WEEK 1 IN THE MTC

The adventures of Elder Max in preparation to serve the people of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

This is his first email after a week. We’re including his Spanish (or, as he puts it, his “Inglespañol”) unedited — we figure it’ll be fun for him to review his own progress later on!

Traditional* pre-mission meal @ JDawgs
* Is it a “tradition” if we have only two kids, and they both did it?

Familia!

Lots of things. First, most pressing on my mind is the fact that two elders from our district have already gone home. The first after 2 days due to anxiety, the second last night because of some pre-mission worthiness issues. Please pray for them. Necessitan sus oraciones.

I love el CCM (MTC)! I’m learning so much and I’m already speaking more Spanish than I ever thought possible. As I’m sure Dad can attest, it isn’t perfect, and I still have a hard time expressing some thoughts, but I’m already having  a hard time with English sometimes. Yo testifico que el don de lenguas es real.

The children around me are growing on me, and my companion is still pretty cool. I often have to leave the room to study so that I can focus on mis escrituras instead of whether or not Bigfoot is Cain and que es el nombre de la enferma that Michael Jackson had, but they’re good kids.

We have been teaching a fake investigadora en espanol para 5 dias! Su nombre es Fabiana, y ella es de Uruguay. I mostly lead the discussions because my companero no es muy confident en su espanol, pero I’m trying to get him to take charge and not be afraid to mess up. For our last lesson with her, we invited her to be baptized, and after the third time, she agreed! Again, it’s not real, she’s already a member, she’s just acting for us, but the spirit is still there really strongly and my testimony continues to be strengthened.

Please tell my friends to send Dear Elders! dearelder.com is fantastic, it’s free same-day delivery to the MTC, and Joe is the only person who’s sent me a letter, and he was in Mexico. I’m not going to come home over this, but EVERY SINGLE ELDER in my district has a girlfriend at home who writes them every day, and while I don’t want that either, there’s something special about having a letter to open at the end of the day.

Lo siento por el inglespanol (Spanglish in spanish!), pero no se como decir todos palabras, entonces este es el mejor puedo hacer a tiempo.

Guarada la fe,

Elder Webb

Something like “You two behave...” or “Don’t touch my stuff...”
The 18-yr-olds helping thought it was funny; we probably did, too.

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