Week 1 Over

Hola familia!

I'll try not to use as much Spanish in the email, but sometimes it just comes out. I was writing in my journal this week and looked back at what I had written and noticed that I spelt "instruction" as "instruccion" but I didn't remember doing that.

No the food isn't gassy, yet. But they say the orange juice and potatoes will get to you after awhile. And at night in our residence halls it gets pretty hectic, pretty much a party. We even have cookies getting passed around from boxes that elders get from their families. Tie trading here is crazy, almost addicting. Every night you can trade out a new tie if you want. I managed to snag several good deals, it's awesome:)

El CCM is the MTC in Spanish. The TRC is still here with it's same name. "Pues" is "well" in Spanish. It's also a filler word. "No me diga" means "No way!" And "Diga me" means "talk to me."

Special note for Tyler: Brother Porter Ellot is a teacher for one of the districts in my zone. So I see him regularly and I bore my testimony to him in Spanish one day.

My Spanish is continually improving here which gives me a lot of hope. My companion struggles more than I do with Spanish and I try to help him. We get along well and are working on becoming best friends. Last night we had our third leccion with our practice investigator Mario about el Plan de Salvacion and we couldn't use any apuntes (notes). But it was so exciting because we were able to use the limited Spanish we know to communicate to him. We inviting him to be baptized as well and he said yes, and that he wants to learn before being baptized.

I'm sorry to hear that Padre is having a rough time with his back. That's not good news. Pero con fe in Jesucristo, podemos be healed physically. I'll pray for Dad. Keep my updated por favor. That's so exciting Meshak has been baptized! I never met him but he's my brother, too.

Tuesday night we had a devotional with Elder Cecil O Samuelson and his wife. Because of the Spirit, I walked out feeling inspired to be better and with a realization of what things I can change in my life. It ended up being a real teaching moment for me when I reflected on how I felt. To feel the need to be better and then to act is to repent. Even if my actions before still allowed me to feel the Spirit. But having a refocus in life and feeling fresh in my resolve to do what's right is a great feeling. And that is repentance. Repentance brings happiness.

My physical mailing address is

Elder Joshua Gathro

MTC Mailbox #389

AZ-TEM 1004

2005 N 900 E

Provo, UT 84604.

But, there's a website called DearElder.com that lets anyone write to me here and I get the letter that day. It's more convenient than taking time during my 30 min of computer time to read emails. Feel free to look into that. Carrie knows how to do it. She sent me one yesterday. Thanks Carrie!

I'm not sure if there's anything else I need to respond to. I love you all and I'm having a great time! I get to go to the temple today which I'm super excited for. Have fun when you get to Utah!

Elder Gathro