Hello
Everyone!
I've
completed two weeks now and I feel like I've been here a long time already, but
at the same time it feels like it's all gone by so fast. We had a
workshop yesterday and our teacher filled us in on a lot of things that are
going on in the outside world, like the basketball player for the Knicks that walked onto the team and
has been putting up 25+ points per game in his last 5 games or so. It was
weird to hear things like that because being here we forget that there is an
outside world that we're not a part of.
So
we finished teaching our first investigator and it turns out that she is our
other teacher! Our two teachers are Hermano Monroe and Hermana Van Vliet.
For the rest of the weeks they pretend to be investigators and we teach
them. The people that they're pretending to be are real people but they
are our teachers. They play the part really well but it's weird to be
teaching our teachers. We have 1-2 lessons every day so we have a lot of
work to do. Elder Perez and I have adopted a new teaching plan:
"Allalo", which in Spanish more or less means, "wing
it". It's gone well so far. As long as we say a prayer
beforehand we do really well and somehow can remember all we want to say in
Spanish and teach pretty well. We have already committed these two new
fake investigators to baptism after the first two lessons. We're just soooo
good! (:
This
past Sunday was interesting. Our first Sunday was a fast Sunday so it was
very different from what every other Sunday will be like. Every week we
are given a topic and have to write a 5-minute talk in Spanish that we might
give during sacrament meeting in church. They don't announce who will be
speaking until a member of the branch presidency gets up to the pulpit and announces
the program. So my second Sunday (the first Sunday with a normal
sacrament meeting) I got called on to be the first speaker. They told us that
it wasn't unheard of to call on the new guys to speak in their first sacrament
meetings and I guess they were telling the truth because I spoke! We also had
to teach a lesson (in English luckily) during our district meeting later on
Sunday. We just thought we were going to be sharing what we learned with
the other 2 guys in our district but it turned out that we combined with the
district that was leaving this week and a member of the branch presidency was
there as well. We were supposed to
be teaching a lesson to everyone to evaluate our teaching skills, and everyone
would give us feedback after we taught. Elder Perez and I went into it
with our Allalo teaching plan again and we taught about Lesson 5 in Preach
My Gospel about the Book of Mormon. We taught a really good lesson and
when everyone was giving us feedback they had nothing bad to say! We were the
group that got the best comments and no one had any suggestions on how we could
improve. It was amazing! We were
so proud of ourselves. This is one of the comments someone said to me
that is probably the best compliment I have ever received in my life. (Elder
Dahlburg): "I feel like if someone came up to you and told you the Book of
Mormon wasn't true, you wouldn't be angry, you would smile and love them.
You wouldn't be stumped and not know what to say but you would smile and have a
scripture to answer them and just love them". That made me so
happy and I hope that when that situation comes that I will be able to do as
Elder Dahlburg thought I would.
We
got to visit a beginner class this week and practice teaching the lessons to
them. It was a huge self-confidence boost. They couldn't conjugate verbs
and we could barely understand what they were trying to say. It made us
feel a lot better about our speaking abilities and our teaching abilities.
I
forgot to tell you guys what I wanted as my scripture on my missionary
plaque. I've always known what I wanted and it's Alma 26:12.
I
got your package this past Monday and was really happy to get something.
It made my day a lot better. I also got the package from the activity day
girls the next day on Valentine's Day and I was very proud that my Valentines
were a bunch of 10-12 year old girls from my ward back home. Needless to
say, everyone was jealous. It was a weird day around here because
surprisingly most of the guys here have girlfriends back home and so it's weird
being one of the few single missionaries, although it should be more like how I
am.
It
has been a fun week, with a lot of funny stories. Yesterday, our Hermana
Van Vliet walked back into class just as Elder Jackson was saying "the
last time I pooped my pants..." We never got to hear the story but it made
him very embarrassed and the rest of us got a good laugh from that.
Tomorrow
is Dad's birthday. Happy Early Birthday! I sent you something and it
should get there tomorrow but mail seems to be very slow to and from the
MTC. I hope you have an awesome day Dad!
Also,
if you ever hear President Don R. Clarke of the first quorum of the 70 speak,
don't believe anything he says. He speaks false doctrine. He gave a
devotional this week in which he said, "Basketball is the sport of the
celestial kingdom, there is no soccer there". If that's true I'm not
going. It was very hard to be a good missionary audience member and not
yell anything out, but I somehow managed to do so. He gave a good
devotional but he discredited himself by saying that.
That's
about all I've got for this week. I miss everyone a ton and love getting
letters even though I can't respond to them until the end of the week. I
love hearing about what's going on in the outside world and everybody else's
lives.
Love
You All,
Elder
Gaskill
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