Holy smokes this week has been crazy!! It's our "week to perfection" so it's been super rigorous. This week we've already done two English fasts (one was fast Sunday) and we're doing 2 english fasts - today is one of them. It really does make me realize how much I'm learning! But definitely at the same time that I have a LONG way to go. We're doing an insane amount of work but I know it's going to pay off. We're teaching tons of lessons, practicing with other missionaries and we're speaking Spanish all the time outside of class. We have a TON of scriptures we're reading this week and memorizing a ton in Spanish so we can use them in our lessons. We're going through all of the lessons in Preach My Gospel and scriptures, and making questions and commitments for them. I can't even list everything we're doing this week - it would take far too long. But I never thought I could learn so much so fast! I definitely know we're getting help here.
Well last week we taught the second discussion for the first time and I think it went really well. We didn't feel nearly as solid about the material, but we kept it very simple and focused on the investigator, so it went far better than we thought it would. We were also pretty excited because she's from Ecuador and she was very impressed with our Spanish! That made us feel a little better.
We have definitely had a lot of devotionals and lessons about the Book of Mormon, so we definitely know the importance of it when we're teaching people. We've had a lot of authorities talk about how there's no way other than divine help a young uneducated boy could translate 531 pages of doctrine from ancient symbols so fast and so correctly when it takes experts with all kinds of resources years just to transfer from like English to German. It really is amazing. What is also really cool is how few corrections there were in the original manuscript. Joseph Smith would say it, and say it once. I know when I write anything I could revise it at least 20 times to get it the way I want it. What he said once has withstood immense scrutinization.
We had a cool musical/presentation on Saturday about the history of the people that made the Bible (and Book of Mormon) possible. It was quite interesting, and I've never really known any of it. I loved listening to the music though, because we can't listen to music here! That's probably one of the hardest rules here for me. Oh, and one of the most exciting things that happened was on Saturday night, we all got to see fireworks!! We were given permission to stay up a little later and watch the ones above the Stadium of Fire. It was awesome, because I haven't seen fireworks in so long! We still had to get up early though, so that was fun. Oh and I got to bear my testimony for the first time in Spanish on Sunday, and it rolled off my tongue a lot faster than I thought it would. It's so amazing what goes on here and it really is a growing experience.
We taught our first lesson in Spanish yesterday and it actually went pretty good! We ended up teaching okay, but we forgot about all the teaching skills we had learned in English, so that's just going to take practice. We are definitely getting super excited about this work though. I love being able to talk to and teach people who aren't missionaries!
We also got to go and clean the temple for 3 1/2 hours this morning! It was super cool! We were pulling up carpets and cleaning lockers and it was just a super neat experience. Definitely enjoyable. Well, I'm doing great and getting along great with my companions!
Hasta luego!
~ Elder Jesse Carlson
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