Hola familia y amigos!
In case you haven't noticed, I've survived so far! It's pretty weird to think that it's been halfway so far; it seems like forever ago just yesterday that I was getting here. It's been awesome, but I will say that I'm very glad it's P-day today. P-day and Sunday are the only reason I make it through a week here, which just proves that the schedule is inspired to include those days in it.
I realized today that I had promised to tell more about my companions in the first e-mail, but I forgot to do so last week. Since Elder Cloward went home for anxiety I'll probably just tell you about Elder White. He and I get along well and everyday we become better friends. He played soccer and lacrosse in high school, and, get this, was in a screamo band in high school. He´s nineteen, but graduated high school a year after I did and didn´t go to college, although he went and worked at USU for a while. So our room has four beds and since we started as a threesome companionship we had the room to just the two of us for a week. Unfortunately, yesterday we opened our door and found a note telling us we´d have new elders move in with us this Wed. (tomorrow). So instead of napping this P-day, which I wanted to do, I had to take a lot of time and clean and move my bed, and my stuff from the desk and closet I was using so that the new elders could have all their stuff ready for them tomorrow. But it's been a good P-day anyways and at least it means my room's clean.
Also not so great news is that Elder Neher, a childhood friend that came in the week after I did and moved in to the same zone as me and two doors down from my room (brief explanation of the zone/district thing: your district is a group of elders and sisters that are in your class and you basically do everything together, while the zone is who you have Sacrament meeting with and you all have your classrooms and bedrooms close to each other. So you see the people in your zone pretty frequently and in your district all day, everyday). Anyways, Elder Neher is moving out of our zone to a different district to be in a "intermediate" Spanish district because he already has some basics of Spanish, particularly in listening and comprehending Spanish. He'll still be here for a total of 6 weeks, he'll just be with people who aren't basically brand new to Spanish, which should mean he can learn more before he leaves to go to the field.
So this week I kinda had a rough week, just because I felt like I wasn't learning as much as I could, and things weren't working out like I thought they should. It all came to a head on Friday night after a pretty rough day. The whole week though I felt like I kept have a bad little bit followed by an ok bit, then a bad bit again, and Friday night I just wanted to know why this was so hard for me. At the beginning I knew a lot of my problems were that I knew so little about Spanish, but that wasn't truly the problem. And I've grown up in this Church, and I'm smart, it wasn't my knowledge of the Gospel that was the problem, and Friday night I just layed in bed thinking and praying, wanting to know what in the world was the problem. It was then that it hit me. I first began to think of these bad times like blows from something like a hammer, it seemed they would come and hit me hard then there'd be a break then hit me hard again, over and over. Then as I continued in this line of thought the Holy Ghost whispered to me, suggesting that maybe that really kinda was what it was, and that Jesus Christ was the one wielding the hammer. That changed my whole perspective. Suddenly I realized that Christ was trying to "forge" me, and honestly, I was resisting. So that night I prayed and I told Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ that I was turning myself over to them. I was no longer in charge, They were. And since then, I've had rough times, but I knew that it was just Jesus shaping me, forging me into the missionary tool I need to be. Let Him shape you also. He is a Master Blacksmith. Everything will work out better than you could imagine if you do.
-Elder Whitaker
In case you haven't noticed, I've survived so far! It's pretty weird to think that it's been halfway so far; it seems like forever ago just yesterday that I was getting here. It's been awesome, but I will say that I'm very glad it's P-day today. P-day and Sunday are the only reason I make it through a week here, which just proves that the schedule is inspired to include those days in it.
I realized today that I had promised to tell more about my companions in the first e-mail, but I forgot to do so last week. Since Elder Cloward went home for anxiety I'll probably just tell you about Elder White. He and I get along well and everyday we become better friends. He played soccer and lacrosse in high school, and, get this, was in a screamo band in high school. He´s nineteen, but graduated high school a year after I did and didn´t go to college, although he went and worked at USU for a while. So our room has four beds and since we started as a threesome companionship we had the room to just the two of us for a week. Unfortunately, yesterday we opened our door and found a note telling us we´d have new elders move in with us this Wed. (tomorrow). So instead of napping this P-day, which I wanted to do, I had to take a lot of time and clean and move my bed, and my stuff from the desk and closet I was using so that the new elders could have all their stuff ready for them tomorrow. But it's been a good P-day anyways and at least it means my room's clean.
Also not so great news is that Elder Neher, a childhood friend that came in the week after I did and moved in to the same zone as me and two doors down from my room (brief explanation of the zone/district thing: your district is a group of elders and sisters that are in your class and you basically do everything together, while the zone is who you have Sacrament meeting with and you all have your classrooms and bedrooms close to each other. So you see the people in your zone pretty frequently and in your district all day, everyday). Anyways, Elder Neher is moving out of our zone to a different district to be in a "intermediate" Spanish district because he already has some basics of Spanish, particularly in listening and comprehending Spanish. He'll still be here for a total of 6 weeks, he'll just be with people who aren't basically brand new to Spanish, which should mean he can learn more before he leaves to go to the field.
So this week I kinda had a rough week, just because I felt like I wasn't learning as much as I could, and things weren't working out like I thought they should. It all came to a head on Friday night after a pretty rough day. The whole week though I felt like I kept have a bad little bit followed by an ok bit, then a bad bit again, and Friday night I just wanted to know why this was so hard for me. At the beginning I knew a lot of my problems were that I knew so little about Spanish, but that wasn't truly the problem. And I've grown up in this Church, and I'm smart, it wasn't my knowledge of the Gospel that was the problem, and Friday night I just layed in bed thinking and praying, wanting to know what in the world was the problem. It was then that it hit me. I first began to think of these bad times like blows from something like a hammer, it seemed they would come and hit me hard then there'd be a break then hit me hard again, over and over. Then as I continued in this line of thought the Holy Ghost whispered to me, suggesting that maybe that really kinda was what it was, and that Jesus Christ was the one wielding the hammer. That changed my whole perspective. Suddenly I realized that Christ was trying to "forge" me, and honestly, I was resisting. So that night I prayed and I told Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ that I was turning myself over to them. I was no longer in charge, They were. And since then, I've had rough times, but I knew that it was just Jesus shaping me, forging me into the missionary tool I need to be. Let Him shape you also. He is a Master Blacksmith. Everything will work out better than you could imagine if you do.
-Elder Whitaker