8-22-22

2 weeks!?! GONE WRONG

I'm just kidding. I told my friends that I would click bait my emails so you guys would actually read them. 

Continuing on, I have been a missionary for 2 weeks now. I would be lying to you if I said I was having the most fun. Waking up at 6:30 AM (which is not that bad considering I was waking up at 5:45 AM, then driving 5 mins later to seminary during the school year), hours of personal and companion study, oh and just a light 9 hours of zoom a day. Covid school year prepared me poorly for this.
However, I have learnt a lot about myself and how hard I need to work. This is by means not easy. Clearly, Spanish is something I won't learn in 2 weeks, but I have learnt so much about how I can be a great missionary. I have such a funny companion. His name is Elder Van den Akker. His last name is Dutch, but he is from Meridian Idaho. He has helped me find a balance of having fun, but also when we need to be serious and be focused. Even through all the headaches and times where I just wanted to fall asleep, he has helped put a smile on my face.
I'll share one funny story that has happened. Our afternoon teacher, Hermana Rodriguez, told us that in our morning class the next day we would be talking to natives for 5 mins. To me that sounded easy. I already knew how to introduce myself and ask the basic questions to get to know someone in Spanish. I just prepared a couple more questions to be extra prepared. So, the next day rolls around and our teacher says we will start talking to the natives...FOR 20 MINS. Not to mention, we were going to do this multiple times. Soooo, 20 mins with 3 different natives. I bet you can already tell that I did not end well. As my friends have seen me in school they can already imagine what was going through my head. I started to prepare more questions, told myself that this is impossible, continued to prepare more questions, while my companion was there saying that everything is going to be fine. It was not. After 5 mins of conversation with our first person all I could do was laugh and say, "welp I am all out of ideas." It didn't help that I was also only responding with, "ahhh Sí." In the end, I learnt that my Spanish can only improve from there.
I leave for Mexico on Tuesday, so please start emailing me from now on. I will not be able to respond until next friday, since they don't give us P-Day this Friday. I hope all is well for everyone. Love and miss you all!
From your favorite,
Elder Ressel









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