THE GNOME SPEAKS!!!!
Yeah…. another late email. I swear I’m trying to get these out on time but this time I really have no good excuse for being late. I only have a week and some change left here at the MTC and it’s crazy to think about.
So since Monday, we have 2 Spanish classes now instead of 1 Spanish and 1 Preach My Gospel class which is really nice to kind of lock in on the language before leaving. It’s still very much on us to learn the language, but we are actually starting to do more grammar lessons which are very useful.
Still unable to get to bed on time. I swear we’ll be getting ready for bed and then someone will come in at like 10:25 and we’ll just end up all talking till almost midnight.
So remember how I’ve been saying the food hasn’t been that bad. Well I must’ve spoke too soon. Tuesday night was ground zero for an MTC food poisoning epidemic that’s gotta be record breaking. They gave us Costco hot dogs and we don’t know what they did to them but everyone has been hit by it and many are still feeling the effects of it, so I cannot wait until I leave in that regard. The chefs here have got to be investigated.
This week we’ve had some insane storms. It’ll be just kinda cloudy and then the heaven’s will open with rain and lightning storms that have got to be mentioned somewhere in Revelations start. We’ve had lightning so strong that the thunder shakes our classrooms. I’ll attach a video to this email of one of those strikes.
I got to say goodbye to Tyler Davison and Alex Kleinman for real this time. They both left early in the week and they seem to already be doing great in their missions. I’ll attach my last pictures with those 2 as well.
On P-Day we got to go to the temple and do endowments again but the nastiest thing happened. We got on the bus and right as we were about to sit down, we found a cat turd on one of the seats!😠It stunk so bad but Elder Pancheri got a plastic bag, grabbed it, and threw it into the bus bathroom like a grenade. Some Elder had peppermint spray or smt like that so that helped w the smell. As soon as we got back from the temple, we had an earthquake drill because I guess September usually gets a lot of earthquakes in Mexico City. I thought it would take like 5 minutes so I didn’t even put on shoes, but instead it took an hour and we had to walk to the other side of the campus and it ended up taking like an hour. The one good thing I got out of that was finding Darren Billingsly. He went to Franklin and took Spanish all 4 years of HS so he’s basically fluent and is only here for a week and a half but he leaves the same day and plane as I do for Buenos Aires.
For my thought, I wanted to share what we learned in Elders Quorum yesterday in church. We talked about seeking Christlike attributes and we went over 2 Nephi 28: 30 “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken.” As disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, we can’t expect to exponentially learn and grow in a day. That’s not how gaining a testimony or learning of the Gospel or becoming like Christ works at all. As a child and young adult, Christ had to learn of His divine nature and mission, grace by grace (D&C 93:12) so why should we expect any less. Our zone leader shared a quote that “We cannot build a house in a day, but everyday we can lay a brick”. We can’t have a full testimony, be fully converted to God, and grow closer and become more like Jesus in a day. It takes daily, diligent, consistent effort to grow into who we need to be, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, grace upon grace.
I love you all and think about you all every day! And please send me emails! I’d love to hear about what’s going on at home!
– Élder Curtis
This is my brother Chris 10 years ago.
