Stay patient because when we get frustrated we can't learn...

Hola Familia!

To answer your question, I told President Winn the reason why I was serving a mission was because through many experiences over the last few years I learned to put my trust in the Lord and rely on Him completely for everything, then I shared the story of when I got lonely at school. I told him that as I learned to put my trust in the Lord I came to love Him and the more I came to love Him the more I felt His love for me and I wanted to help other people know how they could experience this same kind of love in their lives and help them realize how much God and Christ love them and want them to be happy. The only other thing I told him in the meeting was that I like basketball and football, haha -so it was pretty short.

And mom, the mail is picked up every Wednesday or Thursday morning at the latest and then we receive it during district meeting Thursday morning. My district leader is cool, we get along great. He played basketball and baseball in high school and is from Iowa. His last name is Yancey, don't know the first. Ring any bells?

So the first p-day we played soccer I was one of only a couple of white kids there. All the rest were from Mexico, Chile, Brazil and some other places but they were all good and I was terrible,  haha.  Buuut yesterday we were playing and guess what, white boy scored 3 goals! haha Bry you were right! My zone is the central zone. My zone leaders are Elder Fuentes and Elder Tory.

This week was somewhat frustrating! I can hardly understand anything people are saying and when my companion stops talking and looks at me, I don't know what is being talked about so don't even know what to say. I'm not too thrilled with the fact that I feel like I can't teach the way I want too. When I can say something in Spanish it feels like it has no emotion. Elder Fuentes told me that my Spanish was good for my second week and not to get frustrated and to give it time and stay patient because when we get frustrated we can't learn. I thought about it and agreed and have seen a difference so that is helping. I figured that I will do my best to let my personality shine though, haha. I have begun to carry around a candy bag for all the little kids. They get a piece of candy right when we get there and if they listen they get to pick another one out when we leave, haha. My favorite part so far has been the interaction with the kids. They can talk slow enough I can understand them. I also like when I can feel my heart burning during a lesson because the Spirit is so strong. Love it!

We had a zone training from President Winn at the mission office this week. We learned how to involve the Spirit more. It was helpful and it was also cool to see all the guys from my district again. Elder Romero and I won brand new ties!

So for the district meetings on Thursdays we practice teaching. It is cool to get help from other people who have been here for a long time because the more opinions you have the better you'll get. It's tradition to go to lunch after district meeting and there are two options, side by side and we have to all go to the same one. One is Cafe Rio and the other is Wendy’s. Guess what?  The majority vote has been both times..Wendy's! I don't even know how they are comparable, haha, but it looks like I won't be getting Cafe Rio anytime.

We had a sweet miracle this week. We were tracting and I felt a prompting to knock on this door clear at the end on the other side of the street. So we go and knock on it and nobody is home. A couple days later we were looking in the Area Book for former investigators to stop by and I saw this one and I had a prompting that we should check it out. So we went and it ended up being the same house. Still hadn't gotten a hold of them yet though. The next day during the district meeting we got a sheet of paper with a few referrals on it and one of them was this same house! So we went over there later that night and there were 4 adults and 1 kid (who is a fan of basketball and football) and we taught them a lesson and the Spirit was strong and all of them accepted baptism, except for the kid because he is too young. It was crazy to think that the Lord was trying to lead us to this house over and over again using different ways and eventually we found out why. Cool huh!

Another one of our investigators is the owner of a Mexican restaurant and when we go to teach him we get chips and salsa and orchata water. That is like cinnamon milk or something.

It seems like as fast as we are getting new investigators the ones we had aren't interested anymore so it is frustrating sometimes.

On Sunday I got to give the lesson in gospel doctrine. I guess the missionaries are the teachers. It was on priesthood organization and if my companion hadn't of saved me it would have been a disaster. I would ask a question and then not understand what their answer was. I can't wait till I got this down.

Anyways hope all is well there. We hardly have any time on p-days to write letters, like basically none. Oh yeah- tell Aunt Arne thank you for the package I got with all the snacks, shirt and stuff. Everyone was like “your mom is awesome!” and I said “this is from my aunt.” then they were like “you have the best aunt ever!” haha.

Adios, love ya!

Siempre crean,

Elder Creer