Training is AWESOME!

This morning I took some pictures of our area while I was walking to do our reports.

The bird was at a futbol field where we played this morning.

The futbol feild is something we pass every day. 

The houses are on the more rich side where we live.

This is my beloved son--my new trainee.  I like training, training is a lot of fun!  This week was pretty awesome.  I was working with my companion helping him know how to teach, to do all the forms, and figure out all the stuff.  He asks me everyday, "Can we go to sleep early today?"  "Please?"

I'll say, "If we have time," but we've never gotten to sleep earlier than 10:30 pm.  I think it's so funny.  We always wake up super early to exercise with a less active member of the church, who is really lazy.  We wake him up early, and go exercise with him, then we work all day and go to be at 10:30.  My companion is just destroyed.

He's working really hard.  He likes the mission.  He's progressing.  This week we have been working a lot with his smile.  He always has a frowny face.  He has the same problem I had before the mission. Whenever  I was thinking, I put on a frown, that made my eyebrows really thick, and it's really funny now to look back and see that.  Because now I totally see it in my companion.  He has a frowny face all the time.  Every time I look at him, I just smile, really big, and then he starts to laugh.  So we've been working on that.  Watching him with his frown face makes me think a lot about what I looked like before the mission.   Because I didn't smile very much.  Now that I've been here, I smile a lot more.  I have learned how to smile more.  It's really important to smile.  I've finally figured it out.  : )

He's had a little bit of problem with his skin with the humidity.  He has a red rash, so we've been working on that with some cream and lots of drugs.  I like training, it's super fun.

This week we bought a bunch of food.  With my last companion, we didn't cook very much, we just mostly ate junk food. But now with my new trainee, who's from Peru, they say they all like to cook.  They all say they know how to cook, but I don't really like their food all that much.  So I have to cook all this week.  I put on my apron and told my companion that I am actually a real live professional, and I know what I'm doing.  He didn't think I knew what I was doing, because when he got here, he saw all of our junk food.  So now I have prove it to him.  We are making pancakes and eggs every morning and are trying to eat more healthy.  We bought a bunch of french fries and stuff to make sandwiches this week, so we'll get there.  Now he understands.  haha  Oh, I also cut his hair this week.  That was pretty funny.

This week we had this activity that my companion and I tried to do.  We went to this huge family that lives all together in little houses surrounded by a big wall.  We decided to do a big movie night.  Our plan was to watch a couple of Mormon Messages and to share a lesson to help the inactives here in the Playa.  We didn't think that many people would come, but we actually had a lot of people! We had probably 40-50 people.

My companion wanted to do an experiment for everyone.  It's the one where you get a boiled egg, and stick a match in the bottom of the bottle, and it is supposed to suck the boiled egg down into the bottle. When he first told me about it, he said it should be about faith.  I was completely doubtful.  He was determined, he spent a ton of time inside our house all afternoon trying to get it to work.  I laughed at him all day long. And then when we got to the activity at night time, we had a lesson planned, and we pulled out the video, we taught them some principles that went along with the movie.  Then he pulled out his egg and the bottle and starts to talk in front of all these people.  He told me all day long that I didn't have any faith, and that's why it wasn't working.  So he starts the experiment, and it totally fails.  It didn't work, and everyone started to say that the Elders in the Playa don't have any faith.  It was actually super hilarious. I wrote about it in my journal.  I should have taken a picture of it.  haha.  But the evening ended really good.  We had a lot of participation and a very cool experience together.

Training is so great, I love doing this.  We can change the attitude in the mission by how we train the new people.  My new companion was shocked when he first got here.  When I was new I had about 30 min when I realized, wow, this is really happening.  It wasn't a panic, but a realization.  Then we got to work.  And everything was fine.

I'm at 6 months now, and I'm starting to figure things out.  I've learned that your actions say so much more than what you can say to anyone with words.  I'm thinking a lot about my future life, my goals, where I want to go, what I want to do, and what will happen with my life.  Have you met your goals? Are you where you want to be?  Maybe it's an opportunity for you to look back and evaluate where you are, and where you'd like to go in the future. What would you change?  How would you be different?

It's so funny that Taylour's Dad is skiing.  When we first started skiing and we were trying to get him to do it, it was like trying to talk to a Catholic about joining a different church.  He said, I hate skiing, I'll never do it.  And now he's up there all the time, that's so funny.
 I hope Braden and Grace both try out for MavFactor.
I hope everyone is eating a lot of good American food--especially without rice.

Love you lots, thank you for the letters!
Thank you so much for all your love and support.
I miss you a lot,
Bye!