It’s here!!!
Well the thing I've been waiting for this whole time is finally here! My visa came this past Wednesday!!! Which means I'm headed to the Madrid MTC on October 19th. I'm so excited. But also way nervous. I'm going from Spanish and English to only Spanish. And they speak wayyy faster and with a pretty good accent...so it'll be a struggle at first I'm sure, but I know I'll be way more prepared when I actually get into the field.
My companion, Elder Keeler, got his visa too and our roommate, Elder Iverson, got his too. So the three of us, along with two other missionaries who we don't know are flying out to Madrid on the 19th. Pretty sweet!
This past week flew by. I can't believe it's already P-Day again...but I'm not complaining. It's nice to have a day to just relax a bit and write people. The language is coming along great! Elder Keeler and I made a companionship goal to memorize at least 30 words/day which means about 210 a week. Sounds like a ton but it's actually not that hard. We bought notecards at the bookstore, which is really cheap for missionaries :), and started writing words for the lessons and other church words we would probably use. So far I have about 500 notecards with another 200ish on the way haha. Yeah it's a lot...but they help sooo much. Just goes to show how much missionaries and the Spirit work together for missionary work. So tonight we're quizzing each other to see if we actually remember allll those words that we learned this week. Should go pretty good though.
This past week we also got to go to the TRC (Teaching Resource Center) and the TE (Teaching Evaluation) for the first time. In the TE we taught Brother Heaton who went to Japan on his mission. We taught the first lesson in English just to get an idea of how we could split up the lesson, the layout, etc. It went pretty good actually. He gave us feedback which was really helpful so now we can change a few things when we teach again on Thursday and Friday. The TRC was pretty cool. We went to the room and just had small talk and got to know our "investigator" in Spanish for the first 15ish minutes. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Then we took a break and went back to teach the first lesson in English. But instead of just the one person there, there was another person who had joined him. He didn't speak a lot of English so he only spoke in Spanish but he could understand what we were saying. I could understand everything he said in Spanish which was awesome because he was talking way faster than what we're used to. Elder Keeler kinda had a little trouble but that's ok because we're here to learn and get better. He's progressing really fast too now that we've started using notecards.
Oh! And we're only supposed to talk in Spanish no matter where we are. It's so hard. When we're at the cafeteria or wherever else and we want to tell a funny story or something, we have to do it in Spanish which is a lot slower and just kinda kills the moment haha. But it's helped a tonnnnn and I can speak in Spanish pretty dang good now. I still make my mistakes with conjugations and stuff but I know the basic formations and a lot of vocab now so it's going great!
It's been really cold this past week every morning. Kinda not used to that yet haha. The other day there was actually snow up on Mt. Timpanogas which was crazy. Good thing I'm going to Madrid really soon.
The missionary fields have been closed for the past week because there was a pretty big sinkhole in the middle of it. So we've been inside for gym which is kinda fine with me. I get to play some awesome volleyball :). Some days are better than others though. It's kinda frustrating when you get a ton of people that all want to play and then don't even make an effort. I know some people aren't as great at some sports but some at least try which I respect. It actually makes the game more fun when people that you know don't play volleyball actually try, because they're just so funny and great to play with. I sorta wish we could play indoor soccer or football or something haha.
This past Sunday was our first Sacrament meeting here since the Sunday before was General Conference. It was pretty awesome. We had Sacrament meeting at 8:00 which is usually wayyyy too early for me, but since I'm used to getting up at 6:30, it's perfect. Then we have a two hour break until Priesthood. After that we have time to take a walk to the Temple and study and all that. It's just a laid back day which is really nice. There's always a fireside on Sunday night and right after we can go watch a church movie. We chose to watch Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration this week. I love that movie.
During Sacrament meeting our Branch President was released. His name is President Weiderhold. I didn't get to know him too well since we've only been here two weeks but he got up and gave a talk and you could just feel the love he had for our branch and for us as missionaries. And I'm actually gonna miss him. He was a great guy and was a great Branch President. Our new one is President Craig. He seems nice and everything so that's good. Too bad I'm only here for another week.
Now I guess I'll answer some questions that people have had... About Elder Keeler: he actually does know Laura Mickle haha anddddd they were boyfriend/girlfriend. Small world huh?
The food's been great and I actually think I've lost some weight since I can't just snack all day when I'm bored which is awesome. At least I know I won't be getting too terribly fat while I'm out here. We sorta made an agreement as a room to cut back on the sweets. All of us got a package of junk food, haha kinda funny really. So we've been sharing with each other and with our District so that we can sorta get rid of the temptations. Soooo if you do send carepackages...go a little easy on the sweets. I already got a big enough sweet tooth haha.
No, I wasn't in the Priesthood MTC Choir. If I had arrived here a week or two earlier I could've been but I wasn't. Oh well. It was pretty cool to still be here and watch it with all those 2000 missionaries. There's so many of us here and it's so cool to look around during devotionals and stuff and see 2000+ missionaries in suits and ties, or dresses, haha.
Oh I forgot to tell about my flight plans for next week. Our flight leaves at 8:44 am for JFK and then we fly to Madrid at 5:50 pm local time and arrive in Madrid at 7:25 am over there. We're going to be so tired. I hope I can actually sleep on the plane. But since we leave so early we have to get up around 4:00 am which just stinks. And since we fly out on a Tuesday, which is P-Day, we have to see if they'll let us do our laundry on Monday so that we don't have to pack our dirty clothes. I'm excited I'm actually flying with other Elders I know too. I've never flown with other people my age that I know...kinda weird. But exciting at the same time.
Thanks for the Love and Letters!! Miss you all!
Elder Mathews
