Scored some TACOS!

 November 20^th

Sup sup! I can’t believe it’s my last week in the MTC; by this time next week, I’ll be back in the states! This week’s stories coming up!  I tried to take notes this week, and mark stuff in my little notebook every time I wanted to remember to write about it, so here you go. 

First, TACOS!!! Elder and Sister Jones are two elderly missionaries that work here, and they LOVE, I mean, LOVE, the elders in our district.   One day we were chatting with them about how we were sad we had never been able to eat authentic tacos from Mexico.  We weren’t doing this to try to get them to get us tacos; that wasn’t the intention at all.  In fact, we didn’t even think it was allowed or possible, but they just told us "well…if you guys can keep a secret, we’d be happy to have you over in our dorm and get you tacos."  We were seriously dead silent about it for an entire WEEK.  Then comes pday – THE NIGHT of the big taco dinner.  We walk in, and they freaking LOADED US UP.  They got us tons of al pastor tacos, tons of pollo tacos, tons of pineapple juice and treats and stuff.  It was insane!  We pigged out, and they were the best tacos I’ve had in my entire life!  I can’t ever even eat one again in the states after those; they were DELICIOUS.   Then we hung out with them for a while and partied and had a great time! They’re actually inviting us over again to hang out with them because my birthday is on Tuesday.  They are the sweetest people ever.  It was awesome.

Thursday night we had a gospel lesson with Hermana Nishiguchi, and we were learning about how to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ (Lesson 3 in preach my gospel) Then, she tells us, "okay, you guys have 7 minutes to prep a lesson for me in Spanglish, except you are all going to work as a 9 person companionship, and you are all going to teach me at one time." Then, she left the room. We were freaking out a bit about what to do.  So, I stood up, and on the board I assigned a section of the lesson to each companionship.  I basically just assigned it real quick because our district leader was taking forever, and we didn’t have time for that.  I gave everyone a part of the lesson to teach.  Unfortunately, Elder Odle was actually sick that night throwing up, so he was back in the dorm.  In the MTC, if you’re sick, your bed "becomes your companion" apparently, so I was in a trio with Elder Burdge and Elder Hendricks.  As it worked out, I had to do my part of the lesson by myself.  I also had a pretty important part of the lesson: receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

So, I studied quickly and only had enough time to do it in English.  I didn’t have enough time to prep a lesson in Spanish, so I was just hoping our teacher would be cool about it (she wasn’t, as you’ll see). As it gets to my turn (I honestly had a smoking lesson planned), I started to speak in English, and she started interrupting me over and over saying "Elder Snow, how do we say X in Spanish? How do you say Holy Ghost in Spanish? Use your Spanish!" She kept interrupting me over and over and over again.  I was so flustered and frustrated; I basically forgot my lesson.  I was literally to the point of exploding.  I haven’t been that upset with someone in long, long time- haha.  I basically had steam coming out of my ears.  She then stopped me and told me I put no effort into it, and I almost lost it.  But, I was polite and said,” I’m sorry, but I’m at a disadvantage here.  I have one of the most important topics, I had no time to prep, and I don’t have a companion.”  She just nodded; I took a deep breath and just tried to calm down, then continued my lesson.  At the end of my lesson, I bore my testimony.  It’s really the first time I’ve born my testimony since I’ve been here.  I mean, I’ve testified of things in lessons, but its never been super awesome because it was in Spanish.  Well I had the opportunity to do this one in English.  Once I started going, it was just so awesome.  I’ve never felt the spirit so strong since I’ve been here in the MTC.  The room went DEAD silent.  When I finished I looked around, and everyone was crying.  It was a surreal experience.  Afterwards, Hermana Nishiguchi asked us what our favorite part of the lesson was, and without fail, everyone said their favorite part was when I bore my testimony, including Hermana Nishiguchi!   It was a crazy, super SUPER cool experience. 

Next, on Saturday, we had the opportunity to teach NOT ONLY Juan (Hermano Gutierrez), but  also  Juan’s wife (Hermana Gutierrez), which isn’t something people generally have the opportunity to do. Usually, we only teach one investigator. But, we had the opportunity to teach two, and we wanted to make it a very special lesson because Juan’s “story” is that his wife left him and wouldn’t talk to him anymore.  Yet, she accepted an invitation to be taught by the missionaries - with Juan.  Since we wanted to make it special, we decided that we were going to open our lesson with a song, Love at Home (Cuando Hay Amor in spanish), and then teach about the importance of the family and how the gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families.  We practiced twice and did it, and it went so good!  I’m not a very good singer or anything, but elder Odle is, so he carries me pretty well.  Miriam (Juan’s wife) was bawling when we sang the song; the spirit was so strong. It was so cool! Then we just went along with our lesson and taught her, but man it was such a cool experience.  If I have other companions on my mission who sing, I might do that more often, just because of the spirit it invites to the beginning of the lesson. So cool.  Here's a video of us practicing:

On Sunday, lots of things happened! I’m not sure if I told you this, but every Sunday we have to have a talk prepared in Spanish, and six people are randomly selected to speak in sacrament meeting.  Nobody knows how to speak Spanish, obviously, so it’s usually pretty boring.  I actually wrote a pretty decent one this Sunday, and what do you know, I got called to speak!   So, I cruised on up there in front of everybody, (fyi the topic was el perserverar hasta el fin, or, endure to the end), and I brought my scriptures up there with my handwritten talk.  I unfold the paper, look down, and my ink had smeared everywhere.  I couldn’t read a THING. I was just like ah no..what do I do?   So, I started making a couple jokes to lighten the mood.  Then, I painfully started trying to read through the talk.  I was doing pretty good too, not making any mistakes, until I got to the scriptures that I wanted to share. I’m not quite sure what scripture it was exactly.  But, I misread it off my paper and ended up reading a scripture about Jews and Gentiles - not about enduring to the end.  So, I just looked up, paused, and said, "yeah, that was totally the wrong scripture, but let’s just pretend like that didn’t happen and flip to D&C 14:7" and everyone laughed. I got through it.

On Sunday night, I met this girl named Alli Young (Hermana Young) and her dad is a 1/5th owner of doTERRA! His name is Rob Young, and he is the Director of Marketing. How insane is that? This chick is like 19 and has been working for doTERRA since day 1, and she’s actually done all the graphic design for all the bottles and since she was in high school. How insane is that?!  I told her that my mom was the hippie queen in San Diego, and she laughed.  Then, Elder Cook started bragging about me, and how I cured everyone’s bumps and bruises.  It was pretty funny – I thought you’d like that, mom.   

Also, another funny thing that happened on Sunday: the MTC president saw me sitting waiting to watch our devotional Sunday night, and he waved me over to come talk to him.  I was thinking, "awww crap what did I do.”  He just puts his arm around me and says "Elder Snow, how are you doing?" I responded, "I’m doing great president, how about yourself?"  He was like, "oh just fine - when are you leaving? I hope next week sometime, yes?" To which I replied, "yeah leave next Wednesday, so you’re stuck with me for another week.”  He just smiled at me and said, "well good, son, it’s time you get yourself a haircut. It’s getting ridiculous. Get your haircut on P-day.”  I just laughed and told him okay.  I saw him at the temple today and he said "I better not see your hair that long today; I want you to get it right when you get back!" hahah it was funny. He’s just joking for the most part.  He does want me to cut my hair, but he isn’t upset or anything; he just thinks its funny. 

Monday night was our last lesson with Hermana Nishiguchi.  She left for Provo today.  She decided that she wanted to interview everyone individually, before leaving.  She picked me first.  Now, I just want to let you know right now that I’m not quite sure what I did to become her favorite, but it was super evident that I was her favorite student. We start this interview, and we were just chatting, and she’s asking me questions.  She just straight up told me I was her favorite and there was something different about me.  I just chuckled like, oh whatever, but then she got serious.  She told me that I’m a natural leader or something and she’s really excited to see how my mission is going to go.  She specifically asked for my email address and gave me hers, so i could email her about my mission because she is excited to hear about my mission. I was like wow, I didn’t know I had that much of an impact on her. She was telling me how some of the things I’ve said to her have changed her and helped her and blah blah blah… sappy stuff.  She seemed genuinely excited to hear about my mission. I asked around afterwards, and she didn’t ask anyone else for his or her email, but me.  Kinda awkward.

Yesterday Elder Odle and I were supposed to teach Juan about enduring to the end.  I’m not gonna lie - we didn’t really prep for this one.  I was in a bit of a bad mood and was just hoping to get through it.  I was slightly worried and frustrated because I felt that my Spanish wasn’t too good the past few days, and worried I was forgetting some stuff.  Well, we get into this lesson, and I don’t know what happened, but Elder Odle and I went into Spanish overdrive and were just like "blahlbaslñdjlblahblahblalbhalh" talking all fast and good in Spanish.  I was like - what the heck - where is this coming from?  We were in there for 35 minutes; it was great! A really good lesson, honestly one of our best since we’ve been here. It was fantastic. 

The eventful thing that happened today was our temple trip: Hermana black (girl in my district) had a 15 second seizure while she was getting ready and had to skip the temple session. She has no prior experience with seizures, and its never happened to her before, but apparently lately she’s been talking to the other girls about how she’s been seeing some spots in her vision.  I’m kind of worried she has a tumor or something crazy like that. Please keep her in your prayers!

Random:

The driving here in Mexico city is CRAZY.  We thought it was nuts in Costa Rica!  Imagine putting like 32 million people into a city and driving even worse than that.  It’s so awesome!  Today I saw 4 people literally SITTING ON TOP OF A GARBAGE TRUCK and hitching a ride to their destination. It was so insane - hahahah. I laughed so hard!

Love you all; have fun; someone play my league account for me (travis/gagesnipe); someone keep me posted on walking dead PLEASE, and…. Yeah, love you.  See ya!