First Letter!

Mi familia,

Hola! First week has been pretty awesome. My companion's name is Elder Kingsford and he's from Bountiful. This letter is going to just be a bunch of random stuff.....so here we go =). The first day I was here was pretty good, pretty chill. We had mostly orientation stuff. Thursday we hit the road running, we started learing spanish, mostly basic missionary phrases like how are you and things like that. Lot's of study time. Between personal, language study and other study time, there's probably 8 hours or more of study time per day. A lot of our time is spent in a classroom with the rest of our district (about 9 other elders). Our teacher is Hermano (brother) Snyder. He served his mission in Mexico and he's a pretty funny guy and he makes learning spanish fun. Friday we really started learning stuff. We learned/memorized how to give a prayer and learned to bear our testimonies in spanish. We also had to teach Francisco (an RM acting as an investigator) a lesson in spanish. Notes were allowed but it was still tough to teach a whole lesson in spanish. But we forgot to ask if we could come in (we knocked on a classroom door that was his "house"), so we stood there for literally like 1 minute standing there with blank faces trying to figure out how to ask if we could come in. After a little he finally motioned us in. I said, "Si, gracias". Lol. The first lesson took about 10-15 minutes. Not too shabby for our 2nd day =). Also on friday we took a tour of the campus. The first thing we did was smell a tree....we were walking around and our guide was like, "hey come smell this tree! It smells like cream soda!" Oddly enough it actually smelled like cream soda.....I think it was a pinion pine or something. Apparently it's tradition to smell the tree when you're new. Lol. Saturday we taught another lesson to Francisco. This lesson went better than the first but we didn't have as much time to prepare so it was pretty short, about 10 minutes. Sunday was pretty awesome. Lot's of time to relax and study/watch the District. We had a Fireside, a sacrament meeting, a film and a branch meeting. All of them were awesome. Overall a very spiritual day. Today (monday) is our P-day. It's pretty laid back with lots of down time. I'm liking it =). Sorry if I miss answering some of your questions, I don't have your letters with me right now. Awesome a snake skin! I don't think I've seen one before....Yes I'm learing spanish and I can say a variable prayer (It's not just the same thing over and over) and testimony from memory and other basic phrases. Cooper, I would love to jump on the trampoline with you but it'll have to wait a couple of years =). I'm having fun... I can't remember what else was asked lol. I might make a few typo's and grammatical errors mom, but here's my testimony in spanish (without outside help =) ). Yo se que esta iglesia es veradero. Yo se que Jesus es el Cristo y nuestro Redentor. Yo se que la Expiacion es verdadero y nos ayudamos estamos (?) a vivir feliz. Esta conocimiento me ayuda a una buena persona. En el nobre de Jesucristo, amen. That's right Hunter....who can speak spanish now!?

Love you all,

Elder Black