So, we FINALLY heard from Cam today. There'll be two updates because his email didn't send last week.
Hey dad! thanks! Heres my email from last week that didnt send for whatever reason, I'm about to write some more about this week:
Well, Ive been here 6 days and am liking it alot. I dont know what people were talking about with it being hot year round here, my first day was chilly, second day was colder, and I could barely feel my fingers after riding my bike when I got home at night, even with gloves, and the third day it rained. Moral of the story: Dont trust anyone. ANYONE.
So I definitely was more confident with my Spanish than I should have been. Even at the first transfer meeting and everything all the American Elders were like "Wow Your Spanish is really good", then I got put with my trainer, who is a native speaker from Mexico, and he speaks FAST. His name is Elder De Los Santos, and he is really funny. He always tries to convince me of silly things, like when we were eating some leftovers from a meal that they made before I got here he was like "guess what kind of meat this is" and im like "Turkey?" (cuz it was) and he said "no". "Chicken?" "No. Its crocodile." I'm like "Yea right." And he wouldnt let up on it being crocodile for a good 5 minutes, then hes like "oh no es cierto, es pavo." Another thing he kept going for like 3 days and seriously almost had me convinced of is that we cant write any girls, only "Abuelitas". That they have to be over 50 to be able to write them. He seriously was for reals, and said "if you dont believe me ask about it in your letter to president" (that we write every week) since he was so serious I did. After they had been sent, and I brought it up he said "yeah I was just kidding". So now President Woods is probably gonna have a good laugh. Ah well.
Let me tell you about our first night of teaching. We went to a house where two families lived together, and we were teaching both the fathers. One is from Honduras and the other from El Salvador. I thought Elder De Los Santos was hard to understand, but seriously about 40% made sense to me. I still got to jump in a few times and teach some things though. At one point, my companion was teaching and they were talking back and forth super fast and the guy turns to me and asks a question that I didnt understand, so I said "Que?" and he said "es cierto? que el dijo?" (Is it true? what he said?) and I just said "Si. Todo el dijo es cierto"(yes, everything he said is true), really hoping it was. I always heard jokes about when you stop paying attention to the lesson or dont understand whats going on just say "I know what my companion said is true", but that has a whole new meeting for me. But, even after just a few days of speaking Spanish with Elder De Los Santos the whole time and teaching other investigators, I've improved a ton.
So we met a crazy bible basher on my second night. We were right outside the apartment where we were going to an appointment but they weren't there, and as we were gettin on our bikes deciding where to go this guy walking on the sidewalk was like "Hey Elders! Como Estan?" He spoke Spanish and English quite well. He started out really nice and was like "You know I admire you boys for takin your time and spendin all your money to come out here" and got into "You know, I always figured that God had a plan for me" and I'm like "Totally! We can tell you all about it!" And he basically was like "and after a while I figured out that it was to go and tell all the Mormons that their church isn't true, that that John Smith guy just made it all up". He pulled out alot of the stuff you hear all the time like "it says in Deuteronomy 4 and in Revelations that you cant add to the bible" So I said "Well if it says it in Deuteronomy than doesnt that make most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament invalid?" And he was like "you don't understand the bible", realizing I probably had a point. But, not wanting to play his game of bashing, I tried to just bear testimony that I know that the Book of Mormon is true because the spirit confirmed it to me, and hes like "No, the spirit wouldn't do that because its not true". Well, he certainly didn't shake my testimony, and all he really had was "The bible doesnt talk about the book of Mormon or the Laminites or whatever the other people are, it cant be true" Sure, I could of thrown a few scriptures from the bible that do talk about the BOM, but clearly he wasnt going to listen. After a few more back and forths we just said goodbye. Overall he was pretty nice about it all, still a funny experience.
Well, I dont have a ton of time to write more, church was cool. It was fast sunday, and the member of the Bishopric who was conducting said "we have 3 new missionaries, we'd like them all to bear their testimonies" (there a 5 companionships of spanish elders in the ward). I feel like I did alright, and got a few compliments on my spanish.
Love you all!!
Elder Cardon
Elder Cardon
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