BAPTIZE ME NOW!

On P-day, we wake up at 5:25 to basically compete against other districts for the laundry machines because there is only like 40 and every missionary takes usually like 2, so you kind of compete on who wakes up the earliest to put their stuff in first.  Otherwise, you have to wait for them to move it and we have service at 6:15 so it's kind of a pain haha.  Today we got there and found out a district left their place at 5:00 so they had taken up most of them, and then two of our friends from a different district had woken up at 4:30 to put their stuff in and then went back to sleep so we had to wait a lil bit to get ours in but it ended up okay, just had to be smart about it.

My companions are all going to different places. Elder Stoker is going to Arcadia California, Lindstrom is going to Culican Mexico, Coombs is going to Oaxaca Mexico, and Gomez to Mexico City South East Mission.  I have see that Orlandi guy once.  I had been looking for him really hard and then my companion actually found him because we walked by him and he was like, "Hey, that was him".  So I said hi and that was about it haha. Haha yeah, we're starting to be known by everyone now.

We ended up getting 3 teachers, which is unusual I think, and apparently at the teachers Thursday night conference or meeting or something it was brought up that we are the best district as far as Spanish goes, and focus and like idk..we good.  We have Hermano LeBron (he was our first investigator and now he's playing a different one) and Hermano Wright and Hermano Pence (listed in order of awesomeness).

Hermano LeBron has a really awesome conversion story. He was basically a gangster and he's from Puerto Rico, but he lived in the ghetto in like Cleveland and it was really rough.  He had like dreadlocks haha, but anyways he heard the gospel and got baptized, I think I told you all this, anyways his family isn't members and so the first investigator he played was his Dad who actually passed away while he was on his mission and then the one he is for us right now is his brother Jose who has a rough life because he is divorced and he couldn't see his kid that he had with his ex-wife and anyways it was really emotional in our second lesson with him because we were really listening to the spirit and trying to help him, and he started to tear up because as he told us later he tried to help his brother through this by teaching him the gospel when he was going through it and he said he could just see the pain his brother was going through and it was pretty serious and stuff and so he said that he kind of became his brother in the discussion.  I had a chance to pretend to be an investigator just with a quick demonstration with Hermano Wright and I chose C and it literally felt like I was him, like it was really cool and I enjoyed it.  So Hermano LeBron is a native speaker basically.  He knows English and goes to BYU though but since he was in Puerto Rico until he was 13, he basically knows Spanish really well and he also served in Argentina.

Anyways, I told Hermano LeBron we're going to be Facebook friends; he's so awesome. We did practices with like street contacting with him once where you get like 30 seconds - 2 minutes to like talk to someone and share something with them and set an appointment to visit and when he showed us his example, like any time he has showed us a teaching example I'm like, "BAPTIZE ME NOW!"

Hermano Wright actually went state-side Spanish but he was really persistent in learning it and he speaks it really well and has like 0 problems with pronunciation. Hermano LeBron said he sounded like a native speaker to him. I really like him; he's super nit picky with our Spanish.

Then Hermano Pence seems like he's just here for a job.  His first half of his mission was Spanish and his second got swapped to English, he served in Salt Lake I think, but he's not bad.  He knows how to use the scriptures really well which makes all three like amazing.  The Hermana teacher got transferred.

We've gone to the temple 3 times now; we did sealings the first time and then sessions the other two times.  Scripture reading is coming along well.  I don't have or always have a ton of time to just continue where I've been reading because typically our personal study is used looking for applicable scriptures to what our investigators need and then struggling to stay awake.  Our study block is typically from like 1:00 to 4:00 which is right after lunch and right before dinner, so the struggle to stay awake is real.  I'm in Helaman 4-5ish with my personal reading right now I believe; the Lamanites dun be righteous!

The Spanish is coming along great.  I'm really enjoying it and it's improving.  We're the intermediate district so our lessons have been 100% Spanish from the beginning, but it's just more simple haha.  It's getting better as we learn though.  Apparently our Spanish when we arrived was about as good as the Spanish of the beginners that are leaving..poor them.

I am feeling the spirit; I'm not sure if it's really prompting me to say stuff or helping me with the language.  I think it is with the language at times, but I know I'm feeling it pretty often.  If I kind of sit for a second and think, I can feel it, whenever.