Missionary Training Center Week 4

Hello.

Next week in the TRC, we will be teaching entirely in Spanish! We're working hard to prepare for it. Our ability to speak Spanish is coming along, but teaching with no English will be a very different experience. I feel like teaching in Spanish is actually quite a blessing; I can only say things very simply, so the concepts that we discuss are much simpler. The lessons are better this way. When we speak English, we tend to allow our intellect to get in the way. When we speak Spanish, we teach by the Spirit. So I think our next TRC experience will be a very good one. During our Sunday Fireside, everyone who is serving a Spanish-speaking mission stood up; it was about two-thirds of the missionaries in the auditorium! Crazy. I didn't realize there were so many learning Spanish.

It's now very snowy here! I think landing in Mexico will be shocking after living in snow for a month.

More missionaries from our district received travel plans and should be leaving to the Peru MTC soon. It's always strange when our district changes because we spend so much time together, but it's exciting when some of us leave the country!

Sister Julie Beck spoke in our Tuesday devotional. Towards the end of her talk, she told a story about the importance of loving your companion, loving the people you serve and loving your Mission President. I'm working hard to be charitable and only act out of love for others. As a missionary, if you do everything because you love the people you serve, everything else required for success will follow.

For the Christmastime talent show, Elder Piersen and I are preparing "Hallelujah" by that one guy. I'm playing guitar and singing and he's playing piano and singing. Hopefully it's good. I guess we'll find out if it's good when we audition, but in the meantime it's just really fun to play. They have a little Yamaha guitar with nylon strings and a really fat neck and a really high action that I can rent out for 50 minutes at a time. It's awesome.

Being a missionary is great. My life is very simple, my focus is very directed, my perception of importance is very clear, and my perception of time is totally gone. Missionaries here often say that weeks go by like days and days go by like weeks. It's very true. We study a lot every day, and it makes the days seem very long, but I feel like I have been here for no time at all. I'm really enjoying studying, and I'm very excited to get to Mexico (or somewhere) and start serving. And start speaking very broken Spanish to natives.

Elder Brown and I are having a good time as Zone Leaders. The most important part of this responsibility is just being a good example. It's a great responsibility to have because it gives a lot of motivation to be diligent and obedient. We're doing our best to improve our zone.

Thanks for the support! I know that what I'm doing is very important. Also, I'm getting pretty good a volleyball from gym five days a week.

Love,

Elder Tingey