I`ve come to the conclusion that I have to learn mandarin at some point, because I don`t want to be left out of all the secrets when I get home. Something funny I saw the other day, The TV was on in a member`s house and I saw a Taiwanese woman speaking SPANISH hahah. Its pretty funny to hear someone speak spanish with an asian accent haha. She actually spoke it really well, it was just wierd to hear a slight ting tong accent in the background haha. I still am yet to see an asian in person here (and I just hit my 8 month point). Thats one of the things that definitely is different down here, there is just absolutely no diversity. Everyone is El Salvadorean. With the excetion of a few guatemalans, honduraneans, and nicaraguenses. And you very rarely hear any other language than spanish, and its almost always English. But the immersion really helps in learning a language.
Mom thats the reason they don`t teach that much language in the MTC, because when you get to the field its completely different anyways. The more foundation you have the easier it is to learn, but they send the majority of missionaries down here without a lick of spanish and they just have to pick it up. I`d say the first 2 weeks in the field it was mainly just picking up on what the people were saying, because they talk like 10 times faster in real life than in the MTC, and they all have funky accents, then at like 3 weeks I could understand a lot of what they were saying, and by the end of my first change I could get around alright. Now I understand like 97% of what I hear, and I can communicate about 85% of what I want to say, mainly its just vocabulary that holds me back. There are a lot of gringos out here with a year in the mission and still struggle with the language though. I remember the first 2 weeks were really intense, because I was just concentrating soo hard to try and understand a word out of every 20 that they said haha.
On the work front, we have a baptismal date for the 23 of October, his name is Guillermo, and he is 12 years old. We are reactivating his family, and he is the only that isn`t a member. He has a few doubts, but I believe he will do it. Just keep him in your prayers that he will have a desire, and the courage to get baptised. Also we are going to start teaching a refferal that the mission president gave us for a sister that works janitorial for the institute building, and has worked there 10 years. She basically lives like a Mormon, and shes familiar with all the cannonial books of the church. We think she is well prepared, and I`ll let you know more when we actually find her. her name is Norma.
So interesting story from one of my pictures, in the area we are in right now we have to wash our garments, So I was really lazy and decided to leave them to soak a which before I washed them. But I kinda forgot they were there, and I left them soaking for like 4 days. When I went to wash them they smelled horrible, like rotten eggs. I think that much time in the sun got them really cooking, but it was pretty disgusting, I had to put on a mask to was them lol. But my companion just thought it was so funny, so he was taking pictures of me while I was washing lol. The other one you cant really see me, because we took the picture at night with zoom, but its still pretty cool.
Conference was cool. They dropped the machete pretty hard in priesthood session. But a took a lot of notes, and its also kinda funny that I was in the MTC for general conference, and so is Teresa.
Well for Christmas the best gift you could give me is just to make sure that none of my precious things in the house get touched by any of my siblings. Also I`m thinking you can just save up the gifts and get me a car when I get home :)
Happy birthday Dad, hope you and Jared had a fun twin-birthday party haha. Btw you still havent told me if they actually annouced that china is going to open, I was thinking that would be the best birthday present that anyone could give you. haha.
Yo voy a escribir algo en español para que ustedes sepan que yo sí lo apprendí lol. hehehehe solo mi abuelo sabe lo que estoy diciendo. Tambien abuelo espero que todo está bien con usted. Yo siempre estoy pensando en si. Espero que su salud está bien, y que está feliz.
Con todo amor,
Élder DeVictoria.
San Salvador Time
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