Monday, March 4, 2013

The Drop-off: Curb Side Edition


Tess’s hand written letter from March 1st 2013

Buenas dias ustedes!

Yeah, So I just finished sending you those emails and since no one told us how the card reader works or anything I didn’t really have much time to tell you about the other things that are going on around here. First, just wanted to tell you about what most of our time is spent on, which is our “investigators.” We taught our first, Fernando, who claimed to be a Mexican living in Provo who was interested in the church but had a past of drinking a lot and partying with his friends, on our 2nd day here. Since we knew no Spanish we pretty much had a staring contest for 20 min. and the whole district laughed with us for like ten minutes about it because we were the first to teach and it was obvious we all had a long way to go! We taught Fernando a few more times and improved a bit, but honestly we were a bit relieved when we were done teaching him after the fourth time because we weren’t sure what to do next. We were sitting in class the next day and all of the sudden he walks in and tells us he’s now our teacher and will share half of the teaching time with our teacher from the beginning, Hermana Haglund. It was a little weird at first because he went from being Fernando to being Hermano Brown and Fernando wasn’t very friendly, but I like him a lot as a teacher because he’s a little more my style than Hermana Haglund is. The other weird thing is that as of a couple of days ago, Hermana Haglund is now our new investigator Amelia and it’s hard not to see her as our teacher rather than a “married mother of one who wants to know more about God so she can teach her son and raise him well,” but it’s cool!

I also wanted to tell you a little bit about the elders in our district. We’re with them all the time (in class and at meals rather than just seeing them around like it seems like you were thinking when I told you E. Dallin Smith was in my district). There’s Elder Smith, Elder Magdalugo, Elder Fullmer, Elder Connolloy. Elder Smith is probably the most spiritual as well as one of the funniest. He likes to entertain us with his “Spanglish” and is just a fun guy to be around. Elder Magdalugo is from Vegas and he’s also one of the funniest. We make weird faces at each other a lot during class and we have fun teasing each other. Elder Fullmer is very smart and responsible as well as funny in a nerdy kind of way. He went to BYU too and seems to know a million people at the MTC. Elder Connolly is our district leader and I don’t talk to him much because he’s even quieter than I am, especially around the hermanas, but the Elders laugh at everything he says so apparently he’s a pretty funny guy. We’re pretty close as a district and I’m glad I have such a fun yet still very spiritual group. 

Another funny thing is that I wanted to tell you was that each week when the newbies come in on Wed. we look out our window and can see them getting dropped off by their parents/families. We’ve turned this event into a makeshift TV show (since we’re TV deprived) called,
 “The Drop-off: Curbside Edition." 
We crowd around our window and Hermana Hales narrates as the newbies part ways with their families. We’ve come up with a sort of point system to figure out who the winner is.

20 points for a crying mom
5 points for hugs with siblings
10 points for a matching suitcase set
30 points if your car is a van full of people
20 points if you get it all done under 2 minutes
10 points per picture

It’s highly entertaining. Also, I’m getting back into pretty good shape because I don’t eat a lot of the “food” and then we work out like 5 days a week and I usually run or do some kind of strength training, so that’s been kind of nice!

Tell Kendal not to worry about having both PMG’s because they have them and a lot of stuff at the bookstore. Also, tell her not to worry about the language too much because there are a lot of people dumber than her who have gone on missions speaking harder languages and have been just fine! Haha, but really.

I <3 you all,
<3 H. Crawford/Tess

No comments:

Post a Comment