Hello!

Here is my attempt in trying to give you as much information as possible.

I don´t know if you know this, but the 12 days of christmas started the day I came in. So here is our clever little song so far.

on the 7th day of Christmas the mtc gave to me

7 crazy elders

6 christmas pictures

5 minutes to breathe!

4 square competitions

3 straight hours of spanish (at least)

2 missionary tags

and the perfect companion for the MTC

or CCM in spanish

first things first. My companion...(make sure you tell Nate Jensen this) is Hermana Spencer. As in, Anna Spencer. Mum, you might not know the significance of this..but long story short...we went to high school together and played violin together. I ADORE her. I was super nervous about getting a companion, since you are ALWAYS with them, but when I found out it was her I literally praised the heavens. Pretty sure the entire MTC heard me yelling. It´s okay, I had a dork dot so they understood. Also, that has magical powers. It makes everyone 70000 times nicer to you. We keep it on the back of our tags in case we want extra slack. But yes, we laugh so hard together. We probably could write a book about all the inside jokes and stories that have happened already. My roommates are fantastic as well. There are only 4 of us, and it shouldn´t be legal how much fun we have in that little room of ours.

There are 11 missionaries in my district. 7 elders and 4 hermanas. 4 of them are leaving in 2 weeks though for the Guatemala MTC.  I´ll for sure miss them, because we are already super tight...

The days are jam packed. I think the thing I was most surprised was that most of it you are teaching to yourself. Let me explain. I thought we would CONSTANTLY have teachers with language and doctine and stuff. But in reality we only have a 3 hour class of straight instruction (usually of spanish) and the rest is up to us. Which really means we need to be diligent. For the most part we work really really hard, but sometimes, like last night all motivation was gone and we just told stories and read scriptures to each other. It dawned on me that our purpose is to invite others to the truth by the spirit teaching, and we ourselves need to be taught by the spirit in all things here. Hence all the time for personal-language-and companion study I´m teaching an investigator right now. His name is Fernando. We have taught him 3 lessons so far. OH yeah, did I mention it is ALL IN SPANISH! ya. its somewhat frustrating, but so cool at the same time. We placed a book of mormon on the second visit, and yesterday he told us he read some and he feels God can answer his prayers. however, he was raised catholic and doesn´t pray like us. We have tried teaching him how to pray, but with the language barrier it´´s been really difficult. so hopefully we will get that when we teach him tomorrow night again. He did commit to come to church though which I´m excited about.

oh, a few have asked about the mtc food. well, let´s go to the scriputues for that answer. Jeramiah 4.19

My bowels my bowels! I am pained at my very heart. my heart maketh a noise in me I cannot hold my peace, because thou has heard, oh my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war!

thank you for the letters, dear elders and the packages! I can´t wait to open up the presents. you are super clever mum. have fun with all the kids home. aka kelsey and brett. i bet christmas will be a blast, but we are having a fantastic time here.read matthew 1.21 and isaiah 9.6 in addition to luke chapter two. and have a merry merry christmas!

love you!

love,

herman aguas