Week 2 in the MTC

Dear Family and Friends,

So thank you for all the letters you sent me through DearElder, I am receiving all of them. Thanks for the Spanish translation of your letters, it really does help but where ever you had an accent mark over any of the letters, the computer decided to put a ? mark instead so its kinda funny to see how the letters turned out. Yes, I have seen Elder Larsen here and I talk to him whenever I see him. I'm sure he's going to be reading this letter so I guess I'll tell him Good Luck on his Japanese. Spanish is getting a little harder and the lessons are starting to get into more depth. Our last investigator, his name was T, was baptized so he has moved on to the church. We go two new Investigators this week. Their names are JA and P. JA is a 17 year old kid that thinks he is a punk. He lives with his Aunt and basically has no religion or beliefs in his life. His Aunt and his cousins are LDS but he refuses to believe in anything. When we talked to him, he repeatedly told us that he didn't believe in God because he didn't exist. It was so hard to feel the spirit during that lesson and we didn't know how to say the things we wanted to tell him to get him to believe. It was really aggravating. He told us that the only reason he let us in his house was because we were Gringos and he wanted to learn some English from us so he could understand the Heavy Metal Music he likes to listen to that is from the US. My companion and I are working on how to teach him to believe in God because everything we know kind of plays off the fact that God is there and that he knows who we are. Our second Investigator is P. P is from Lima Peru. He is happily married and has 2 little girls who are 3 and 6. He owns a Bread Shop that he runs out of his home. He stays up all night preparing bread and then sells it in the morning. We asked him about his religious beliefs and he has never really believed in anything before. He isn't opposed to it, he has just never thought of there being anything there for him to believe in. So we kinda have the same problem with P that we do with JA except P is open to have something to believe in, unlike JA. We taught P how to pray and challenged him to pray before and after he sleeps. We also challenged him to read the Book of Mormon. So we will see how things go with him.

Oh, and I was thinking last night, and I have some things I would like to tell you.

- I'm the District Leader in my District (can't remember if I told you or not).

- I've been sick with a cold or something for the past couple days.

- Getting dressed up every morning seems normal now and now it feels like an occasion to wear jeans on P-Day.

- Ties are the only thing we have in our outfit that we can change so I think it would be a cool idea if you guys each picked out a cool tie (according to missionary standards) and sent them to me and when I wear them, I can think of you!! Make sure I know what Tie is from what person!

I love you and I love serving the Lord! Write you again in a week!