SUP?

Well everything is going great here and I am having a great a great time. No offense but I do not feel homesick.  My companion is Elder Groneman, hes from Sandy Utah.  And yesterday an elder who was staying in my room went home cause he didnt want to be here anymore so now I am in a trio with Elder Barlow from Draper Utah as well. There are both nice and we get along great but lets just say that there are helping me develop the Christ like attribute of patience.  I have a really awesome district, we get along great and we have a fun time together.  

Everything here is in spanish, my maestra knows english but is not fluent so we are pretty much forced to learn it here.  I am surprised by how much i have learned so far.  I have given 3 lessons to an investigator in complete spanish.  It was pretty hard but I have realized that the more you have the spirit with you the more you understand and the more you can remember while teaching.  I have to sit in a class room for like 9 hours a day and i get so restless and it gets hard to focus by the end of the day and I have been having a hard time falling asleep at night.  Thursday was honestly the longest day of my life, but the rest of the days have gone by faster.  It feels like I have been here for like a month.  

The food here is either kinda good or not good at all but the mangos here are the most beautiful thing in the world.  They taste like sweet juicy candy and they are just so beautiful. We had a good devotional one night from the director here. One reason it was so good was because not only did he speak english, but he was american and spoke it fluently and without an accent.  Hes some 30 year old guy here and he was telling about what his old scoutmaster/kung fu teacher would yell at him.  It was all about the quote from star wars "stay on target! Stay on Target!"  

It rains here everyday, but it didnt yesterday or today...yet.  Mi casa (for those of you playing at home thats spanish for my house)  is a little under a quarter of a mile from the classroom and other buildings (were shoved way in the back corner of the ccm) We had a meeting and I left my umbrella in the classroom and we had to sprint there through a torrential downpour of hail and rain that will go down in the history books as the only rainstorm to rival the one that flooded the earth.  We were soaked to the bone even through our raincoats.  

We have gym everyday and we either levantar pesas or jugar al volleyball.  Its pretty fun.  One day we started joking around during lunch and talking about "gains"  For those of you that dont know gains are muscles.  And now me and Elder Amaratti kinda made it into a little district thing and we give small devotionals at the end of the day about making spiritual gains.  Ive probably heard the word gains about a million times over the last few days but gains es mi vida.  

Since were right next to the wall we can hear the Mexicans party all night long and periodically throughout the day we hear small explosions (possibly gunshots) and they tell us that thats just the local church setting off fireworks but who sets off just one isngle firework at 7:47 a.m  The wall around this place is about 15 feet of concrete with 10 feet of chainlink fence with an additional 3 feet of barb wire. Ha good luck jumping that! Dont worry mom were all safe here.

Nothing too exciting happens here cause were in class all say long.  Ive run into Hayden Nielson and Jared Greene up here but not any bowns yet.  During church we all have to prepare a 5 minute talk in spanish for sacrament meeting and they randomly call people up.  On sunday they called up Elder Gardner but luckily there was another Elder Gardner from Utah there so I was safe.  

Today s our  P day and me and the elders in my district are about to hold the first inaugural x gains. Its like the xgames but its not.  Pretty much were just gonna workout and then play volleyball. 

I love you guys and I miss you guys.  Yo se que Jesucristo es el Salvador.  You se que el libro de mormon es verdadero y yo se que la iglesia es verdadera.  Estoy agredicado por el Evangelio en mi vida.  Vos amo!

Para siempre Dios este con Vos!

Love you guys

Elder Gardner

You best believe I have that missionary pocket thing going on

Here's the "misty B of the mountain below"

Here's my district - Elder Groneman is the shorter one and Barlow the other one.