August 12, 2015
Those are all really good, maybe you can make them an FHE one night. I was watching one of them and while I was watching it it really showed me that hindsight REALLY is 20/20. It's the one with Elder Bednar talking about wasted times on games and things like that and foregoing what really is the most important. Sorry mom, feel free to use my words to convince Spencer (although not my previous actions, that might just make things worse ;) ). I just liked how it talks of how we can be desensitized by spending too much time, and really anytime, on the things that really have no significance, and foregoing them for things that actually matter.
I can't believe you all own a car now! You're growing up before my very eyes mom and dad :'). Just making me really proud. Hahaa, also I'm glad Adam's homecoming went so well, I'm sad to have missed him by such a short time, but I'm also excited to see him in just a few short years. Also Seth Beus should be coming home within the next couple of weeks which is exciting. Also, I love the picture with Nate and David, and over at Grandpa and Sharon's for dinner. Also the picture you just sent of Spencer, Heather and Rachel is unreal. Spencer is so dark and just a good looking guy, I know he's gonna have a good date this Friday haha.
Anyway, this week has been a little bit more low key than the last couple, which is funny for our first full week as zone leaders. I guess I'll just do a couple of the highlights/lowlights.
Well, actually, first one of the lowlights. So both my companions are older than me, and one is right out of highschool, and he's a really sweet and tender guy, but just a little naive about somethings and he takes things a little too personally. So basically, we're supposed to keep the teaching records of what our "investigators" (teachers) have been taught, and he's the one that keeps them and I made a nice comment about how we should keep better care of the teaching records because he kinda just throws them about and they're all tattered and torn. Anyway, I said it in a nice way, just that it would be best if we took better care of those records, because if we were in Russia right now that's how the new missionaries would know what has been taught. And he just took it as if I insulted his whole existence and was moping for the next couple of hours. And I just don't really know what to do, because there are all things we can improve, and I'm really happy when my companions are comfortable enough with me to let me know about something I can do better, because a lot of the time it's something I've never noticed before, but then with him, I feel like I can't make a suggestion or give constructive criticism for fear of him being really down on himself the rest of the day. Anyway, I just really don't know what to do about that, I've been praying and searching for an answer, but any bits of wisdom from any of you would be greatly appreciated too.
Anyway, away from the less happy stuff. So this week we've gotten to spend a lot of time with one of our teachers while the other two have been out of town. He's awesome and really funny, and so we got a lot of work done, but also we had some really funny moments. He just taught us some funny phrases, and we now have a new inside joke, where we come up with a new mystical question every day that he is teaching and write it on the board so that he can try and come up with an answer. It's a fun thing that also just keeps us interested in trying to learn as much of the language as we can while we're here. It's awesome and I can't believe in just a few short weeks we'll be going over there to really start our missions. Also one of the perks as Zone Leaders is that we get to do orientation for new people in our zone and we get to do that later today which is exciting.
We also had one of our teachers come back after being gone for 10 days, and we were teaching her yesterday, and when we finished the lesson she was just so impressed with how much we've learned. We've been trying to SYL a lot more, and although it's hard at times to just always speak Russian when English is so much more convenient, it's really helped us learn. We've also been trying new things in our language study just to get us excited and re-energized trying to learn the language, because sometimes our brains just hurt tons. Anyway, I love you mom, I love you family, miss you all tons but at the same time I genuinely am super happy :)! I'll talk to you all in a week and I actually think I have a couple of pictures to send this week!
Love,
Christopher/Elder Belnap
 |
| Elders and Shimais all going to Nagoya Japan. CAB knew them at BYU. |
No comments:
Post a Comment