The MTC has caffeine free Mt. Dew - he thought that was funny! The top picture is Brig with Elder Stover who is one of his friends and the other one is Elder Blake.  They are both in his zone.

October 26, 2016

This week has gone fast, I got my travel plans on Friday and I'll be reporting to the travel office at 6:20 Wednesday morning. Flight leaves Salt Lake City at like 11:00 and lands at like 12:15. So a week from now I'll be in San Jose. Pretty exciting but it's also kind of overwhelming haha. Apparently I can send videos once in a while, which is pretty sick. So I recorded one and just sent it. I talked to my branch presidency and they said that we can send short videos every once in a while as long as they aren't super long on P-days.

But yeah, nothing too new this week, just learning Spanish all the time but there's only so much you can learn without talking to native speakers. Happy birthday to Hyrum, Thinking about how he's 17 is a little uncomfortable lol. He's still like 15 in my mind but I guess he gets older too haha. Thanks for all of the letters and mail from everyone, I appreciated it and love hearing from you all. Thanks a ton Andee and Chan for getting me new scriptures, I really needed some and I'll be able to use those through the whole mish. I'll let you guys know what my mission prez says about music standards and everything once I know, I've been missing music a ton lol.

Really nothing too new happening this week, but I will be leaving on my P-day in the morning next week and don't know when my P-day will be in the field so I do not know for sure when the next time I'll email you will be. I'll probably be able to email my family once I get to the mission home but I don’t know how it all works. But I'll have a ton more info and new once I get to the field. Everything is going well and I feel like I'm forgetting to say something but if I remember it then I'll send whatever that was. Or it may be nothing at all and I just had a regular old week, I'm not sure. But I love you all and miss you, hope everything is going well. The addition to the back patio looks sick and I'm quite jealous lol.

Love you all,

Elder Godwin

October 19, 2016

So I talked to the travel office and my departure date from the MTC is scheduled for November 2nd. I should be getting my flight plans on Friday which is exciting. Also overwhelming, but I know that it will be awesome. Spanish is going well, I'm still just learning more every day. I taught an investigator yesterday completely in Spanish which was awesome. I only didn't know a couple words but then I just turn to my one of my comps and ask if he knows the word and one of them usually does so we can keep going. It's like we all know words that the others don't so with our combined knowledge we rarely have to look up a word. And we all learn from each other at the same time which is cool. 

 

This is a little random but our district was talking about which scripture we chose for our plaques at our church buildings and I don't know if the bishop got another one for me yet, or if he just used the same scripture I had before. If he did, that's fine, but if not and he's getting a new one I would want to change the scripture to Matthew 10:39. So there's that.

 

So I have a goal to lose weight / get in better shape but I've kind of given up on it here because there is too much food and candy everywhere lol. Every time someone gets a package full of stuff they share and so we have a surplus of junk food in all of our dorms. There are vending machines right by our rooms and we get a certain amount of money on our cards for every week for them, and we don't get to choose what we eat each meal so that's all kind of amounted to me postponing my beginning towards that goal haha. In the field I'll be able to shop and plan my meals out so I'm just waiting until then to start. 

 

One thing that I was worried about when I got here was whether or not I would be with good people that I could be friends with and it turns out that my entire zone here is really cool for the most part. There are a ton of zones here and when I look at the other districts I'm glad I'm in the one that I am. There are just a lot of boys here but not a lot of young men if that makes sense. All of the more mature people are in my zone which is awesome. There are always a few exceptions, but I've been really blessed to be surrounded by the people that I am. 

 

I've also discovered the beauty of laundry, It's like my favorite thing now. Sorry Mom for not discovering this sooner lol. I love feeling nice and clean and so it makes me happy to clean all of my clothes and feel fresh. Anyways, this week has been pretty good and I"ll let everyone know if anything new happens. I hope everyone is doing well, love you all. 

-Elder Godwin

 

October 12, 2016

My week was pretty good, Sundays are super great and we get to go on a Temple walk for like an hour and a half before dinner which is awesome. My companions are awesome (I haven't gotten a good picture with them yet) but my district is really cool too. There's this other district in a class next to us that we hang out with a lot. Spanish is going really well and I've already caught up with my companions, but sometimes I'll accidentally use a Portuguese word in class and then my instructor is like "That's not a word" and the Elder Deniz from Brazil is like "Wait, that's not a word?" and then we both just kind of hang our heads and are like"..its a word" under our breaths lol. It's a really similar language and sometimes my instructors will pair me up with him to work on pronunciation and accents which is nice to have somebody to work with on that. But usually I work with my comps and learn a bunch of grammar the whole time which is really helpful too.

On Monday we had time after dinner so when we were waiting before our instructor got there we went on google maps street view just for fun to look at areas in our missions. It then occurred to me that Google maps updated and when I was working for A+ I once passed the google car at May and 30th by Taft stadium and so I went there and sure enough there I was driving my truck lol. So I took a picture of it and sent it to you. Cuz I'm on google maps and that makes me cool. 

We have devotionals on Tuesday nights, and yesterday they had David A. Bednar speak to us. It was amazing, I was like 10 rows back. He talked about general conference and how to learn by the spirit as we continue to study and dig deeper into their messages. I took a ton of notes, and got a lot from it but I don't have them with me so I'll send some of my favorite things from what he said in a different email when I get those. 

Anyways, I'm doing pretty well and I miss you all. I really look forward to getting to the field and telling you about it, I'm sure it will be awesome. I also don't like being stuck in a box most of the day lol. Thanks for all of the DearElder letters, I've gotten all of them as far as I know. Oh yeah, and thanks for the package of goodies but I got it after dinner on Saturday night right after I started my fast lol. So that was a struggle having Kit-Kats and things in my room until I finished fasting lol. But overall things have been going well and I'm happy to be here. Love you all. 

-Elder Godwin