This was my first full week as a set apart missionary and DANG, I am exhausted. I'm gonna attach a picture of my schedule from this week just to give all of you an idea about how packed our days are. Yes, it is super tiring, but I seriously love everything so much. But I promised a more detailed email this week so let's get to it.
First, to address the subject of this email. My companion is a really funny guy and we have a pretty similar sense of humor so we have a lot of fun. For some reason, every time we change clothes for bed or anything, he yells "GORDO TIEMPO" (which means fat time) and starts patting his stomach. Then all the elders in the room start singing the song from that vine with the dad that plays the trombone and the kid that is slamming the oven door. I apologize if you don't understand that reference, but for those of you who do know, I hope you find it as funny as I do. We all have a great time together and are all already really close.
My Spanish is improving so much, it's crazy. My vocabulary is really increasing, my conjugation skills are becoming much more efficient, and everyone always comments on my accent and says it's really good. I'm really glad about that last one because I do not want to go to Ecuador sounding like a white kid from Texas. We have a program here at the MTC called "Speak Your Language" and the purpose of it is to speak the language we're learning as much as we possibly can. If we don't know a word, we're supposed to write it down and then study it so we can apply it later. I have a little notebook full of words and I've been trying my best to use them. I used to really dislike Spanish when I took classes in high school, but now I have grown to really love the language. I'm really excited to be able to communicate fluently and hope that it comes soon.
Each Tuesday, we have a devotional given by a General Authority and they're always awesome. This Tuesday it was given by Steven R. Bangerter and his wife and it was amazing. I also had the opportunity to sing in the choir and we sang "Be Still My Soul." The choir director is super funny and he shares stories from his mission and testifies of truth and he makes the choir experience so much better. But back to the devotional. Elder Bangerter talked about seeing ourselves and other people as Christ sees us and it really was really powerful. He told the story of Simon Peter when Christ told him to cast his net into the water one last time, and then he caught so many fish his boat started to sink. He said "At that moment, Christ didn't see Simon as a tired, stinky, disappointed fisherman. He saw him as the chief apostle he would become, the future head of the church on the Earth. He saw him as a Son of God." That quote really hit me because I'll see people in Ecuador who will be really poor and sickly and have all types of physical descriptions, but the most important thing is that I see them as the people they can become; dressed in all white, their face shining with the spirit, entering into the baptismal font. I just love that thought and thinking about how Christ sees me.
This is already a really long email, but I feel like it's important for me to continue the story series I started last week; The Volleyball Chronicles of Elder Spangler. I play volleyball every day and I seriously love it so much. On Wednesday I was playing and there were elders that all played volleyball in high school and they were just running the court and destroying everyone. There was one elder in particular who kept spiking the ball on everyone and had like 15+ kills. I was on the front line right in front of him and he went up to spike the ball and I jumped up and totally blocked him and we won the point. Everyone went crazy and I was once again the coolest missionary in the MTC. The unfortunate thing about that block was that, since it was so amazing, everyone assumed I was actually good at volleyball so people kept setting it to me and I would try to spike it and would completely embarrass myself. I'm actually getting a lot better and want to be super good by the time I leave the MTC.
Okay, sorry for the super long email, I left out so much but its already so long so I'll end it here. Please email me if you can, I love getting emails from everyone and I'll try to respond. Love and miss all of you!
-Elder Spangler-
A fake picture of me studying
My classroom
In order from left to right; My companion Elder Tall, Me, Elder Mella and Elder Thompson. We're all wearing Ecuadorian ties from my brother-in-law cause we're all serving in Ecuador. The two on the right are our zone leaders and they're awesome guys.
