Travel plans and following the Spirit

Well I got my travel plans on Friday. We get to travel 31 hours in total. We leave next Monday August 23, and we leave to the travel office at 4 in the morning. Our first flight is out of Salt Lake at 7:20, and arrive in Chicago at 11:10. Then we have a 3 hour layover until 2:05 there. We leave there then, and fly into Miami at 6:20 pm, and have a 2 hour layover, until 8:30 when we fly out of there. After that we fly into Buenos Aires, Argentina at 6:15 the next morning. Once again we have a 3 hour layover, until 9:40, and then we finally fly into Asuncion Paraguay at 10:20 am on August 24. We have 14 people who are all going to on the same fights and are in our mission. I think during the layovers, I can call you, but I’m not really sure how it works, so be ready during those times for a call, and I’m assuming you want me to call dad's cell phone?

So this week we had a fire side, and a bunch of musicians came to speak. All three of the guys had written one of the hymns in the current hymn book. The first one was Stephen Jones, who wrote hymn 128. The second one was Thomas Durham who wrote hymn 171, which is with humble hearts. The last guy wrote hymn number 220, which is Lord I would follow thee. It was really cool to be able to hear them speak about the hymns, and what the hymn that they wrote means to them.

Also this week, we had an investigator for our last TRC that was from Peru. He spoke really fast Spanish, but I understood most of it. I talked to him and his wife after for a little while in Spanish. They said they have lived here for 1 year now, and that they used to live in Lima Peru. I told them my brother went there, and they thought that was pretty cool.

One other thing that happened this week was a spiritual experience. I had a couple promptings during the week that i needed to ask one of my companions if he needed a blessing. I thought it was kind of weird so I put it off until this Sunday. I could tell he was struggling a little bit, so I decided to interview both of my companions, starting with Elder B. We had a good interview, and then I went and got Elder N. I asked him if he needed anything from me this week, which he said just help with Spanish. After that I told him that I had a prompting that I needed to ask if he needed a blessing, to which he said he had been wondering who to ask for a blessing, and that he did need one. He then told me that he has been struggling because he doesn't feel like he has had a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon, and that he doesn't know if he is feeling the spirit, and then said he doesn't even know if he should be on a mission right now. I'm not sure exactly what I said to him, but i know that the Spirit directed what I said to what Elder N. needed to hear. I told him that the Lord called him out here on his mission right now, and that it is not a mistake. I also told him that he will receive an answer that he needs. Anyway, it was just really cool to be able to work through the spirit to help someone else.

Also this week I am doing a complete English Fast. I started it out yesterday, and started with a real fast to begin. One other Elder in our District is doing it with me, Elder Van Mondfrans. Anyway, I feel like doing this will help me learn the Spanish that i need to know before I leave the MTC to be able to teach the people to the best of my ability.

Lesson on the Atonement

Well everything is still going well in the MTC, we got to host the new Elders that were coming in yesterday which was really fun to be able to take them around to their dorms and stuff. While I was helping one of the elders, we were in his apartment, and just randomly the cover over the light fell off....

We did an activity with my teacher who left last week on his last day he was here. He gave us all a bunch of snickers, and then after we had eaten them, he told us that each of them had a price on them.... someone that he had chosen already had to do 10 pushups for each of the wrappers that we had. We all had to one by one go up to the Elder, and give him our wrappers and ask him to do pushups for us. It was really hard to watch him have to struggle through all of them, and I wanted to just do the pushups myself. This is just like the atonement in so many ways. We can't take back the things that we have done wrong in this life, and Christ had to suffer for all of the sins and mistakes we have committed. It really made me think a lot about the savior and the love that he has for each and everyone of us, to be willing to suffer for each of us. It really made me want to do all I can on my mission to do the best i can, and try to show the gratitude that i have for what the savior has done for me. We had a testimony meeting after, and all of us got up and shared our feelings. It was probably one of the most spiritual experiences i have had here in the MTC.

We started this new game with our class, where one person is supposed to be a native, and they aren't supposed to speak any Spanish during the day, and everyone is supposed to guess who they think the native is. It has been good, because everyone is trying to speak Spanish more.

We should get our travel plans sometime this week. We are hoping that none of us have problems that are going down to Paraguay, but none of us have heard whether or not we have our visas or not.

Is there any way that you guys can send me the address that I will have down in Paraguay? I believe it is in the mission papers somewhere, and I would like to have it before I go down there, so that I can tell people what my address is going to be when i am down there.

Sometimes I get stuck on a conjugation, but that all just comes with practice. We had one of our teachers leave this week, and before he left, he interviewed me and challenged me to speak only Spanish for the entire last week here, and I told him that I would.... so that will definitely be hard, but I think it will help me be more prepared to go out in the field

No, there usually isn't, but our teacher is getting married, and the other one has a sister getting married, and the one that left before had a sister getting married..... I think the summer is just a popular time to get married. We haven't had any general authorities for a while, including the 70, they are all on vacation, so all we get is the MTC people pretty much, and every once in a while a emeritus 70

Keeping a good attitude helps in life

Well nothing new has really happened since Tuesday..... it's been raining here for the past 2 days, which makes it seem dark all day. I became senior companion on Wednesday, since we had to rotate it with three of us. In class we finally learned the past subjunctive, so now we have learned everything there is to know in spanish, now it's just a matter of being able to use it in sentences and speaking with it. It definitely takes a lot of work, but I can tell that the gift of tongues is definitely taking effect on some of us. The people in the class that say they can't learn Spanish, or constantly complain about it have a much harder time learning it than those of us who try to keep a positive attitude about it. That's how almost everything is in life though, if you have a good attitude, and believe that something can be done, and work hard at accomplishing that thing, then more often than not, you will be able to complete it. This week in the TRC we have to teach the Plan of Salvation for the first time in Spanish. The investigator also has a problem with la Palabra de Sabuduria, so we get to try and incorporate both of those in the lesson. For the task we are giving directions of how to get to the church, which for the most part is pretty easy.

I still don't know if I’ve gotten my visa yet or not, but our departure date is supposed to be the 24 of August, so I’m hoping that it gets here before that time. Mexico and Argentina have some major problems with getting visas; some people have had their visas denied for going to Mexico. I can't believe how fast the time is already going by. It seems like just yesterday that i got dropped off here at the MTC, and now next thing i know i only have 3 weeks left of being here. (hopefully)

Well other than that nothing new has really happened since the last time that I emailed you, so unless you email back, Adios until Tuesday.

A body of flesh and eggs?

This week has been good, we have learned everything there is to know about Spanish except for past subjunctive as of right now. We are supposed to be learning that pretty soon i believe. We had our TRC appointment yesterday, and we got this lady who is from Honduras. She doesn't speak any English, and has a really thick accent, so it was kind of hard to understand her at first, but it got easier throughout the lesson. We taught to her needs really well, and covered the main points of the lesson really well. I was the only one of us that could really understand what she was saying, so I usually got to be the one that answered her questions, but overall the lesson went really well. We get to teach the Plan of Salvation this week, which should be fun. There are always some funny things that people say when they accidentally replace words in Spanish. Two Elders were teaching our companionship, and they were teaching the Plan of Salvation in Spanish. One of the elders meant to say we have a body of flesh and bones, which is: Tenemos un cuerpo de carne y huesos. He, however, said huevos instead of huesos, which changes the meaning to we have a body of flesh and eggs.... also during our lesson one of my companions, Elder Beckett, tried to say that he knows that Jesus Christ is his brother, which would be Jesucristo es mi hermano, but instead said Jesucristo es mi hombre.... meaning Jesus Christ is my man. Anyway, it's kind of funny when people say the wrong word, just because it makes the sentence sound really weird, but you can usually tell what they were meaning to say, so it's not a big deal.

We get to go to the temple again today, which will be really nice. It's amazing how much better the week goes when you get to go to the temple. We have about three weeks left as of today, which is crazy. We'll be getting our flight plans this next week, and then as long as we get our visas we'll head out. None of the Elders going to Paraguay have been told if we got our visas yet. None of us know if we do yet or not, so hopefully we have them, and they just haven't told us that they are here yet.

My companions and I have started a new game that we have been doing this week. We bet on how many letters we will get as a companionship, and how ever many we are off, we have to do 25 push ups for each letter off. One of the days I was 8 off, and so i ended up having to do 200 push ups that night.... it was nice and tiring for sure.

I caught a cold this last week for a little while. I pretty much only had it for a day, and then it went away, but the day that i had it, I was tired all day, and started getting a headache and stuff. Needless to say, i ended up going to bed at about 9:45 that night, and when i woke up i felt a ton better. I pretty much only felt really sick after I had played soccer.... yeah I know it's probably not the greatest idea to play soccer when I'm sick, but I did anyway.

I got a letter from Jessica Hanzel yesterday, and it had this bracelet from Paraguay in it. Apparently there was a dance festival thing in Springville this week, and people from a bunch of different countries came to it. Somehow, Paraguay was one of the countries that was in it, and i guess they did a dance with bottles on their heads and stuff, and she said it was really cool. They also were selling stuff from each of the countries after, which is where the bracelet thing came from.... too bad we can't wear bracelets here.... I will probably just use it as a bookmark or something like that.

Well my time is pretty much up, so I will talk to you again on Thursday. Love you all tons!

Elder Ryan Griffin

The week is better when I can go to the Temple

Well nothing really exciting has happened the past two days, except we went to the TEC yesterday and talked with a brother who went to Paraguay on his mission. He told us we will have the castillano accent to an extent. We make the "j" sound when we say "y's" so in other words it would be pronounced "jo tambien" rather than "yo tambien." The double L however just makes the normal sound, so we don't have it nearly as weird as in Argentina. He also said it's so hot there, that we will probably be wearing hats when we are out tracting and stuff, he said it gets up to 120 degrees + whatever humidity.... Anyway, he said we'll be eating a lot of rice, not so many beans, a lot of yucca, and pretty much no fish. He also told us that the temple is right on the border of both the missions, so we will be able to go there during our mission. Iguassu falls is apparently in our mission, right on the border, but he said he doesn't know if we will be allowed to go see it or not. He said the place there is like outer darkness, but the people are celestial. He also gave us advice to teach about prospering, because the people down there have a hard time seeing how the gospel can help them unless it gives them free food or something.

We finally got to learn about the subjunctive tense yesterday in our class. Now i know every single tense there is, so now it's just a matter of learning how to use them all. Well other than that, nothing really new has happened. You guys will have to do some dear elders or something if you want longer emails, because i don't know what else to say...

Oh, i forgot to tell you guys that the temple finally opened back up down here this week. We got to go through and do a session this last Tuesday. It's amazing how much better the week goes when you can go to the temple.

Well I love you all, and I hope all is going well back home!

Elder Ryan Griffin

Teaching the first lesson in Spanish

Well there's not a whole lot that is new as of today. We pretty much have the exact same schedule every day, so it gets kind of mundane sometimes. Anyway, this week we got a new district leader and zone leaders. Elder Van Mondfrans is our new district leader, and Elder Slaugh and Elder Herbert are the new zone leaders. Other than that there is nothing really new that has happened in our district lately

Also this week, we got to teach the first lesson in Spanish for the first time. We taught it like 3 times before we went and did it in the TRC. Anyway, for the most part now, i don't have trouble forming sentences, and can say quite a bit, and I’m slowly getting faster at forming them in my head. My companions both have a little bit harder of a time forming sentences, so our lesson went really slow, and we didn't quite have enough time to be able to finish it, but they both did a lot better. We always get asked questions by the investigators, and usually I am the only one of us three that picks up what they ask, so usually i just tell my companions what the investigator said, so that they can try and answer the question.

When we were at lunch two days ago, we met this older guy and his wife and kids. We started talking to them, and figured out that he was the previous mission President in Paraguay... anyway, we talked to them about all the stuff, and they said it is way pretty down there. They also told us that there is red dirt, and that once it gets into our white shirts, it doesn't come out. They also told us that to send packages to Paraguay, that you should send a shoebox that is under 5 pounds, because otherwise it has to go through customs, and sometimes the missionaries have had to pay up to 300 dollars to get it back. They also told us that in our mission, we will be spending most of our time outside of the city, which means lots of Guarani... I'm finally going to start feeling comfortable with Spanish and then get down there and not understand a thing, because they will all be speaking Guarani.

This week we hit our half way mark in the MTC, i can't believe I'm already more than half way done with being here. It goes by so fast some weeks, but at the same time I feel like i have literally been in here forever.

Well that's about all that's new with me, so I’ll talk to you on Thursday. I love you all tons, and thanks for all the amazing support you guys give me!

Elder Ryan Griffin

8 bowls of ice cream

Well I'm glad to hear everyone is doing alright. Life here is still going really good. We just got another new district in our zone this week, so now we have 5 districts in our zone. Yesterday i played soccer for gym, and I ended up scoring three goals on the other team, but my team still lost, because our defense was doing terrible. The soccer is pretty fun, but sometimes there are way too many people, and there are too many people that think that it's football, and try to tackle people since they don't know what they're doing, and that always gets a little bit frustrating.

Every Wednesday they have ice cream for lunch and dinner, which is really nice, but yesterday they had some personal pizza things that were really good as well. During lunch, another Elder, Elder Herbert, and I decided to have a competition to see who could eat more ice cream before lunch ended. So after already eating a pizza, I ended up eating 8 full bowls of ice cream, and he ate about 5 and a half, because he kept putting ice cream under the bowls to try and win. Anyway, I felt a little bit sick after that, but somehow I kept it all in. I ended up not eating anymore during dinner, since it didn't even look remotely edible to me after eating 8 bowls earlier in the day.

Also last week our district played the younger district in volleyball, and we had our whole district, and they picked their six people, and barely won two out of three times. Anyway, they were talking about how they beat us, and so we decided we are going to have a rematch against them tomorrow, and we are going to just pick six people from our district so that we can actually beat them.

On another note, we had an English fast yesterday, which only lasted until about lunch or so; because so many people just end up going back to English, and then the rest of us don't just want to be speaking Spanish to them, so we usually just end it as well. We get to teach the first lesson in Spanish this week, which is definitely going to be interesting. It's going to be hard, since it's already hard enough to do it in English, but now we will be limited to being able to say the things we know in Spanish. I know that the Lord will help us know what to say though, as long as we study, and do all that we can do.

Well on Tuesday I ended up writing and sending out 7 letters to people, so that was fun writing tons of letters. Also the laundry is a lot less stressful now, for some reason the first week we were here, it was like way packed, and just stressful trying to get everything done.

Did you guys get the letter I sent with the checks in them? I'm hoping so, because I sent them Tuesday, so they should be getting there pretty soon.

I haven't heard anything about my visa yet, but I’m sure it will be here pretty soon.

Well, anyway, the Spanish is going well, the food is pretty good, and I am feeling pretty healthy (besides yesterday after eating all the ice cream). I hope all is still going well back home, I love you all, and I'll talk to you again on Tuesday.