Jack is in serving in Tucson while he waits for his visa. It sounds like he's having a fabulous time!
Hello everyone! I hope everything is going as well at home as it is here. I'm glad you got my letter! I received the one from dad with the wikipedia article on tucson the other day so the mail seems to be working:) I think it's just a little slow for me to receive mail because it has to be forwarded through the mission office then to our apprtment.
Well I don;t really know where to start... but I LOVE the mission field! Already in the first WEEK I have been chased by angry dogs, yelled at by passing cars, rejected at the door, and (beleive it or not) rained on a little! But preaching the gospel to our investigators and the ones we do find is so incredibly worth it all, it's hard not to smile the entire time.
We are teaching some really great families. Daniella has a baptismal date for this upcoming saturday! She's a really nice girl about 20 years old, 4 kids, and has been through a lot in her life. She's found teh gospel as a way to really turn her life around and face the right direction. Her boyfriend figure is in prison (also now reading the Book of Mormon there ha ha) and her kids are the cutest! It helps a lot to practice my spanish with little kids. I like to help her oldest, Luis, w/ his homework -- he's in kendergarden and is REALLY smart. We are teraching a couple other single moms, a really nice family, and a young couple (again maybe a year older than me) with their very young very cute little girl, ALL OF WHOM JUST NEED TO COME TO CHURCH. I have learned quickly that this is kindof suprisingly the hardest part. People will read the book of mormon, they might even pray and get and answer, gain a testimony, want to be baptized, but for whatever reason no one ever comes to church on sunday! It's hard enought to get the members there on time enought to take the sacrement haha.
Anyways enough about them, now my companions. I really do like them a lot.
Elder Burns is hard working and SO GENEROUS. He is ALWAYS baking something for us or for the investigators and he's realllllly good. He makes biscuits and muffins for breakfast or pasta or something if we don;t have a dinner appointment, its GREAT. He also always seems to be fixing my bike for me in his spare time because it keeps breaking (he basically build it from scratch for me when they heard they would be getting a "visa waiter").n Hes really great and really funny -- always singing disney songs and translating them into spanish on the spot. He also really loves the people and the language and is really good at teaching.
Elder Barlow is quiet, awkward, skinny, and about 6'4'' or maybe 5''. He doesn't speak very much spanish but is an inspiration to me because he TRIES so hard and the people really do understand him, and love him for trying. The there are the zone leaders who also are working in the los reales branch (5 missionaries to maybe 20 people in sac meeting is a lot ha ha). Th are really great, Elders Kinsey and Edmundson. Elder Kinsey looks like a Kinsey form the Glendora stake, small, buff, etc. Edlder Ed. is HUGE and has bright red hair and freckles and plays football for BYU! They're both really fun.
alriiight I don't have too much time b/c I want to try and send you some pictures from the MTC but really quick, some funny stories:
I think I mentioned this already maybe. but Elder Burns was test riding my bike while we were tracting one day after fixing it for the nth time and the seat broke off and the seat post ripped his pants haha I felt bad but he just laughed and we kept tracting!
Then another time we were visiting Daniella's grandma, an inactive member and she had locked her keys in her car! she didnt have AAA or anything so we used a coat hanger and a rag and a screw driver and broke into her car hahaha some of the gangster kids on the street helped us do it since we didnt know how. I don;t really want to know why they know how... haha
Then on saturdayyy fue una barbabcoa de la estaca! I think thats how you'd say there was a stake bbq. It was reallllly fun, sadly none of our investigators that told us they would come, came :/ but we met lots of new people. What was funny was that it was the whole stake, so about 3 or four spanish only branches and a bunch of white wards from north Tucson haha the mexicans were in charge of the music... entonces... it was really loud, and very mexican! and the white people kept turning it down, and then someone from the spanish branches would turn it back up again, and so on and so forth ha ha.
Sad stories:
On sunday morning, we had planned allll week to have a breakfast at la casa de Robles! We made muffins and biscuits and went over there for desayuno to meet Daniella and everyone there and bring her and her kids and her inactive grandma and everyone to church! When we got there it was only hermana Robles, she didnt know where Daniella had been since the night before, she had made us breakfast, but wasn't coming to church b/c she was tired :/
Sunday is "game day." We work all week to invite people to come to church and Noche de Hogar and activities and things liek that, but the final climax of the week is always sunday! This gameday we lost and none of our investigators came to church:/ not even the ones who said they would. But thats okay! We'll gett'em next time.
Spiritual experiences:
Last night actually, we were teaching this man named Hugo. He's really funny, and really pretty golden. He's very spiritual and tells us every time we go there that we are messengers for him from God. we're liek "Yeah! we are!" ha ha. Well last night he was talking, and I was sitting there, very stressed and frustrated as usual that I could understand probably 95 percent of what he was saying but I couldnt for the life of me say what I wanted to say, when I got the strongest prompting to promise him something. This is weird, b/c this is the part of being a missionary that I have not yet experienced and have always been kindof iffy about-- promising someone something will happen if they just come to church, or make time to read the BOM etc. Cuz what if I'm wrong?! I'm no prophet, no patriarch. Anyways after fighting it for a while, the prompting was too string to ignore. So i was trying SO HARD in my head to figure out how to say that I felt prompted by the lord, since I was a rep. of Jesus Christ, that if he would just come to church on saunday with us, he would find answers to his questions and everything would work out at work. While I was struggling to figure this out in spanish, my companion Eld. Burns told him EXACTLY THAT. word for word.
I was and am astonished. This truly is God's work. as missionaries the spirit is speaking through us, 2 maybe sometimes (in our case) three mouths and is saying the same thing: Christ is the way. He's the light. We can't do anything by ourselves, but through faith in Him, we can be better people, and we can be happier. All our Father in Heaven wants for us is to be trully happy.
Anyways I'm taking way too long and I still want to try and send pictures. I love you all so much and I am so grateful to hve such a strong supportive family at home. I look forward to getting my visa, and am still excited to go to Mexico, but honestly I would be just as happy if I stuck around here in Tucson fr the next to years. I'm loving it:) God is slowly but surely making me into who I've always wanted to be - who he kows I can be - exactly who He needs me to be.
I hope to hear from all of you soon! I love written letters:) again thanks for everything,
y recuerden
andamos por fe, no por vista
ELDER SPENCER
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