Week the First

Hola everyone,

This past week, I've been trying to be like the Apostle Peter,

I say this because of his experience with walking on water.  Peter, out of the desire of his own heart to draw nearer to Christ decided to walk on water(to summarize the story just a little).  Only when he had complete faith in the saving power of Christ though, was he able to do so.  When he lost faith, or acted out in fear, he would begin to slip into the ocean.  The same is with me and the gift of tongues.  

We get no grace period to speak English or Spanglish in the Mexican MTC, we are just told: speak your language!  The up side is, the Gift of Tongues is real, and totally amazing.  The down side is, it only works when I say what the spirit would have me say.  In other words, my conjugation and general knowledge of Spanish is really good whenever I am bearing my testimony or teaching an investigator.  When it's nine in the evening and my Hispanic roommates, (who don't speak much English) want to talk to me, I'm left clueless.  My goal for the first week has therefor been to not do anything that would cost me the companionship of the spirit so as to not be forced to tread water and possibly drown.  So far this has been working rather well; I've been teaching a mock investigator named Abby, And after only five days of teaching her we have committed her to baptism.  I just hope that things stay this easy in the field as they are in the CCM(Spanish abbreviation for MTC).  

  

By the way, for all of you that love tacos, I've been able to turn every single meal I've had so far into a taco.  It's been the best diet ever!!

Hope to hear from all of you soon,

Elder Gooden

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Other info from a couple of emails he sent to mom and dad today:

-"I'm in an awesome district with a bunch of people that I like"

-The food is "Amazing"

-"Our mission president is Amazing"

- "My companion's name is Elder Smith.  He's from Arizona and has a football scholarship waiting for him back home at BYU"

- "By the way, my app that you said wouldn't help me put me about two weeks ahead of the rest of my district."  

- "My teachers are great, even if we literally can only understand half of what they are saying."  

- "So far my favorite part has been Sunday devotionals."

- When mom asked where are her pictures?!?!?!  He replied - "I haven't been able to hack the WiFi password yet, so I can't send any right now.  I'll try to have it figured out be next week, but if I can't then I'll just send you everything once I leave the CCM."

- About Mexico, temple trips, Spanish, and teachers  . . . "My teachers are all amazing and from Mexico.  I've been told that I'll get to go to the Mexico City Temple twice while at the MTC on P-day.  In fact, My district was supposed to go this week, but we had a glitch in the schedule, and didn't get to go.  As for the city, I've only seen what I saw on my way from the airport and what's outside my window.  One thing that I saw though that was really cool was this one residential district.  All of the houses were painted in these bright shades of green and pink and yellow.  It filled up the entire side of a Utah sized mountain.  Spanish has been easy so far.  Right now it's just a matter of expanding my vocabulary to communicate about spiritual things."

And mom's favorite part of his last email today . . . ."And just in case I may of forgotten, I love you.  Elder Gooden "