September 23, 2013

So first off a super great scripture that has been super helpful for me personally and in lessons with other people. In the Book of Mormon, in the book of 3 Nephi, there is a stellar scripture about prayer and in Español it reads: "y cualquier cosa que pidáis al Padre en mía nombre, si es justa, creyendo que recibiréis, he aquí, os será concedida." I love the scripture so much, it just rocks! So this week I had a lot of fun with Spanish. First off, I took a Spanish comprehension test, specifically on grammer, and I got a 50%. Normally I would just hang my head in shame, but basically it means I went from 0% knowledge of Spanish 2 months ago to 50% accuracy in a fluency test. So, good day in Tumbes! I also gave my first talk in Spanish in church. The ward mission leader came up to us one day last week and said that he wanted us to give talks, and so my companion said, okay well my companion can probably talk for 5 minutes, to which the ward mission leader said nahhh he can do 10. Challenge accepted. I gave a 15 minute talk straight in Spanish. Point 1: Elder Rich. I also cool cultural experiences from the week to share with everyone in the Estados Unidos. First off is music. The music is jamming down in Perú, quite literally. People just turn up their stereos to full blast and play music for hours. We were walking and right in the middle of the street was 6 loudspeakers blasting Spanish dance music, and only 4 people were listening to it. Yet no one complained. People were just sitting out in front of their houses reading the paper, not caring at all. It was quite glorious for a music lover. We also have this obnoxious yet pretty cool catepillar train car that drives around every night playing a car alarm (literally, its horn is a car alarm) and busing around families with little kids who apparently love car alarms. But this little train doesn´t just go once around the block for the kiddies, oh no, it goes 10 times around this area from 9 until 11 everynight. It is quite interesting, obnoxious, and cool. I want one for when I go home. I also helped a lady redo her house. This was done by first moving the furniture to one part of the room, pouring mounds of dirt in the desired new area, pouring a mixture of soap and water on the dirt to help it compact, and then moving the furniture onto the new area. It was very unique, but nice and easy. We need easy home-maintence like this. With this little bit of time left I would like to share something I learned in my study of the Bible. First off, it has been interesting being in a Catholic-dominated country because the Bible is like the newspaper here: everyone just reads it casually everyday. Thus, we use the Bible pretty much every lesson and so I have been studying a lot from it. Anyways, I have found it interesting in the book of Éxodo (Exodus) that everytime people get blessings from God like crossing the parted sea to escape the Egyptians, getting manna from heaven, getting sweet water or even water from a rock, the people end up murmuring and wanting more. It is sillyness, but sadly it is the way of human nature. A good lesson for me to remember to count my blessings each day. Anyways, thanks for everyone´s thoughts and prayers. I read from Aimee´s blog that BYU didn´t fair too well against the U, and all I can say to that is obviously someone got paid off in that game. Crazyiness. Oh and another side note, I also keep wishing I had spell check here but I do not, so count your blessings! Sincerely, Elder Rich