Week 5 - Email to Friends and Family

I cannot believe I only have a little over a week left here in the MTC, it feels like I’ve been in this place for forever now.

This week has been great, very busy like always but really good. Last Saturday we went to a naval museum for p-day and it was cool I have never been in such a formal museum before, it was literally a group of 12, 19-year-old elders in this museum and not to bag on Spanish culture or history but the paintings of their past kings are hilarious. We had a good time hahaha.

Last Friday was pretty normal, we have 2 lessons we teach every day and we have been progressing our investigators far each day.

Saturday at the park was awesome I was put with a native Spanish speaker from Honduras named Elder Serrano. He’s awesome and we worked so well together. He could explain the parts I can’t so well in Spanish and together we placed 4 Books of Mormon and got 2 references which wasn’t too bad. One of the people we spoke to who was one of the references took the Book of Mormon we gave her and she lit up she had this sudden urge to really listen and take the book and read it, she seemed really interested which I’m really glad for her. I learned two things from this last trip the first was how hard it is to take rejection. We go out as missionaries as volunteers in this work to spread the gospel which we know to be true. At least 5 instances we gave the Book of Mormon to someone and they took the book look at it and think for a second and then turn it away and give it back. And I guess they’re not ready but to see someone turn down the truth right in front of them is hard to take in. Second, I had a deep spiritual experience of my testimony of eternal families and the Plan of Salvation grow. We sing every time at the end of our park trip and me and my companion were late. On our way back we felt we needed to talk to one guy and his girlfriend or something he was talking to and it started off great. Serrano was talking to the guy he loved our message and then we talked about through prayer we can know about the truth of the BOM. And he shut off automatically. He shared how he doesn’t believe in prayer and that God listens to us because his grandma passed away years ago and he didn’t know why God would allow bad things to happen to good people and why she would pass away so young. Elder Serano shared in the gospel with the Book of Mormon we can answer these questions through prayer and he shared he wouldn’t and that if we know the answer that we should tell him right in that moment and we were late so we couldn’t explain the whole Plan of Salvation to him and we couldn’t give him an answer and he wouldn’t take the Book of Mormon and in this moment I could feel the Spirit very strong and the Spirit testified to me that even if this man is ready and humble enough to listen to my message that we still have the answers to these questions and the knowledge of eternal families in the Gospel.

Sunday we had testimony meeting and it was good to hear the testimonies of many of the new missionaries here the Russian learning missionaries and as well the native Spanish speakers. I added my testimony too and we could really feel the spirit there more than most other testimony meetings. Also we fasted for 24 hours. We fasted dinner on Saturday night and breakfast Sunday morning and even though before the fast I was so scared to fast for 24 hours because it was my first time but I survived and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and definitely can trust in Heavenly Father more.

Monday through Wednesday are pretty normal days with classes and more lessons. This week with grammar we covered a lot of pronouns as well as the imperative tense which is basically commands and it’s extremely difficult to conjugate and it’s really been hard to put together but we’re doing it. We had some very good lessons with our investigators and we thought about the plan of salvation as well as the restoration and progressed our investigators far and got them to begin praying. One of the lessons that we taught stood out to me a lot. In this lesson we talked about this life on earth and many aspects of it such as the creation and the fall of Adam and ended with the Atonement in the section about the Atonement we discussed how through the Atonement we can find answers to many hard moments in life that are unexplainable and cause us lots of grief and we related it to her and her experience with her grandmother who passed away young and she said she would pray to find the answer to why this happened and the Spirit was very strong there. We ended up going 10 minutes over our allotted time for lessons but the teacher dismissed it because it was such a good lesson.

The temple is closed these last two weeks of the time we're here for cleaning and so we don’t have the opportunity to do any sessions but they’re actually taking the statue of Moroni off the top and cleaning or replacing it and we get to witness them putting it back up. Because we have more time today we are going to this castle close to Madrid for the day with all the missionaries and checking out all the sights around it and I’m really excited, plus they’re taking us to McDonald’s and seriously I’m dying for some American food right about now. American food and music are the two hardest things I’ve had to let go recently and it’s been a struggle. We’re not allowed to sing any songs that aren’t hymns and I’m like a jukebox of American songs sometimes. We have to do 10 push-ups for every non-hymn we sing and let’s just say my arms are pretty sore.

I have a really funny story to tell everyone from one of my friends in my district here. His name is Elder Taylor and he’s from Utah. He knows almost no Spanish and so his speaking is rough, really rough. He writes down most of the things he wants to say to better convey his message and in his lesson he had a prayer written down to help him. In his investigator lessons, they got their investigator to pray for the first time but she said she didn't know how to pray so Rock Paper Scissors later between Taylor and his companion and Taylor decides to help her pray. He begins the prayer well but then says gracias for el evanjulio, not evangelio ( which is gospel in Spanish) and his companion started busting up giggling hard. Taylor was trying to hold in the laugh too and tried so hard he let out this giant, loud like 10-second long fart in the middle of the prayer. They both start dying and Taylor goes - ummmm en el hombre de Jesucristo amen. Says lo siento and runs out with his companion so fast. We were literally dying. He was so embarrassed but it was definitely a moment to remember.

Thank you everyone for the emails and pictures I enjoy seeing them all so much. Please send me more pictures and emails I love to catch up with everyone. Thank you all for your prayers and everything. My ability to teach and open my mouth to teach lessons and speak Spanish has increased so much this last week I’m feeling so much more ready for the field. Thank you all hope to hear from everyone.
Elder Keith

(Also this is the first p-day we can wear normal clothes, not white shirts and tie. It’s literally the best feeling ever I needed this so bad.)

(The guy in the chair in the first picture is elder Taylor.)