MTC Week 1

Hola, everyone! I don't know how to do all the fancy Spanish symbols yet, but I'll make a point to learn those. I love it here! It was wonderful to get the DearElder letters you sent yesterday. Keep sending them! :)

From almost the very beginning they had us in class and learning to be missionaries. I hear almost no English in my classes at all. It's a little frustrating, but I'm so grateful for it. I understand almost everything that is said and I'm learning how to respond. Every day I get more excited for missionary life and to do the work. Yesterday was a little nerve-wracking, though, as we taught our first lesson completely en espanol. It didn't go very well, but I'm sure everyone goes through that. We are teaching Aldaberto again today and feel much better about it. My companion, Hermana Pullan is great! I have been so blessed. We are good friends already and I look forward to spending the next weeks with her. We are helping each other learn the language and I love talking to her about what our investigators need. My district is great, too! We have one other set of sisters who are going to the Argentina Cordoba mission and a set of elders going to the Dominican Republic in two weeks. The rest of the elders are going to Buenos Aires Oeste with Hermana Pullan and me. We have so much fun together. So much that it can sometimes be difficult to focus and stay on task. We're working on that, though. I love being around so many people who love the Gospel and are completely dedicated to it. It's been weird to be so completely outnumbered by men, but I'm getting used to it. I've also stopped realizing that most of these boys are younger than me. They have already grown up so much in the short time they've been here. It's amazing to watch. The only time I really do notice it is when they do something stupid like put all of their table scraps into a cup to see how gross it is and dare someone to drink it. That's when I remember they're only 19.

I'm really learning to rely on the Spirit and put my trust in God. Teaching a discussion in a language you don't know will do that, I guess. I'm getting better about praying and doing a better job of it. I'm even doing it en espanol! I'm really so surprised at how much I've learned in just a couple of days. I'm really looking forward to learning the language and being able to carry on a complete conversation. I'm really trying to not worry about gettting everything right and speaking with the correct grammar. That's difficult for me, but I do a little better every day, especially since I realize I won't learn anything if I get caught up in having everything be perfect. I really don't have time for that. I don't have time for really anything here.

They schedule us like crazy! We only have about 15-30 min to detox at the end of the day. I'm not used to being so busy, but I love accomplishing so much in such a short time. We have gymn time every day and I'm so sore! I feel great, though. I love that we're "forced" to exercise here. It's really the push I needed. I'm really struggling with gettting ready in just a half-hour, though. The elders have it so easy! I'm sure I'll figure it out sometime in the next 18 months.

I've tried to be pretty thorough, and I'm not sure what else to say. I hope you are all doing well and I'd love to hear from you! I love you!

Hermana Erin Litster