Email 11/18/2008

Hi everyone. Once again, thanks for all the letters and prayers. I know they helped me this week. It was kind of a crazy week.

On Wednesday my teacher Bro. Lindahl made us sign up for this "investigator" thing where we go and teach this guy – but not just once. We keep teaching him and progressing with him until he is either "baptized" or stops the discussions. The worst part is we have to do it in Spanish. :) He is from Europe so he has that pride and he is probably harder than any real investigator I’ll ever have for real. He has all these objections and questions that are hard to deal with – esp. in Spanish. It's going ok though we have a few things up our sleeve, but we've already taught him twice and haven't gotten through the first lesson yet ha-ha.

Then we had another surprise in the RC this week. They made us do some Spanish calls so we had to talk in Spanish. The one person I did get a hold of was like "just speak English" then went on to tell me to take him off the list. It hurt. Not only did he not want to talk to me in Spanish (because he could tell I wasn't great at it) but he also didn't want us to contact him anymore. I guess it's good practice for when I get rejected in California. :) So yeah, I've been doing a lot more in Spanish.

This week was week five so everything had to be in Spanish from now on. The only thing that was supposed to be in English was our TRC lesson, but Bro. Lindahl set me and Elder Peterson up with a lady that didn't know English so once again it was Spanish and I was left wishing I could express myself like I can in English. Thankfully my comp got a 34 on the ACT so he knows Spanish better than me since he can learn so fast.

We always sing our hymns in class in Spanish. I bought a small Spanish hymn book when I first got here. There aren't as many as in the English one and the numbers are all different, but it's fun. Since they have to follow the music, they don't directly translate the hymns so lots of the same hymns have slightly different meanings or words. It's interesting.

It's really hard not to gain weight here. I have to run during gym or I gain weight. I'm already like 155. I'm trying to get back down to 150 so I can fit comfortably into my black suit again lol. Other people have gained like 15 or more, but one guy lost 35 so I guess it depends how well you take care of yourself. Usually I like to play a little four square and then run about 2 or 3 miles on the track above the gym.

On Sunday we got to watch "Joseph Smith, prophet of the Restoration." I really like that movie.

I gave my comp a blessing the other day. He hurt his leg playing soccer and he also wanted me to bless his back and help him get over his sickness. A couple weeks ago the whole district pretty much had a cough, but he's the only one who hasn't gotten completely over it yet. He said he was already feeling better the day after the blessing though so I'm sure he'll be fine.

It's so fun to hear about Stormie's baby. I'm glad everything is working out well. To answer her question, getting up at six thirty isn't too hard, but I always get really tired between 10 and 12am. I'm doing fine with the schedule though.

Anyway, things are still going well here. Going by fast, but I'm trying to enjoy my MTC experience. All the sunshine sure has been nice. I'm not excited for snow and ice but it will be a short winter. :D

The laundry room is huge, there are like a million washers and dryers and it is still hard to fine empty ones lol. It's nice to get clean clothes though. We always get 100% on our room check every week. We have like the cleanest room on the floor. Of course it helps to only have two of us, but anyway, we are both very clean :)

Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Curtis