April 27, 2014
Dear Everyone:
My first week at the MTC has been so awesome! I'm the district leader, and our district and whole zone is really a tight knit group of missionaries. I'm the only one in the entire zone going to the Culiacan mission though, but its okay because I'll be able to write everyone here.
The MTC is so much fun and I am learning more Spanish than I could have ever dreamed. The language is coming really fast to me and we've taught one 'investigator' already, and she accepted to be baptized after 4 lessons (all in Spanish). I'm surprised about how many thoughts and ideas I'm able to communicate in Spanish now.
I love my companion. His name is Elder Kester. He's from Springville, Utah and we get along great. We both love sports and the same music, and we have a really good give and take when we teach lessons. The two other elders in our apartment/district are Elder Moore and Elder Asaasa. Elder Moore is from Phoenix and Elder Asaasa is from Samoa. They're both hilarious and we always crack jokes with all the missionaries in our zone. Although we've only been here a week we're like a big family.
I had an interesting experience. We were talking to one of the Elders who already speaks Spanish, and he told us that the best way to learn Spanish was to sing hymns and read the scriptures in Spanish. Immediately after he told us that we walked over to a park bench to continue on our language study and opened with "Called to Serve" (in Spanish, of course). A RM (returned missionary) heard us from his window in the apartments and came down and taught us Spanish for like 3 hours! It was amazing.Our teachers are kinda rough on us -- mainly just one. But it helps us learn a lot faster. They have only spoken a couple of words to us in English before.
President Uchtdorf came to talk to us on Easter Sunday, and we all sang in the choir, which was an awesome experience. He talked about a very bold missionary who 'feared no man' and invited everyone to learn of the gospel. I feel like the story gave me a lot of courage especially since I'll be serving in such a crime-ridden part of Mexico, I need to remember to fear no man, because everyone should get a chance to hear the gospel. Obviously I'm not going to harass cartel members but . . . who knows!?! I need a SD card for my camera, its a micro sd card I believe, because I tried to buy one on campus but it was way to big for the camera.
And I did get the Easter package! Thanks it was awesome! The food here is not very good because all the Spanish-speaking missionaries are on West campus, and we have a dinky little cafeteria, but it's okay. We play volleyball -- A LOT. Almost every time we have free time we play as a zone and it gets pretty competitive. Could you send me some more shirts and shorts?? I think ill be needing more, because I only have a few shirts and two pairs of shorts and we workout for like an hour every day. But thats all!
-Elder Latimer
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