30 June 2014 Letter -- Week one in Mexico. Whew!

Well I have officially been in the mission field for one week. Whew. It feels like I have been here forever, but I still have no idea what´s going on. It was SO nice talking to you last week. I miss you all SO MUCH!

My companion is Elder Dahlin. He is super patient with me, especially because I can´t speak Spanish. Haha. It´s coming. The people speak SO fast here. It´s awkward where they say something and you have no idea what they are saying and so I would just say "si". Not even the right response to their question. We work super hard here. We always walk with a purpose. Like I thought I walk fast, but no. We are almost at the point of running. I look forward to bed like no other. And then the alarm clock goes off. :) 

  

So about the area. I am in a city called Toluca. You can probably go on Google maps and find around where I live.

I live right across from a Blockbuster and gas station. We work in three areas, San Mateo, Santa Barbra, and Centro. It is pretty in a weird way. It rains EVERY day. I am so grateful for my rain jacket and umbrella. It usually starts out sunny and then rains.

People live in such different life styles. I think I am still in shock. You knock on a metal door that looks like a garage. Then you go in and it´s just walls without a roof (like a courtyard) and then you go into their house. In the courtyard, often there are multiple houses. I am so confused with who is who. Everyone is somehow related to each other. And everyone has the same name. Some parts of families are members, some aren´t. I think I have met like 5 or 6 Ceasars since being here. They all live with their grandparents and whole family. I have to practically study their names and something about them to remember. There are stray dogs everywhere. Very few Chihuahuas, surprisingly. The streets are also difficult because I´ve never heard the names because they are all Spanish names and they all look the same. Some people´s houses are super small and just tin roofs. Our apartment is mediocre nice. (see pictures, we just cleaned really well today) We DO have warm showers, which is nice. I think the mission president makes sure we do. Thank goodness.

We wake up and shower and get ready at 6:25 and then study from 7:30-10:30 and then go out and contact and meet people at their houses and teach them about the Gospel. When people tell a story or answer a question they talk a lot. I get so lost and sometimes start falling asleep. Haha. My companion usually goes ¨my companion is now going to explain...¨ and then I try to explain it and he restates it because I don´t think I made sense. Haha. We are out till about 9:30 and then get home, plan for the next day and then go to sleep. It´s interesting because when people say they will be home or will commit to doing something like going to church they don´t do it.  

We had 4 people in church this past Sunday. They average about 1 baptism a week, which is crazy! We were going to have one this week but it fell through. The ward is kind of struggling right now because they just got split. We are going to fix that... 

The people are so nice. They always are willing to listen to us. It´s hard to tell if they aren´t interested in our message though. Haha. The food is good, pretty different, but good. We have beans and tortillas ever meal. You always put the food in the tortillas. We eat breakfast at our place and then at 2:00 we eat at a members house. We may have a snack when we get home, but that´s pretty much it.

There are some rules they have here which I am not too fond of. Like we aren´t allowed to email girls outside of the family. I think we can write them, but it takes forever to get them. I think we only get mail like every 6 weeks... :(  Also they make us like glue our hair down with a part. I don´t like it that much, but we need to be obedient...

We usually start off our lessons with a hymn, which is always really nice to bring the Spirit. Elder Dahlin is from Utah and is majoring in theatre, so luckily we sound pretty good. Most Mexicans just pick a note and sing the same note the entire song.  Haha.

We have had some miracles this week. We ran into this one member girl who yelled ¨Mormons!¨ She was from Vegas and was with her cousin who wasn´t a member. We are going to try to teach her cousin. It was so nice to talk to someone in English. Right after there was this guy who was listening to our conversation (the parts that were in Spanish) and wanted to know more so we are going to teach him. I´ve definitely had some interesting experiences. There are a lot of problems here with drinking and worshipping the Virgin Mary. Very eye opening. What a different world than what I've lived. I hope to soon love it.  Anyway, that´s pretty much my first week! 

I cannot believe it has been 5 years since Clayton passed away. I have thought about him a lot lately. I am so grateful for the Plan of Salvation. I miss him so much and cannot wait to see him again. I miss you all family and friends! Love you!

-Elder Thomas

June 21 - Final semana a la CCM (MTC)!

Well this is my last Preparation day (P-day) at the MTC! I have no idea how the time has gone by so quickly. I've learned so much, but I am sure when I get to Mexico, I will feel so unprepared. I just have to put my trust in God and hope that I make it through the next few months. My Spanish is slowly coming. Before I knew all this stuff, there was a lot of grammatical errors that I didn't know. Now I know everything I don't know and it's hard to keep everything straight in my head. We sometimes sing Christmas hymns and I told my district that hopefully by this Christmas we will all be fluent. 

 

Here at the MTC we have been having our final days. This past Sunday was Father's Day and I wanted to call you Dad and talk!  Fortunately for me, I was one of the lucky ones during Sacrament meeting to be randomly called up on the spot to give a talk in Spanish. This week's topic was baptism, but I tried to throw some things in about fathers :) People said my Spanish seemed to be good, but they weren't really sure because they couldn't really understand Spanish themselves so...haha. How'd your talk go mom?

Later that night we had Sheri Dew come talk to us. It was really good. She talked about having grace of Christ and how it can influence our lives. I went up to her after and asked if she knew Nana and she said that she was really good friends with her and they travel often. It's really fun finding people you know or connections with others. While here I have seen I think at least 15 people from my ward at BYU or people I've met. It is so fun running into people. I even saw my roommate David Asay this past week. 

We haven't taught as much this week. We finished with our TRC investigator. They were people they hire (or maybe volunteer, I am not sure) to pretend to be investigators. Some people are actually investigators though. On Tuesday we had to teach again over Skype. Elder Olvera was in Vegas getting his visa, so his companion Elder Huber joined us. We prepared really well for the lesson and then went in and it wasn't our best lesson... I've found most times I prepare for a lesson it always goes a different direction. We eventually got through it. I've been having a hard time just getting to know people and then relating the Gospel to their life. I hope it comes as I learn the language more and practice in Spanish. We also taught Hermano Eaton who was Samuel. We taught him Saturday and then on Wednesday. We found out that he had a wife and daughter that left him and he wanted to change for himself and for him. We got him to read the Book of Mormon and set a date for baptism. Wednesday wasn't as great because every time we would teach him, he would never remember what we taught him the time before. Since it was our last time teaching, afterwards, Hermano Eaton told us about Samuel's background. Samuel is someone Hermano Eaton taught on his mission. His family is really broken. He is 18 with a wife and little  three month year old girl. He has some sketchy details. Hermano Eaton also said that his attention span was so small and he would forget everything. He only gave us 10% of what he actually is. It's crazy that these are going to be similar to some of the people I teach. We also have taught each other in our district and our teachers without any role playing. 

On Tuesday we had Elder Ballard come and talk to us. He talked about staying focused and avoiding the "noise" of the world. We sang "Consider the Lilies" for the choir piece which was really nice. 

We went to main campus for all of Thursday for in-field orientation. They pretty much taught us the importance of being involved in the wards and getting everyone involved in missionary work. We read this story of this sister missionary serving out in the Cambridge ward in Massachusetts and she flipped the entire view of missionary work in the ward. I hope I can do the same in Mexico! We also saw a video of the growth of the Church since the Restoration. It's amazing how even in the past 40 years the Church has exploded. Wahoo! It's time to contribute! :D

Today was muy bueno! I may or may not of told Dallin when I would be at the temple today. I completely forgot I wrote him that until we were riding the bus up to the temple. I walked up and sure enough he was there. I wasn't expecting him to, but he came in and did sealing with me! In case he is married when I am gone, at least I got to be in a sealing with him now...Everyone in the temple thought he was a missionary as well and it was awkward when we were like "I'm a missionary, and yes, he's my brother" haha. I told him to pick up those shoes to return at 12:30 at the Wyview creamery so I met him there and gave him those and a cinnamon roll (thanks for those Mom! They were delicious!). He wanted me to practice contacting him and then snapchatted me sharing a piece of my testimony. Oh Dallin... When he called you, Mom and Dad, he put you on speaker phone. You were talking about getting ready to go boating... I was trying so hard not to say something because I would feel guilty talking to you. It was fun hearing your voices though :)  It was SO fun seeing Dallin, but I'm going to miss him. :(  

Anyway, that's my week! Thanks Tyler and Whitney for your letters! I'll try to write back before tomorrow and get those sent before I leave for Mexico (or if I have time to email you today). Oh yeah... I am leaving for Mexico on Monday! CrAzY! I am enjoying my last few nice showers, cold milk, and clean water. My companion and one other elder in my district are reassigned to Salt Lake City East because they never got their visas. They seem to be okay with it though which is good. We leave here at 4:30 AM and our flight is at like 8:30. I have no idea what the deal is with calling you. I think we get to, but I am not sure when.

Boating with Stokers sounds fun. Their picture is here at the MTC in the mission presidents case haha. Congrats on painting the deck! That is such a chore, but I am sure it looks great. Aaron, you crack me up. I saw your snapchat to dallin of your pole vaulting accident haha. Glad to hear you all are well. I love you all! Next time you get an email from me is in Mexico! Miss you!

Love,

Elder Tanner Thomas

June 14 - Been here a month and only a week til I leave for Mexico

Well it officially has been 1 month since I entered the MTC! I feel like I have been in here for forever, but at the same time, I feel like I just started.  A lot happens here in a week I feel like, but everyday still feels the same. So some highlights of the week:

The oldest district left on Monday morning. It is weird how you only know a group of people for a month and it's still sad saying bye to them.  That's going to be my district in a week! We did get our travel plans! We leave at 4:30 am to the airport and our plane leaves at 8:30, so expect a call from me then!!! Only 3 of us (including me) have our visas, but another one should be getting his this week. The other two, one of which is my companion don't have theirs.  My companion's passport got lost in the mail somehow.  He will probably get reassigned so he is pretty bummed, but it'll be good either way.

So with our investigators, we taught Ivette Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Monday was interesting because I kind of just sat there and just listened and thought. At the end I simply bore my testimony, and you could really feel the Spirit in the lesson. Elder McCrory taught most of the lesson. There are cameras in the room so our teachers can view us and listen to us. It turns out that day my teacher Hermano Doblin was watching our lessons while the other companionships were in their lessons. After our lesson he pulled me aside and asked me what I was thinking. I told him that I was really learning the importance of listening to our investigators and their needs.  Also that some things don't necessarily always need to be heard to teach. It was a neat experience for me. It was cool that my teacher picked up on what I was doing. He is such a good teacher and seems to relate really well to me. We continued teaching Ivette throughout the week with the Gospel of Jesus Christ about baptism and the Holy Ghost.  On Thursday we had our teacher pretend to be a member with us.  They would start talking fast Spanish and I would get really lost haha. Then Friday was our last day teaching her. We finished teaching lesson 3 (which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ). It was a great last meeting. We encouraged her to continue to meet with missionaries if she was a real investigator (we weren't sure if she was real or not). Turns out she is a member and just got her mission call last week. Her conversion story was real though. It was so cool to talk to her for a little bit after and thank her for teaching us. 

We have taught Samuel (our other teacher Hermano Eaton) a few times. It's hard to make progress with him. Apparently Mexicans a lot of the time forget what you teach them the previous lesson, so he is giving us that same experience. He says he believes in The Book of Mormon, but I can't tell if he just believes because we tell him or if he actually knows for himself. Today we are planning to teach him about God's plan for him.

On Tuesday we taught on Skype. Elder McCrory and I were trying to contact someone they assigned us with, but the person was in Mexico and had a bad connection so they found someone else that one of my teachers baptized on his mission. They are just member lessons, but it sure was humbling. We couldn't understand most of what she said because of the bigger words she would use. And worse, both of our teachers sat on each side of Elder McCrory and me and would kind of laugh because our faces looked in shock since we didn't know what to say. I am sure it was hilarious. It was fine though. The lady we taught was so nice and loves missionaries. It was cool to teach through a computer. We even say prayers together and read the scriptures together. 

Also on Tuesday we had Elder Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was a pretty good devotional. In his talk, he had some really good points. He talked about where we are going, we are going to build up branches and wards which is a cool thought. We are going to build up the leadership and the members. 

On Wednesday our district was assigned to host at main campus. We went up and hosted all the new missionaries who were being dropped off by their families. It was actually really sad because a lot of families are driving up and in the front is the mother crying and everyone getting teary eyed including all of the siblings. I hate goodbyes. How cool it is though that we say goodbye to our families for 2 years to serve God and build up his kingdom. While hosting I did see a kid that was in my ward at BYU. I have seen 5 or so people from my ward and it's fun to say hi to them. 

Today we went to the temple.  We went to the bus stop and apparently there was no bus because of the marathon, so our whole zone decided to walk up to the temple! It was a fun walk, especially to be out of the walls of the MTC. 

After the temple we went to main campus for lunch. I grabbed my food and then just heard this girl start squealing. I was kind of confused and then looked over and it was Stephanie Smith from BYU!!!  We both almost started crying we were so happy. I sat down my food tray and we both ran to each other, but we couldn't hug!  It was so tempting not to hug, so we just shook hands. We talked a bit but not very long. She leaves this Tuesday. She is English speaking so she hasn't been here that long. So much fun to see her! 

After class our district was all losing focus so we decided to make boats and float them down the river we have around our classroom. Some elders were getting into it and started cutting up their laminated conjugation charts haha. We went the other day to the copy center just to get blank lamination sheets for boats. Yup, just as Elder Jordan in my district says,  "this place really gets to ya".

Dad, your experience with Elder Bednar sounds amazing! That is so cool you got to talk to him. The temple trip sounds great too!

Hopefully you got the boat out today!  Congrats to Aaron in finishing school and for his sports awards! It looks like Tyler's family had fun at Myrtle Beach. I bet that was good to take a break from school!

Congrats to Cam and Kelsey! I am so happy for them!

Good luck with your talk tomorrow Mom!  Just be glad it's not in Spanish! Every week we may get randomly chosen to give a talk in Spanish in church, so every week we prepare a talk to give depending on the subject (tomorrow is baptism). 

Happy Father's Day Dad! You are awesome! I sent something in the mail yesterday so it should be there soon. Love you!

Thanks for all the letters everyone! I will write you back! Just got to find the time :P Love you all!

-Elder Thomas

P.S. Mom, probably cinnamon rolls :)

Jun 7 - Only two weeks left at MTC!

Hi everyone!

We only have 2 weeks left here at the MTC!  I cannot believe how fast the weeks go by. We should get our travel plans to Mexico before this time next week. So everyone in my district (all 6 elders) is going to Mexico City West. Only 3 of us have gone to the Mexican consulate, so I don't know if everyone will be leaving with us. Everyone has taken Spanish except for my companion. He has been a little behind, but for the most part we are now at the same level. Most of what we talk about is Gospel stuff, so sometimes when our teacher tells a story there is a lot of new vocab. I don't know how our Spanish level is. Like some people I can understand really well, or others I am completely lost. I would definitely say I have passed what I learned in high school Spanish. 

This past Sunday was fast Sunday. It was difficult to fast because you wake up at 6:30 and you realize how hungry you are. It was still really good though. We had a great testimony meeting. I mentioned that I lost a brother 5 years ago and one of the hermanas in my district asked about him later.  Apparently she had lost a brother unexpectedly a few years ago. It was really nice to talk to someone about going through it all.  She said none of her siblings are active in the church but she is still really close with them. I have realized how interesting it is that we all grow up differently and come from different backgrounds with our own story. Later at night we had a devotional with Brother Hemingway who is the head of the social media missionary department.  He talked about how Facebook and technology can bring people the gospel to people all over the world and especially our friends. It was way neat. After that we watched the John Tanner Story and the Only a Stonecutter story. One thing said in the Stonecutter movie was that most callings are seldom convenient.  I thought about serving a mission, and how that isn't very convenient, but it is what we are supposed to do.

On Monday, Elder McCrory and I started teaching our TRC (teaching resource center) progressive investigator, Ivette. She is so nice and ready for the Gospel.  We don't know if she is a real or fake investigator (they leave it unknown).  We met with her a few times this week. The first meeting we just met her and found out what she needs. Then the next we taught most of the Restoration and then we got her to pray. She started crying and she could definitely feel something special. She talks to us in English a lot though, so I kinda feel bad for not practicing as much Spanish... She did agree to eventually be baptized though! The next lesson we taught about the Plan of Salvation and she asked us a bunch of obscure questions like about Satan and what not. We told her we would study them and then yesterday we went to teach her and apparently she is sick so the TRC teacher told us we could email her. We told her that those questions about the Plan of Salvation are good questions, but aren't vital to her coming closer to Christ. We wrote more about the Plan of Salvation and we sent a video about it from lds.org.  It was so cool to teach by email. Technology really is helping people find more about the church!

We aren't teaching our other investigator Adam (our teacher Hermano Doblin) because of our TRC person takes up that time. We are still teaching Samuel (Hermano Eaton). We are still trying to understand him better, but I don't feel like we are making a lot of progress with him. We are meeting him later tonight, so we will see how that goes. 

On Tuesday Elder Schwitzer of the Seventy came and spoke for the devotional.  He and his wife talked about loving our investigators and seeing them as children of God. It was a good reminder to not see our investigators as just people to teach, but people to come closer to Christ and return to God. 

This morning we went to the temple and we did sealings for the first time. It was such a cool thing. I am so glad that our families can be together forever! We all came back and took a nap (I LOVE NAPS!) and then we went to Burger Surpreme. It's Elder Jordan's birthday today, so hopefully we can do something fun – because we have so much free time.... haha. Anyway, that is mostly my week. The oldest district of 4 hermanas and 4 elders leave this Monday, so my district will be the oldest. It'll be sad when they are gone because they have some fun missionaries in there. We should be getting at least 1 or maybe 2 more districts in our zone this week. I think they are expecting over 100 new missionaries this week for west campus. Last week there were about 50. It is about to be packed here!

It sounds like you have been having a nice week! I am glad that the scholarship night went well. I wish I could have been there. How is it been a year since last years award ceremony and my graduation?! I still can't believe that Aaron is almost done with scouts (and you are almost done with scouts too!)  Let me know how Aaron does at states! I wish I could have gone to the branch temple trip. That sounds awesome. I am sure it'll be a good bonding experience for everyone and nice to go to the temple. It doesn't really feel like summer because we don't do summer stuff. One week from today and you will be cruising on Lake Thompson watching the sun go down listening to some Keith Urban and eating a pizza.  Ahhhhh, the life. It's sad how much we all think about "when I get home, I'm going to do" or "watch" or "listen to".  It's almost been a month since I've been gone. Crazy.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. I love getting letters from you all.  Excited to hear from you all!

Love you and miss you!

-Elder Thomas