week of May 31

Hello,

Can't believe it's been another week.  Every week i'm here, the time flies by faster.  I got some sweet packages and letters this week, so thank you bunches!! Every day my district has a contest.  Packages are 3 points and letters are one.  I got 4 letters and 3 packages one day and defeated everyone else. It was awesome. 
I honestly don't even remember what happened this week, because I feel like I was just writing yesterday.  On Sunday we had Marcus B Nash of the 70 come speak to us and then after that we all got to watch the broadcast of Sister Monson's funeral.  Tuesday night, W Craig Zwick of the 70 came for the devotional and his family.  Apparently his grandkids are also the grandchildren of President Eyring. I really enjoyed his talk because he gave some steps to developing Christlike attributes.  It was pretty cool and the Spirit was really strong. 

The other day at lunch, my companion and I were the last ones left at the table finishing up, and one of the MTC district presidents, President Jenkins, came and sat down next to us with Elder D----- from South Africa.  President Jenkins is the one who has kind of been in charge of my companion the whole time she has been at the MTC and figuring out what to do and such.  He said to her, "well are you ready for tomorrow?" She was confused and he said, "You're leaving tomorrow! I have your plane ticket on my desk!" Apparently there was some miscommunication, so we went to the health clinic that afternoon because Hermana Boomhower was still in her boot and wanted to see if she was clear to leave the next day.  We got to leave campus, which was awesome, and walk down to the BYU health center and she got some x-rays.  We took them back to the doctor and apparently, bad news, her foot had not improved since her last x-ray.  This caused some concern so she did not fly out to her mission yesterday, and today we have to go to a podiatrist somewhere in Provo because she might have to get surgery now.  The podiatrist will decide what needs to be done, and then on Monday she will meet with the district president to see if she has to go home and get surgery or just wait it out or what.  Apparently they cannot keep missionaries here longer than 12 weeks, and she has been here for 10 going on 11. So they have to either send her home to get surgery, send her home to heal, or send her out to the field.  She'll find out all that out in the coming days. It's pretty crazy! I feel really bad.  She is a trooper though.  I probably would go crazy if I had to be here that long. The MTC is great and all... but yeah. 12 weeks is too long, especially when she was only planning to be here for 2.

We have two investigators we are teaching right now.  Luis, who is a grandpa and his entire family is active in the church, and Ricardo who is a 15 year old boy.  It's fun because our teachers are really good actors.  Especially Hno Stevenson who is Ricardo.  Whenever we teach him he just responds with stuff like "esta bien." and doesn't talk much.  Like a typical 15 year old boy who thinks he's too cool for church.  we asked him the other day what he wanted in his life or something like that, and he said, "Una casa grande y un ferrari." So it's been fun for us to try and adjust our teaching styles to make the Gospel exciting to him and get him to feel the Spirit. 

Spanish is continuing to come along as well.  I wonder what the teachers think when we try to speak to them in our completely broken spanish.  I imagine it's pretty funny.  I was telling one of our investigators how someone was sad and angry, but I couldn't remember the word for angry for some reason, so I accidentally said they were sad and orange. haha.  I realized what I said right after though and he and I started laughing.  Also, my companion and I were trying to say that "we care about you," but we accidentally said, "we are in love with you." Haha.  I guess this is what the MTC is for. Learning. And that is why I will have a trainer when I get in the field that will hopefully actually know Spanish and can correct my mistakes.

 We got a new district in our zone today.  Also, two districts left this week and last.  When our district got here, there were 5 altogether.  4 left in the past two weeks, and one came in.  So now there are 2.  (I feel like just now I was being like the donut shop worker in the Brian Regan joke that does the obvious counting for everybody that already knows how to count.) Anyway, it's a little lonely in our hallway, but it's nice because the districts that left were really loud and distracting haha so my district has been focusing a little better.  There are two people in the new district from Missouri - woo! One is from hamilton, the other is from Overland Park.  Which I thought was only in Kansas but he says he lives in the Missouri side of it.  We are also getting two new districts next week, which is when Hannah Hoyt comes in and she's Spanish speaking so i'm hoping she's in one of them because that would be awesome. :)

They opened up the "West Campus" of the MTC this week which includes Wyview and Raintree.  About 100 people got transferred down there and some others arrived there on wednesday.  I guess they live at Wyview, and then have classes at Raintree.  I have been trying to snoop and figure out who all goes to which campus, but apparently it's pretty random.  Some Hungarian-speaking and Spanish-speaking and English-speaking were sent down there.  And some people going to Madagascar.  So I guess it's not really a specific language.  It's cool though that they had to expand because of all the new missionaries.  At the devotional on tuesday, Elder Zwick kept saying how 'historical' this was that we were expanding and such.  He also said that 'the brethern have never before been as involved in missionary work as they are now.'  Or something like that.  I thought that was cool.  He said that for assigning mission calls there used to be one or two apostles that did it every week, but now they require 6 apostles to assign every week. Awesome! Anyway. Random.

Well I don't know what else to say, but just that I love you all and i'm so grateful to be serving a mission! estoy agradecida por la oportunidad a servir un mision y ser a la CCM.  Yo se que el evangelio is verdadera y por medio viviendo los principios de el evangelio, nos podemos volver a vivir con Dios y Jesucristo y nos familias por eternidad.  yo estoy muy entusiasmado a predicad este mensajo a la gente in Peru!!!!

-Hopefully that made sense to those spanish speakers out there. :)

Love you all,

Hermana Jones