Elder Taylor Fawcett: Week 2 - Rice, Chicken, Rice

Hola todos mi Familia y Amigos,

Week number two is in the books and boy has it been a crazy week! The CCM is pretty much the same everyday hahaha! But I have absolutely learned a whole lot of new things within the week. Being on a mission is definitely the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life, but the absolute most rewarding! I miss all of you so dearly, but I absolutely love this opportunity I have to represent our Savior Jesus Christ. Every single day I hop out of bed, even when I am exhausted (because I don’t sleep too well in the beds here… My bed is smaller than a twin and it’s hard to sleep when you have to scrunch up a lot to fit in the bed hahaha), shower in either scalding hot or freezing cold water, then dress and put on the my name tag. Each day as I put on my name tag I look in the little mirror in our room and notice “Elder Fawcett”, right above JesuCristo (Jesus Christ) and remember that I am an acting representative of him. It truly is incredible. No matter how hard the days get, I always remember that these two years aren’t about me. “Forget yourself and go to work” is something that I always remember. This is all about our Savior Jesus Christ and I am so grateful to represent him each and every single day!

Let me tell you a few things about this past week…

So after emailing last week we went to the Lima, Peru Temple. I can honestly say that it is one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Everything was in Spanish essentially and it was incredible. They gave the missionaries headsets for the session so that we could see it all in English… but the ending was all Spanish so that was pretty interesting!
Spanish is coming along slowly for me! Hahaha! So we have been teaching lessons in Spanish and I was teaching repentance. I was teaching when I accidently said the wrong thing. Instead of “We need to be forgiven of our sins” I said “We need to be forgiven of our fish….” Oooopsss… But to make it even worse I also said “Fishing draws you away from Heavenly Father” instead of “Sinning draws you away from Heavenly Father” so it’s coming slowly… But I am working as hard as I can at it. I have been filling up a little notebook and I study it all day with words to increase my vocab.
Our pretend investigator is getting harder… He asked us about polygamy in Spanish and so explaining that in Spanish after only two weeks was pretty tricky but it went alright… We wanna commit him to baptism soon!
THE FOOD IS CHANGING a little… This week we had soup with all sorts of chicken parts (seriously all kinds), that was pretty tasty actually. We also had some kind of cow heart stuff which also tasted good with the sauce it had on it. Best of all, we had hotdogs cut on top of fries and anyone who knows me knows I love fries… the hotdogs just added variety.
The Latinos love me. Seriously every Latino comes up to me and is like “Elder FAWCETT” and gives me a big hug. My favorite Elder is Elder Moran who is from Panama. His family is really poor and he has only been a member for a year but he has the strongest spirit. He comes up to me every day and we talk the little Spanish I know for a while. Then there are two other Elders who are trying to learn English from us. One of them learned “I am go to sleep “ and he says just like that every single time… even after we correct him! There is also another Elder who always comes up and is like MUCHO GRINGOS!!! Hahaha it is great!
I have dropped like 5 pounds since I got here… despite always being full of rice and chicken and whatever else… I am dropping all my weight… But boy would I kill for some panda express orange chicken right now (yes I do eat chicken for every meal but I really want some Chinese right now…) …. So if someone can hook me up with that I would be pretty thrilled!!
My English is starting to merge with Spanish. So sorry if my letter is a little iffy… I am trying my best… Everything is Spanish all day pretty much so it is hard sometimes!