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