Holy cow I´m writing my first letter as a missionary!! Wow this has been such an insane week, I´ve got so much written down that I want to mention here so everything is going to be way scattered, haha sorry about that. So we made it here safely last Wednesday morning at 3:00 in the morning! We didn´t get to bed that night until 4:00 and they made us wake up at 7:00. Ugh. That first day was the longest day of my life, but not in a homesick way. I haven´t been homesick this whole time! Don´t get me wrong here, I miss everyone so so so so much, but I´m just loving my time here so far! This week has felt like a month. I did get misty eyes looking at my pictures one night....but that´s all for the crying so far haha! Okay here´s where this email is going to get really random, sorry for all the bouncing around. It smells really weird at the CCM. Like a high school locker room mixed with weird laundry detergent. That´s the worst part though so there could be worst things. The spanish is coming slowley but surely, the gift of tongues is so real! We had this 20-1 missionary to investigator type class discussion on the first day, the kind we used to do in mission prep. I felt so good about that, I´m just ready to start the teaching part right now! The Spanish, not so much. But like I said, it´s coming! The easiest is reading it, then understanding the teachers, then speaking it, then understanding the natives and everyone else. We´ve been eating every meal with the Latino elders and trying to talk to them so that helps a little. We have a fake investigator named Carlos who´s really our teacher, but we go to his house every night and teach him a lesson in Spanish and he acts like an investigator. Man that´s hard! He just lobs softball questions out there, the perfect questions for missionaries to answer, but we don´t know enough Spanish to explain how we would like to! I´m getting along well with my companion, Elder Chapman. He really has a great knowledge and love for the gospel, but man his Spanish is pretty bad. He works unbelievably hard on it though and he´s braver than me when it comes to talking to the natives when we go out in public! Haha his Spanish accent is so horrible though. I said yall one time this week without even thinking about it, so I´m also becoming fluent in South Carolinian without even knowing it. What´s up with the start of World War 3?? There were some rumors flying around the CCM a few nights ago, but that´s died down and now no one´s talking about it anymore. But that´s still pretty crazy if it´s true!! We´ve played basketball and ultimate frisbee football every day for exercise so that´s been sweet. The basketball courts are horrible, they´re really slippery and the hoops are nine feet, but it´s better than nothing! We´ve got some pretty cute Hermanas in our district, haha so it was hard the first few days to remember that I´m a missionary.;) I heard about all the football scores from Elder Sheffield, one of the counselors in the branch presidency here. Go Mustangs baby!!!! Wow that´s sweet, I wish I could´ve been there to see it! I also heard that BYU won and Utah lost...bummer;) There´s an elder here that could be Zac Efron. His name is Andrew Maddocks, look him up if you can. It´s insane. But he wants to be a hair stylist so that´s weird. Man I miss everyone so much and hope you are all doing okay back home! Love you!!!!!!
Love,
Tanner
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| Elder Gudoy (the Lima area director for S & I) came to meet me and bring me some chocolate! |
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| The elders in my district outside of the Lima Temple |
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| It's official! |
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| The view from a balcony here! |
