Good morning! I hope everybody is excited for spring break this week. It's going to be good for us too, since we're taking the opportunity to take Marlon to the temple for baptisms while he doesn’t' have school. This past week was pretty interesting, too. A lot happened. Tuesday we had the opportunity to do something I've never done before: translate something that isn't church. The Madrids had a meeting with their boss, and they needed our help translating back and forth, so we went and helped out. It was harder than I expected, actually. But their boss is a really nice guy and he was very patient with our pauses and stopping to clarify what they had said so we could transmit it accurately to him. The biggest problem was that they would often say something in sort of vague wording, which I'm sure made sense to them but I didn't have a clue what they were trying to say because I don't work for this company. So I would have to clarify that I understood, then translate. Thankfully my companion took over translating from English to Spanish, so we had a nice system to split the workload. Wednesday was exchanges with the Zone Leaders home, so I got to go back to Buena Vista
for a day! It was super nostalgic, but also reminded me how far I've come. When I was there, it was just a matter of following my companion around. This time, I was able to take charge and help Elder Coldiron since he and Elder Berrios just whitewashed the branch
(replaced the two former missionaries at one time.) a month ago
and don't know the people very well yet. I brought my journal and
basically data mined it for ideas of who we could visit, mostly members who are not actively participating and recent converts
because that's what we were in charge of that day. Oh, I should explain the new way of doing exchanges so that make sense.
President changed the way we do them so that instead of, for example, me and Elder Berrios switching areas for the day, instead both me and Elder Valladares went into their area for the day. So they split it up, putting me and Coldiron in charge of less actives and recent converts, and Berrios and Valladares in charge of investigators. So I got to show them where a lot of the less active folks I taught during my training live, and it just felt good overall to be back. Thursday was pretty busy, mostly on accident. We had just planned to visit some new referrals we got, and the first one was home. She's a nice less active lady with a nonmember daughter, so we got to have a good talk. At the beginning of the visit, she made the (ever so common) assumption that I didn't speak Spanish, and tried to speak to me in broken English. Side note: I find it highly ironic that this happens so much, because it proves that they make assumptions based on skin color just as much as anyone else. It's not just white people that do that, like they made it sound in history class. Anyway, I responded in Spanish and surprised her, so she asked where I learned it. I said, "En Mexico." So she replied, "Oh, ¿es de Mexico?
(Are you from Mexico?) ¿De que parte?" ( What part?)
I just laughed and took it as a compliment on my accent. Later in the afternoon we stopped by the mission office to pick something up, and President was there, so Elder Valladares asked him to help fix a problem with our area book app. It's been refusing to count our key indicators, which is really weird. Anyway, he suggested deleting and reinstalling the app... And then the app refused to reinstall. So we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon at the library backing up Elder Valladares's data so he could reset his iPad and get it working right again. Luckily I have lots of experience with resetting since I've done it so many times, so I was able to help him back up everything quickly. But it still wasn't in condition to be used by evening, so he took paper scriptures to our appointments. First we finished talking about the Restoration with Julio and Keyshla, and then we visited Cristina and Michael. Michael has been reading the Book of Mormon and even gave us a detailed description of what happens in 1 Nephi 1-2. He has an impressive memory, and even started comparing what Lehi experienced to Isaiah's vision of the Father and Son in the temple. It was really amazing to listen as he practically taught the lesson for us, just based on his extensive knowledge of the Bible. And we found out that Cristina has been reminding him to read and pray, as well. Those two are just amazing. Friday was boring. District meeting was twice as long as usual because the ZL's had this special training to present, but it was mostly aimed at the newer missionaries and didn't have that much of an impact on me since I'd heard it all before. And then in the evening there was an activity in Mount Ensign 3rd that we attended to support, but not very many people came. Saturday was spent mostly making sure people got their recommends to attend the Provo City Center Temple dedication. It paid off because we got Eddy and Marlon to get theirs, and (spoiler alert) they came the next morning. We also had a short talk with Julio and reminded him to talk to Keyshla about setting a wedding date. I think we're going to try to put him on date to be baptized the first Saturday of June... That would be the 4th! It will totally make my year to baptize someone on my birthday. I hope it happens! Yesterday was the dedication of the new temple in Provo, which they streamed live to all the stake centers in Utah. We attended all three sessions, and surprisingly they were all a little different. Several common themes emerged, though. The importance of temple attendance and family history work was one, and maintaining a current temple recommend was another. And almost everyone made the comparison between the old Tabernacle burning down and being replaced by the beautiful temple, and us being born again and made holy through the influence of temple ordinances. They all quoted the verse from Isaiah where the Lord says, "I will give them beauty for ashes." It was really amazing. Hopefully we'll get the chance to visit there on the way home this summer! Well, this was a fun week and I wish I had taken more pictures. We're going on a hike today, so I'll take more then. Have a great week! Love, Spencer
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