Hola! Ultimo Semana en el MTC

Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009

How is everyone doing? I hope everyone is having just a marvelous day. And I hope everyone had a great fourth of July. Oh how the time is flying and now I only have 5 more days here in the MTC. I'm so excited. Today while I was getting my shot I ran into a guy from Santiago and he just told me how I'm going to love the people.

So on Thursday I got my flight plans for where I'm going. i'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to leave in the morning. My companions and I leave the SLC airport around 3:30, Land in Dallas around 6:30 and then leave Dallas around 9:30PM and land in Santiago around 8:30AM It's going to be a long day but I'm anticipating it.

Most of my 4th of July was pretty much the same. Just normal teaching like always, but at the end we had a little production about America and how God made it possible for us to establish the church here in this land. It was so cheesy. The special effect were not that special and I spent almost half the movie laughing. That's okay. It had a lot of good information though. Afterwards they let us go outside and watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks from the MTC. That was pretty fun.

So this week is called our teaching week where we only have two hours of class and the rest is spent teaching the gospel. Kinda getting us in the mood for how it's really going to be like in the field. I am humble though knowing that I'm going to know diddly squat once I get there...

This past week we've had fun scaring each other. Elder Wilson hid in Elder Ray's closet the other day and scared him. We took one of the poppers Dani gave me for the 4th and we popped it next to Elder Moore who freaked cause he didn't know what was going on. It's just been a fun week. I'm going to miss this district.

Some things I've learned this week as a missionary:

I dislike big people. Now I'm not singling out fat people... wait... I dislike clumsy people that's how I should say it. There are so many tall/fat/clumsy missionaries who just don't know how to walk and don't know how wide their shoulders are. I can't count the number of times I'll just be walking and a guy just runs into me. C'mon.

As far as doctrine goes... I have learned from one of the teachers that you don't have to teach all of the doctrine in order for an investigator to progress in the gospel. I used to get anxious when we didn't start talking about the gospel soon. He helped me realize to just be a pal to them. He said, "Do your investigators need to know what an apostasy is in order to get baptized" obviously no, and he said, "but they do need to be reading, praying, and going to church. So focus on that." Which is true

Well that's it for this week. Until Chile!

Oh yeah my Chile addresses:

For packages send them to the mission office:

Elder Samuel James Yoshida
Chile Rancagua Mission
German Riesco 230 Suite 730
Rancagua
Chile

For pouch (which is single sheeted letters, folded into three-panels, and taped at the top NO ENVELOPES)

Elder Samuel James Yoshida
Chile Rancagua Mission
POB 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150
USA

That is how DearElders will work. Write the DearElder and then they'll put it in the pouch and send it to me, which will take forever and cost money. So just e-mail me after July 13th... it will be much easier.

I love you guys
Vive la Chile
Elder Yoshida