayer and gets SUPER excited every time he gets picked, because he shoots his hand into the air as soon as the word prayer is said. Well, yesterday, Elder Hansen beat him with his hand up and got to say the opening prayer. He was way excited. All of the elders have been plotting for a couple weeks now how to take down prayer kid and they finally succeeded yesterday. What a glorious day. Oh and yesterday was actually my last day of gym as well, because Christmas even tomorrow then I pack during my gym time on Monday. I can't believe it's coming so soon!! It's so weird, but I kind of feel like time doesn't exist here. It's really strange actually. 3 hours can feel like 1 hour and 1 week can feel like just a couple days. It's crazy.


Oh yeah! I did just think of something awesome! So earlier this week, we had this substitute teacher come teach our class. He taught one day and briefly mentioned he was a convert and then came back the next day and actually told us his story. He used to be Athiast and absolutely did not believe in any God whatsoever. He told us of how he randomly came upon the missionaries and spent the first 2 lesson absolutely arguing with the missionaries. And then his friend invited him to church and he told us of how absolutely strange and SOO confused he was, because he wasn't even religious at all. Then he told of going to the temple and feeling drawn to the temple, but not knowing any reason why and the feeling was soo strange to him. He also talked of when the missionaries would bear their testimony and it was the weirdest feeling that would come over him and it was so weird that he couldn't even dispute the point back, which he had been doing the whole lesson. Finally, he agreed to try the missionaries challenge to pray about the Book of Mormon, even though he had NEVER prayed before or even believed in God or Jesus Christ. He decided to try it one day and talked of getting such a strong feeling come over his whole body. He said it felt like his whole body was on fire with light. Instantly in that time, certain truths were made known to him. That the church was true, the book of mormon was true, Joseph Smith was a prophet and whatever the missionaries said was true. He said everything he believed his whole life disagreed with those truths and so he decided he had to completely forget everything he had known his whole life. All he knew then was those simple truths revealed to him. He said "Even breathing felt different". He said that he said that over and over to himself after praying. So, the next lesson, he went to the missionaries, told them the experience and said that he had to believe everthing they said and that he had a lot to learn, because he didn't know anything about life anymore, so he was ready to learn. It was such an amazing story and testimony. The spirit was so strong during the whole story. Anyways, the story took 3 hours to tell and so there was waayyy more detail, but anyways, it was awesome. He ended up getting baptized, then went on a mission. It was so amazing to hear how the gospel can COMPLETELY change anybody's life. It made me realize that the gospel can change ANYBODY'S LIFE! So awesome!! I'm so pumped to be here sharing this gospel!!

The secret gym

Sent 12/16/11

Ok, so funny story. A couple nights ago, one of the districts were telling us about this new gym at the MTC underneath the mail room that had all sorts of sweet new machines, with TV's and they would be doing P90X and such too. I thought they were soo funny to be coming up with this story, thinking I would believe after being here for a couple weeks already and so I just played along, thinking they were being funny. I even asked them if the "subway cart" was down there too(elders make up a myth about a traveling subway cart around the MTC for the new elders). Anyways, the next day for gym, the other hermanas in our room asked if we wanted to go to the new gym too. I thought it was funny again and told them I thought they were kidding. They kept on trying to convince me it was real and I still didn't believe them. They kept on going on about it, how there's these cool rowing machines where you can race against eachother and other ridiculous stuff. They kept on insisting it was real and so I figured I might as well let them play out their joke to the max and follow them there or just see for myself if it was real. We were walking and everyone was still going to the regular gym and so I still thought it was a lie. I even made a deal with them that if it was real, I would have to jump up and down 5 times and yell, yippee!! over and over! So when we got right in front of the building with the mail room, we saw other elders in gym clothes walking behind the building, and I started to realize this gym might be real. Still sounds ridiculously fake, right? So we walk around the building, go up to this random door, swipe our card, go down these stairs and then all of a sudden there's a sign on a door that says "missionary gym here". I started freaking out and laughing histerically when I realized this thing was REAL!! we walked down there and walked into a room full of ellipticals, bicycles, rowing machines, mats, free weights, benches and TV's on the wall showing the Joseph Smith story. This place was REAL!! I couldn't believe my eyes!!! It was only the 2nd day it was open and so not many people knew about it yet. I just thought it would have been advertised to us better. But anyways, it's sweet. It's like not even reality, haha.

Oh and about gym, I found a girl to play basketball with!! I got to play in 3 on 3 games for 2 days in a row. She's going to puerto rico and actually leaves this Monday, but it was fun to play with her while she was here! She was pretty good, played more of a post position. It was just way fun to play again. And.... still maintained my status :). 

As for the rest of the MTC, it's been Awesome! I've really been able to feel the spirit here. I really do believe it's so much easier to feel the spirit here. This last week, we had Elaine S. Dalton come and speak to us for our devotional. The spirit in that room was so strong. It really is pretty cool to hear all of the missionaries singing. That fireside, overall, was such a neat experience. It made me just so grateful that I'm here. It was such a good reminder that I am supposed to be on a mission RIGHT NOW! The spirit testified so strong to me that there are certain people waiting to have me come teach them and that the Lord is preparing them right now. She talked a lot about following the promptings of the Holy Ghost no matter what it tells you to do and to not hesitate doing it. It really confirmed to me also the reason I think why I got the answer to go on a mission right now instead of after another semester or year or school or something. Our mission calls are not random, they are inspired. Oh and I got to get a hug from here after it was over :)

As with the Spanish language, it is coming quite along. Sometimes, at the end of the days, I feel like I didn't get much successfull spanish studying in, but yet I feel like I'm improving every day in our spanish. It's soo cool! I know the Lord is helping me SOO much. This last week, we taught our lessons without any notes. We just took our scriptures in and let the spirit guide us as to what to say. It's always so cool when in the middle of the lesson, I'll say words I've never said before and somehow they turn out to be the correct or close to correct translation. I know I could not do all of this on my own.

I'm also starting to realize how much I am going to learn about myself while on this mission. I have to learn to forget myself completely and serve others. I need to serve and love my companion and study for my investigators instead of for my own benefit; and I know that by completely forgetting myself, I will actually come to find myself. It's a tricky, but humbling and rewarding process.

I hope all of you are loving this Christmas season! One thing I've been trying to focus on is asking for spiritual gifts that Heavenly Father could give me. Or just think of gifts you could give your Heavenly Father. And no... you don't have to kill anything to give it to him :), haha. Well, I'm super grateful I get to spend Christmas in the MTC this year. I think it will help a lot with helping me to remember the real meaning of Christmas. Well I hope all is going well with the family!! and I'm going to get some pictures printed today, so I can hopefully get them to you guys by Christmas! LOVE YOU!!!!!