11 Days in the MTC

I got my visa and everything so I will be leaving on Monday. I first fly to Georgia. Then I have an 11 hour flight to Buenos Aires Argentina. I will be able to call home from the Salt Lake airport before I leave. Our flight is at 11am.

I'm pretty nervous to go into the field after only 11 days in the MTC. I know the doctrine of the lessons, but I'm still working on explaining this in a way best suited to the investigator. The other day our class was helping out one of the beginner Spanish classes who has already been here three weeks. They were practicing teaching the plan of Salvation and we were the investigators. Even though they were the beginning class, it seemed like they were able to speak the Spanish of the lesson better than we were. Having a new Spanish speaker explain a principle simply and effectively that was a struggle for me to teach definitely put me in my place. I am studying a lot more effectively now.

Another thing that happened this week is that we got to teach a TRC investigator. This is different than when your teacher is the investigator because you don't know the person you are teaching and you don't know if they are a member of the church. These lessons were by far the hardest. My companionship taught a Catholic man who was from Ecuador. During our 45 minute lessons we would only get about two sentences in because this investigator was talking the whole time. We could ask one question and he would talk for 20 minutes. This would be great if I could understand everything that he was saying and could have a nice conversation with him, but I was spending most of my time smiling and trying to figure out what exactly he was talking about. I guess I need to master the art of asking people to speak slower.