Elder Saunooke's 12/3/15 - New PDay This week!

The days here are honestly really starting to fly and to blend together. I definitely have trouble remembering what we do during the day and I feel like my journal entries are getting progessively shorter and shorter because its more of the same thing every day. On Wednesday last week we had another TRC and we taught this guy who was a member and he had his 12 year old son with him who happened to be wearing a star wars shirt in anticipation of the new movie. Needless to say, many an elder expressed their wishes to see that movie haha. After TRC it straight poured and of course our classroom was the absolute farthest away. We met the new district who replaced 7B who just left our zone, and I convinced them I was from Australia and kept it up for three days. The poor kids even wrote home to their families that they met some kid from Sydney. Shout out to you Nana for being the reason I went there and for being the reason I can pull off the best australian accent known to man and back it up with details. I even went as far as making up a fake boarding school and street address. The look on their faces was priceless when I finally dropped the bomb on them that I am actually from Idaho. We sang to them Divina Luz which in english is Lead Kindly Light, and it was so good. I think it definitely helps that our hermanas sing like angels so they make us look good.

Thanksgiving was a pretty good day. To be honest one of the things I was grateful for was not having to clean up tons of dishes this year... I know I am a real winner huh?;) We got to watch a devotional by Elder Oaks and his wife which was good but not my favorite honestly... picture an hour long musical number by his grandchildren and maybe five minutes of speaking. At dinner the new district was curious how my "Australian accent" affected my spanish and it took every fiber of my being not to bust up when saying the missionary objective in spanish in an australian accent.

The next few days were very uneventful so I am going to skip to Sunday. We heard from the coolest guy ever who is the Director here at the MTC. He is super white and looks like he is maybe 25 but he is probably early thirties. He served his mission in Chile and is now a bishop here in mexico city. He focused his talk on not having our attachment to the past out weigh our confidence in God´s plan for us in the future. He talked about Lot´s wife and how she was reluctant to let go of the past. He then jokingly talked about wondering if she turned into a pillar of salt that cows like, or like more of a sandy sea salt kinda thing. He shared a Jeffrey R. Holland quote, "give me your heart, and I´ll give you my power, and we´ll change the world." He also talked about how the Pharisees and the Herodians were only united in their hatred of Christ. They devised a way to trick him, by asking if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, knowing that either way he answered would condemn him. Christ in his infinite wisdom answered by asking whose image was on the coin, and then said "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar´s". Not going to lie, I especially liked this lesson because RDJ uses that quote in the first Iron Man. He then said that this was especially a magnificently worded question because the word image was used to denote the image of man, and also reference to the ten commandments. He then asked us what we need to render unto God in order to be successful missionaries.

He finished by sharing a poem that goes kinda like this...

Come to the edge he said

No we´ll fall

Come to the edge he said

No we´ll fall

Come to the edge he said

We came to the edge, and he pushed us

AND WE FLEW

My whole district with the exception of three of us have been deathly ill this week. My companion was sick and so we missed one of the devotionals the other night and stayed home. Being the freak I am, I proceeded to disinfect every surface in the casa. For anyone who has seen the movie the Aviator, I honestly dont think It would be much of a stretch for me to end up like howard hughes sometimes...

For my companions birthday we had a sick service project. We decorated a Christmas tree! Elder Griffin in 7C tried to teach my the eldredge knot, but without any success.... I think that is how you know you have made it as a missionary... when you can tie that knot. 

Love you all,

Elder Saunooke