Week 6

Hola Todos,

This past week, I'd been trying to be like Jesus, but I'll get to that in a minute.  I first want to celebrate the fact that I'm officially in the field.  As such, my P-days have been moved to Monday, so you can expect my emails around now from now on.  

I said that I was trying to be like Jesus this week, and when I say this, I want to focus on Christ's obedience.  As I mentioned in my last email I accepted a challenge to only speak Spanish for my last week of the MTC.  Later on Wednesday though, my district and on other district that had arrived at the same time decided to perform a special musical number in half English and half Spanish.  The expectation was that everyone would sing half in English and half in Spanish.  I immediately said that I would be unable to sing in English, and offered to sing entirely in Spanish, as the entire group needed help with that part.  This idea was initially denied, and so I declined to participate.  

That made a lot of people mad.  One of the other missionaries decided that my judgment was off, and asked me to pray about what I should do.  Thinking that no harm could come from prayer, I followed his advice.  As soon as I started to pray that night, the thought came into my head that I already knew the answer to this. And then I was reminded of a talk the Elder Holland gave at an MTC devotional.  In it he said that we need to become out first converts to the Lord.  The spirit then asked me, what kind of investigators do I want to have?  Do I want investigators that will keep their commitments and obey God all of the time, or do I want them to just do it when it's convenient.  So long story short, I made a lot of other people mad again the next day.  It got bad enough that my companion took me in to seek couple's counseling.

But then after the trial of my faith, miracles started to happen.  For one, the promise that I would understand the language better was made manifest in my online assessment score.  I scored 28% higher than I had on the practice test just a few days before.  Secondly, my mission president got wind of what was happening, and spoke to the leaders of the two districts.  I'm not entirely sure of what happened behind closed doors, but the next thing I knew, everyone recognized that we needed more Spanish singers, and then President Bennett was commending me for my dedication to learning Spanish.  I guess the moral of the story is, after every trial of faith, miracles are brought to pass.  In the words of Thomas S Monson "may we always choose the hard right instead of the easier wrong."   

I'll try to write more about the field next week.  It's just hard to describe a place when you have only been there for on day and spent the entire time inside a church building

Elder Gooden

Pictures from the Mexico City Temple before he left the CCM

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A few extras from Mom and Dad's email -

Companion's names is Elder Casey

When we asked if he needed anything he said dry ice because it is "as hot as it can get here"

"The apartment has no drinkable water, I have a single AC system in the bedroom, and I haven't tried the bed yet.  Right now I'm drinking powerade, and I've been given a bottle filter that can make sewage drinkable."

Week Four

So this week, I have been trying to be like the Brother of Jared.

I've been making a lot of progress with my investigators, and I've been focusing on the need for faith in all things.  Last week I mentioned how I used the temple as a chance to know how to better teach one of my investigators.  Since that experience, I've been able to make a lot of progress with her.  She is still hesitant to get baptized though.  But since the temple, I feel as if I have just been on this amazing spiritual high.  And so this past week, I've been trying to increase my faith so as to better hear the word of the Lord.  

This past week we also started a Latino splits program, and we have gotten to create our own investigators.  It was kind of interesting for my Latino companion to meet an investigator that didn't believe in prayer.  I guess that everyone prays in Peru.  

Language has been coming along really well as well.  I´m now able to conjugate in the passive voice as well as command my investigators to read their scriptures.  It´s been a blast.  I get to go to the temple again today, and I´m going to try to listen to the entire session in Spanish.  

It´s hard to believe, but I've only got about ten more days in the MTC.  At times I feel like I´m ready to baptize the entire mission, and at other times I feel as if I can´t get a single lesson across.  I guess I'll see how prepared I am in ten days.

If anyone has any questions about how MTC life has been, feel free to email me, I love all emails.

Elder Gooden

Week Three

Hola Todos,

This past week, I've been trying to be like the missionary that my mission president sees in me.  I feel like this week was a bit of a set back in a way.  After week two, I started to feel a little bit cocky in my language and doctrinal mastery and started to slack off a little more than I should of.  As a result, my companion and I didn't do as good in our teaching exercises as we could have, and we stopped making progress with our mock investigators.  It made me feel a little disappointed in myself.  The really hard part though, was when my mission president passed by us and called us the dynamic duo.  President Bennett has shown so much faith in our abilities and has treated us like we are rock star missionaries.  I didn't feel like that was the case after my last few lessons.  

So I started setting more short term goals, and revised how I studied,   Just earlier today, I got to go to the Mexico City Temple for the first time.  In our earlier studies, we had talked about how church attendance can bring us personal revelation if we go with a specific question that we want answered.  I decided to put the same practice into temple attendance.  I wanted to know how I could best relate the gospel to an investigator I have named Eliana.

As I went through the session, I felt the power of the spirit at an overwhelming level during this session.  It was nothing like I had never experienced before.  What was even stranger though was that I felt the spirit bearing truth to me at parts of the session that I had never bothered to take much note of before.  At the end of the session, I was certain that I needed to teach Eliana with a focus on how much our Heavenly Father cares for each one of us personally.  I'll let you all know how it goes next week.

In other news, I'm now part of a new program at the MTC that is trying to see what the logistics of having American missionaries transfer to have Latino companions after the first three weeks.  For those of you who don't know, at the Mexico MTC, Mexican and other Spanish speaking missionaries spend three weeks at the MTC, while we Americans spend six, so as to better learn the language.  The Idea of this study is that after three weeks, American missionaries would get paired up with the incoming Latinos.  So far it's been a blast.  I've been paired up for part of the day with a guy named Elder Espiritu, which translates into Elder Spirit.  We've been able to do a lot of good work together, and I've been able to learn a lot from him.  

As always, feel free to email me if you have any questions about my mission.