Wesley's 5th letter (July 22, 2011)

Como le va! Good news, today is MTC humpday so I’m now half way through the MTC! Everything is good here it’s my favorite day of the week, Pday, the only day I have time. When you don’t have time, time becomes a beautiful thing!

So, I’ve been limping around a lot lately, because I sprained my ankle pretty bad yesterday playing basketball. I was in a game in the gym, you know doing work on the court, when I got passed the rock, and I was running out and a kid from one of the other courts adjacent ours was doing the same thing and ran into me. When we kind of stumbled and I semi caught myself and twisted my ankle, but halfway down as he was stumbling he accidently stepped on my ankle, thus giving me the limp I have today. I’m just glad I didn’t break it.

About half of my zone in my dorm is leaving on Monday for Paraguay and Argentina so I’m syked for them, but sad at the same time because I had just barely become good friends with some of them.

We’ve committed 2 of our teachers to baptism in our mock lessons so that’s happy news. No one else in our district has any commitments so its kind of a big deal because, the teachers really do try to make it hard on us. Even though we suck at Spanish, they try to reenact people from their missions who they baptized. The first person we committed was a strong Baptist, training to become a Baptist minister, and the other was a devoted atheist, who lost all faith when his wife left him and his son died. Even though they are not legit baptisms and they’re just acting, its cool to see how much it really becomes real and how much we begin to care about these people, and organize our lessons around their personal needs. The new curriculum in the MTC isn’t just to get baptisms, but to train us to learn from the individual, and what we can do to bring them to a better understanding of Christ’s love.

It’s a mutual learning based curriculum, we learn from them as much as they learn from us. That’s why when I get home I hope I have a thick Spanish accent and not remember English, serial necisarrio que padre tranducira por yo. Sorry I’m still working on subjunctive I am still pretty bad at Spanish not quite sure if that’s right.

The scripture I think I want for my plaque is mosiah 12:21-22 wait about a week for me to say for sure.

No hay muchas cosas to talk about, one cool thing I want to pre-warn you about is that while I'm flying out to the mission field if there are any layovers I can make calls. We should figure something out for you guys to send me depending on how my flights are. I should know my flight schedule around 2 weeks before I leave. So get ready to send an international phone card like the day I email you.

Oh yeah, thanks for all the awesome packages I’ve gotten. You guys rock!

I got those Krispy Kremes, the gold fish and every thing, too awesome!

I feel bad it’s taking so long to write everyone back it’s just I have soo little time for anything so I’m super sorry, its pretty sad. So just expect all of my response letters to be sent out on Fridays, so if I get a letter from you on Monday you’re not likely going to get a letter back for a while. So I’m sorry

Wesley's 4th letter (July 15, 2011)

HOLA.

Thank you all so much for all the wonderful letters and "dear elders" I’ve been getting, all those drawings from the primary kids were awesome! And thanks for those packages. I love the photo book I got. I really do love reading about every thing that’s going on in the real world, we don’t hear any news, I’m pretty sure an atomic war could have started and we wouldn’t hear about it. I’m not gonna front, as awesome as sitting in the class room is I would kind of rather be in the mission field. But I’m still happy as I am. I have a lot of time to just ponder things. Now I’m like super profound and stuff, honestly after spending so much time with no distractions. I think this generation is going to be a lot more learned in terms of receiving information from the internet, but a lot less wise, because they have too many distractions, and don’t go out and experience the real world.

But sitting in a classroom for 16 hours every day is kind of unbecoming of wisdom also haha. But it has been helping my Spanish, every time you think your getting better at the language they throw some sort of new rule at us that completely undoes every thing we’ve learned, but I’m still doing pretty decent at it.

So, I forgot to tell you last week that I’m in an expirament group and we have a completely different curriculum than any other missionaries have had, so they are going to see how we do it the field. For instance, the teachers rarely spoke English even on the first day. On the second day we had to teach an investigator in Spanish while barely knowing any. We always have at least three progressive investigators (teachers pretending to be some one from their mission) who don’t speak English and they don’t speak English to explain Spanish grammatical rules, which is pretty frustrating.

2 nights ago we did our first annual tie trading convention, and I got to trade 3 of my missionary mall ties for cooler ties now I have some diversity in my collection and depending on what mood I’m in now I have a tie that matches it!

Ever since I’ve been here I’ve already lost a lot of muscle mass and that’s kind of a bummer. But any ways I’ve been playing soccer every day for gym time, and I’m pretty bad still but I’m learning. I kind of want it to be my sport when I’m older. Oh yeah, I’m the champ at the shuffle board game but its like no big deal.

Sorry, I can’t really think of any thing else to say so this is this weeks news letter, wish there were more exciting things in the MTC.

Wesley's 3rd Letter (July 8, 2011)

Buenas Tardes, como le va!

Sorry, I really do wish I had more to write about but the in MTC not a lot happens haha. I really am sorry but it’s hard to reply to everyone’s questions. I really do miss all of you SOOOO much but I really am always short on time so that’s why I am bad at replying. I’ll at least be able to read your letters if you do the “Dear Elder thing. PLEASE DO THE "DEAR ELDER" thing. IT WORKS SO MUCH EASIER. I really don’t ever have time to read emails and I don’t know any one’s mailing address so dearelder.com works the best, because being here there really is just 3 modes: studying, eating, and sometimes when I'm lucky sleeping,. Even on P-day we still have like 5 hours of classes. Once I’m in Mexico I guarantee I’ll be able to email a lot more. 



So we did the math and these are some of the statistics of how much time we really have, we spend 62 hours a week just in the class room, on top of that about another 12 or 13 hours of devotionals/other churchy things and in the end it equates to about 1 hour of time at the end of the day not directly used for studying, but more for showering, brushing teeth, writing in journal, etc. Although the classes and stuff aren’t that fun that doesn’t mean I’m discouraged or not having fun!

My companion is way sick and we get along pretty well. The same goes for my district. Here’s everyone’s names Elders: White, Nebauker, Alley, and Grindstaff, they are all going to Equador, Elders: Boberg, Metcalf, Kienhenz, and Price are all going to Mexico City East Mission. Elder Wadsworth, Ball, Germaine and I are going to Merida. They all have distinct personalities that make classes and the over all MTC way more awesome sauce! We quote Will Ferrals's version of Harry Carry all the time.

The longer I’ve been here the more I’ve come to realize just how the simple things can keep ones mind entertained. As of last week we’ve started a saltshaker shuffleboard tournament during lunch times. As it stands I’m in the championship match, so keep me in your prayers! But don't worry too much because Elder Boberg doesn’t stand a chance.

In terms of useful sports I’ve been playing a lot of volley ball and a lot of soccer during gym so hopefully I won’t get too killed by the local kids when I get down there. Haha. 



Just last night we found a movable panel in the ceiling of our room and there was a hidden annex filled with bottled messages from our rooms past occupants, one of the messages is even from a group of elders going to brazil in the 1980s ha-ha. 



Hey mom thank you so much for that package you sent me every thing in it was delicious the sad thing is is that those toffee thing you send me melted and tasted weird haha so actually because the MTC feeds us such fatty food, I don’t think sweets are the best idea. Next time you send gold fish send them by the carton because those are worth their weight in silver here.

Maybe a list of my friends addresses, because I want to know what’s up in the hip world. Tell every one I really do miss you all sooooooooooooo much, and tell the nieces and nephew I miss them a lot too:( 


PS hey friends write me letters or I’ll disown you when I get home, no I won’t but I will be sad for the next 2 years.

Wesley's second letter (July 1, 2011)

SUP FAMILY AND FRIENDS,

I REALLY MISS YOU GUYS SO SEND ME MORE LETTERS! But right now I'm just chillin at the MTC with only 30 minutes to type my news letter, so I'll try my hardest to put as much in as possible. The days are going a lot faster and now they're starting to mesh together. As far as Spanish goes I'm doing pretty well, I've earned the nick name amongst my district as "Mr.fluent" which is pretty awesome, in fact we've been doing so much Spanish I'm having a hard time speaking good English now. Its amazing how much Spanish one can learn if they're forced to study it 14 hours a day, ha! I'm still pretty bad though so I'm kind of at the point where I'm bad at both languages. But ya I really do love Spanish. They make us give lessons in Spanish and its pretty tough but I am still enjoying myself.

Its amazing how when you have no other options available the simple things in life become the most entertaining. Some of the guys who have been here for 7 weeks were struck with cabin fever had a rock-paper-scissors tournament needless to say it was the lamest thing I've ever seen. I had a hard time sleeping in my room with the muffled echos of their chants and excitement reverberating off the walls and the back of my eyes, with the madness creeping in on me. I just hope I don't get that desperate for entertainment 5 weeks from now, ha. One other thing is that the food here has gotten better I cannot tell if they're serving better food or if I am just getting used to it, ha.

Sorry mom but it does not let me upload photos to their email so I think I'm just gonna have to send you the memory card in the mail. Sorry I wish there was more to talk about but lets face the facts, not much happens here at the MTC. I really do miss you all!

Your Mexican missionary,

Elder Esmit