No One Wakes Up Planning to Fail

SEMANA 5!!!!!!

THIS IS INSANE!!!!!! I can't (and can) believe I am almost done with the CCM!! I finish officially on Saturday. Here's the plan y'all... I finish Saturday and am released on Sunday. From Sunday May 31st until July 20th, I will be a normal dude (weird). My plan is to continue to study Spanish as often as I can by taking MTC training courses and studying with friends and family. Hopefully in 2 months I will have a good rounded out fluency so that I don't lose the language on my mission in Utah. Honestly though, I love just putting my head down and getting to work on my own so I am excited for this break!

Studying at home in your last week feels like senioritis but on steroids because you're so close to getting out of the house to go speak English and the last thing you wanna do is learn difficult concepts in Spanish. However as I said in my last email, "Keep Moving Forward". You never know what opportunities God is going to throw your way if you are ready and willing to receive them. The point is, we are learning hard concepts, teaching multiple people this week, and I finish in 4 days sooooooo... REALLY gotta focus on motivation jaja. 

I learned this saying earlier but it applied to a lesson we taught today. My companion and I had to teach a lesson on P-Day in the MTC (not fun) so he was tired and so was I BUT we still knew that if we didn't plan... we were going to fail. So, we threw together a good solid lesson that was focused on allowing the other person to share their feelings and then we would end it with a video. What we didn't see coming was the amount of questions she asked us. They weren't even necessarily gospel related topics. One specific question she asked while we were talking about prayer was "Why did you choose to serve a mission?" It threw us off but we answered it just fine. After I shared my end, my companion went next and as soon as he started I thought "MAN, Mosiah 2:17 would be PERFECT". Mosiah 2:17 is "... when you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God". This was the only scripture shared out of the Book of Mormon AND it was last minute. Once I finished sharing she asked "Where was that scripture from? The Bible? or another book?" I explained that it was from the Book of Mormon which was not separate to the Bible but a compliment. This led her to asking us if we could meet again to explain to her what the Book of Mormon is. COOL STUFF! Soooo the full quote to the title of the email is "No one wakes up planning to fail... but don't plan, and you will fail". Although we had not planned to share a scripture out of the BoM, the fact that I could step back knowing we had a plan and let the spirit guide me wherever it needed me helped us to secure a second lesson. 

Love you all and hope to see some of you when I get released!!

Pictures!!!!

1/2. Disney took over the meeting (+Video of Elder Rogers as a Lion)

3. District reassignment map

4. How I feel sometimes

Keep Moving Forward

Semana 4

Wow this is insane because I finish in a week!! It felt super long in the moment and it still kind of does but honestly it's gone by so quickly. Things that I struggled to place in my life are now ingrained into my daily schedule and I may actually have a hard time transitioning when I'm released. I get released on March 31st and do not leave until July 20th so tengo mucho tiempo entre fechas. Pero, I got to go to the United Food Bank with Sister Giles (my cousin)!!! How often can missionaries say they got to go do service IN THEIR MISSION with their cousin, SUPER COOL! (Picture provided below).

Entonces, it is really fun learning Spanish as the DL because I can learn with the other members of the district! In the MTC most people are aware of SYL. SYL means Speak Your Language and is an opportunity for missionaries to strive to find circumstances in which they can speak their mission language. My STL (Sister Training Leader) and I found that the current categories for SYL application didn't fit very well with the online situation. So for those of you who know me... you know the first thing I did was make a proposal to change it jajajaja. Both of us drafted a proposal and submitted 5 new categories (Originally: Residence, On-the-go, Gym, Class, and Meals). These new categories are: Residence, Companionship, Personal, Class/Lessons (teaching), and Extracurricular for P-day. We submitted this to our teacher and we have gotten permission to use our district as the "Test" to determine if it is worth changing MTC wide. Kind of fun not gonna lie jaja. 

However, planning and putting that together took a lot of my time which stressed me out. I didn't have much time during the rest of my day to finish much else and I also had a hard time trying to meet with everyone. This started to become a self-inflicted burden that was justified by helping the district. It was a good thing but it made me busy. The movie Meet the Robinsons (Best movie ever) has the quote "Keep Moving Forward". I would like to emphasize that it does not mean "put your head down and never stop" it means "move forward with a purpose so that you can get where you need to, when you need to get there". We are going to have stressful times in our life but God does NOT intend for us to put our head down and follow blindly. We have a purpose and a plan and so does he. Make your eternal salvation worth striving for every single day. I KNOW God is wanting you to understand his plan for you and if you can set goals for where you want to be and "Keep Moving Forward", God will make sure you end up exactly where you need to be, when you need to be there. Ether 12:4,6

Picture time:

1/2. United Food Bank with Sister Giles

You are only as fast as your slowest guy

Semana 3!!

Wow this is crazy!!! He aprendido muchísimas cosas en este semana. Honestly the housing situation is great so far! I don't have to pay rent and my landlords send me the occasional "Clean up" notices but they are super nice about it haha. I have a full two and a half weeks left which in the grand scheme of a mission is pretty much 1/50 of my mission but hey, I'm livin the life. My favorite part about being at home has to be the level of comfortability I have with my surroundings. I am not in some foreign country surrounded by a different culture and a ton of people who don't speak my native language. It's quite relaxing actually.

My studies are moving a lot like a rollercoaster. The beginning of last week I hit an all time high of time used to study in one day. However... It burned me out pretty bad so I had to regroup and start over. I was recently asked to be the "leader of the district over the Elders" which is a cool opportunity for me to get to know the people in my district a lot better. I am to look after 5 other Elders and there is a Hermana who watches over the other 3 Hermanas. I took time before my mission to study Spanish and to get a head start into the MTC which worked, but I am learning to forget about myself and use my knowledge to help those around me. I am having to help out my comp, who is an amazing guy but is struggling to understand the concepts. When it comes to Spanish-English, it is almost harder how simple Spanish is because you have to rephrase words from English because they don't exist in Spanish. For example, there is no verb "to text" so you have to say "enviar mensajes de texto." Ya... I know. But it's fine because it also makes it easier because you don't have to memorize as many words. 

Anyways, being the leader of the district (as mentioned before) has taught me a lot about selflessness and how to let go of my own personal progress and help those around me. In the marathon that is "MTC" everyone starts at a different spot and has their own pace that hopefully allows us to all cross the finish line at decently close times. Unfortunately, this race is not marked by those who cross the finish line first, but by the one who crosses the finish line last. As a district we have to work in unity with the mindset that "You are only as fast as your slowest guy." I tend to like to put my head down and get to work, blocking out everyone else and anything else that distracts my train of thought and focal point. In this specific instance, I am having to stop myself in my place in the race and turn around to do my best to help those behind me. Although I never purposefully act with selfish intentions, I am now seeing that I need to sacrifice my time and effort NOT to make sure I get as far ahead as possible but that as a district, we take 1st place. Mosiah 18:9

No pictures this week... BUT I'VE BEEN REASSIGNED!!!!! I am being reassigned to Salt Lake City West Mission reporting the week of July 20th!! I AM SO EXCITED!!! I will be released when I finish MTC and will enjoy life until I return to the field.

Love you all hope quarantine is becoming less of a drag!

Push Harder to Work Smarter

Semana 2

Everyone keeps telling me they can't believe it's already been two weeks and my simple reply is "Well... I can." That isn't necessarily because I don't like it here but because it just feels like a long time. Days start to blur together to the point where things that I recall in the afternoon that happened in the morning feel like they happened days before. The schedule is so relaxed that the free time that I have just goes to studying more because there isn't much else to do. My usual cook decided to take on the role of Gourmet Chef which really enhanced the learning experience because I knew as soon as I was done, there was a delicious meal waiting for me. My Chef just so happens to also be my personal trainer, life coach, best friend, consultant, entertainer, ninja, body guard, laundry lady, lover of all things France, and my Mother... she wears many hats haha. As many of you know 5/05/20 is Cinco de Mayo. Well... little did I know that the Mexican natives don't actually celebrate Cinco de Mayo and I went into class without this information with what many refer to as "full send mode" (picture provided below). I also got to go and help distribute food for the United Food Bank with my Uncle Tyson Nansel. It was a super neat experience and definitely a good workout. I brought two Elders from my online district who live and Gilbert and 3 other Elders who are all in a District that is "Connected" to ours. We are 16D and they are 16E (picture below)

As far as the study goes... I do a lot of it. I have recently upgraded my time with my companion from 2 hours a day to 4-5 hours a day with some extra yoga and pronunciation practice thrown in. Days are still the same schedule except I workout in the mornings now and study all between classes with my comp. We signed up to teach an actual investigator on Friday and I'm not exactly sure I'm ready but I'm confident it'll work out. We started this Intermediate Core thing that I like to call "Baby Clifford" thanks to my good friend Elder Bean. Baby Clifford because it's small and Red like a small version of Clifford the big red dog (even though it's not a dog, I know). Anyways it came right after Basic core but from basic to intermediate is like from 0-60, it picks up speed pretty quickly. We have also taught two other "investigators" but those are just my teacher pretending to be an individual. 

There have been some pretty neat experiences in this last week that taught me to push harder. In the first week I could tell my comp was getting pretty discouraged and I tried to talk him into continuing to work hard until the spirit gave him some help. He wasn't sure that was going to get anywhere until he heard it from his Dad and a switch flipped. The next day he apologized for being down all the time and he was ready to get moving!! I was so excited! That day while in a zoom breakout room I had a thought that we needed to teach someone this weekend and I could see him thinking so I said "yes... I know." Without even speaking to each other we were able to communicate the similar spiritual prompting between us both it was so cool! Right then I signed us up to teach Friday. For how not far we are in Spanish... that was a bold move. I started to see a lack of motivation in my efforts as well because I knew the information but I had no way to communicate my progress. That night I watched a video that really turned my perspective around about Christ with Henry B. Eyring and Jeffrey R. Holland. The title of this week is "Push Harder To Work Smarter" because that was my motivational motto that told me that sometimes you need to sacrifice in order to learn the most. Just because you work smarter does NOT mean you can push less. That was the shift I needed to really push hard this week in getting done the things I needed to and step up my game. "Commit to the Lord whatever you do and he will establish your plans" Proverbs 16:3

Hope everything is going well with everyone! Here is the video if anyone wants to watch it (highly recommend it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6FKiNVbw3Y

PICTURE TIME!

1. Cinco de Mayo... (Panda head+Poncho+Argentinian Sash+Mariachi Music+Cinco de Mayo Background+Dancing=Full Send)

2/3. Service project with Elder Newman and Elder Davis (in my district on the far Right) and 3 other Elders from a "neighboring" district

4. My comp and I have been making virtual backgrounds of ourselves and we play them in class.