I still do pretty much the exact same
thing every day, and I've eaten rice and some part of a chicken
(drumstick, breast, eggs, mystery body part) for at least two meals
every single day since I've been here. Still love it though. I've also
been buying lots of cookies on P day called Casinos. They're basically a
Peruvian version of the Oreo and they're really cheap. I also bought a
couple ties from the temple store that have llama's on them that are
supposedly made from alpaca fur. Also cheap.
Crazy story about Elder Powell though. So I
was talking to another Elder in my district and he asked me if I knew a
kid that went to his high school (Viewmont) that I reminded him of. The
kid's last name was Thornock so I was like, I might be related to that
dude. My grandma's maiden name is Thornock, and then Elder Powell was
like, You're related to Thornocks? Me too! So we both whipped out our
little fan charts and found out that we're both descendents of John
Thornock which makes us fourth cousins! Crazy stuff! Cool though
right? That's why we do family history before the mission.
So every two weeks we have a group of missionaries that
leaves, and a group of missionaries that arrive. So every two weeks we
get a new group of Latino missionaries. Well the last transfer, after
I'd been here two weeks, I knew enough Spanish to be able to kind of
converse and I made a couple friends. Their names are Elder Martinez and
Elder Vento, who are both now serving in the Bolivia La Paz mission.
Anyway, Elder Vento actually spoke pretty good English, but Elder
Martinez had never even heard someone speak English before his mission,
except for in movies. It turned out the only English words he knew were
swear words so Elder Black and I had to tell him that they were bad.
After awhile he realized that he knew nothing useful in English so if
he ever had a question he would come up and whisper a word in my ear to
check if it was okay to say to people. It usually wasn't. The cool
thing though, was that even though we could barely speak the other
person's language, Elder Martinez ended becoming one of my best friends
besides my companion. Elder Vento also became one of my best friends. It's awsesome
having Latino friends though because it helped my Spanish a ton. Elder
Black and I are working on making some new friends with this new group.
On Saturday I got to go proselyting again, only this
time I had a Latino companion who didn't speak a lick of English, and
the members that came with us knew even less English than he did if
that's possible. It was rough. I had no idea what he was saying most of
the time because he talked super fast and he mumbled. We still became
buddies though. His name is Elder Cordova. Anyways, Proselyting kinda
sucked this time. Pretty much everyone we taught (mostly less active
members) just made fun of me for not being able to speak Spanish, and in
the middle of the lesson my companion would just stop and look at me
and want me to say something but I had no idea what they were even
talking about. In one house we were teaching an active member and my
companion hands me a word of wisdom pamphlet and gestures for me to say
something to her but I had no idea why she needed it. After each house I
got a little more flustered. My companion could tell and he would just
put his arm around me after I apologized to him and say "It's okay" but
it was in Spanish so it was more like "esta bien." He was really nice to
me the whole time so that helped. He just kept telling me that I needed
to practice more. I realized though that it's not all going to be easy.
It's hard when I see these beautiful children of God and I want to
express to them how much I love this gospel and Jesus Christ and I just
can't because I can't speak their language well enough. I know that
I'm not going to learn a whole language in a month though. When I have a
hard day I just like to think of it as God's way of reminding me that I
have a lot more work to do so I'd better work a little harder. I really
do have a whole lot more work to do, but I know that God will help me
do it.
Well that's all for now. I love you all. I pray for you
every day. I love the emails I get from you all when you actually send
them LOL. The church is true. If you have time read Romans 8. It's one
of my favorite chapters of scripture ever. The last like four or five
verses are very powerful. Until next week!
Love,
Elder Tate
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