November 13th, 2008 - Happy Early Thanksgiving

Hola mi familia y amigos,
To start I received emails from Dad, Mom, and Nikki. Thank you. And I received letters from Mom and Nikki, and the envelope from Dad. Muchas gracias. I really appreciated all of it. Well I am on my last 3 weeks here at the CCM in spanish or the MTC. I was going to tell you that I left on Dec. 2, but your one step ahead of me. It is amazing how fast it has gone and yet how sometimes days are really long. It has been a pretty calm week. We said adios to second group of latin missionaries and hola to the new ones. There are now about thirty of us north americans and 7 north american sisters. We are now about half and half with the latins. The other girls are really nice. The temple opened again this week and I am excited I get to go after I email. This past week has had some up and downs. Pretty routine. One really neat experience was that President and Sister Bowen came and spoke to us, he is the area president and and in the presidency of the seventy. He spoke for a about an hour and a half. They laughed and commented briefly on my name when I shook there hands. He spoke a lot about magnifying our callings as missionaries and the importance of obedience and Preach my Gospel. He was nice he translated about a third of it so I could understand more. But I still was able to get a lot out of it. So last Saturday wasn't the best experience we had tracting we were a lot more timid and didn't talk to as many people. I don{t know why, but it was hard. I felt bad because I didn't do my best. Which is sad. But next week I will do better. We were able to give a BOM to a really nice lady and she seemed to really like our message. She was working here while her family is in Chili. A lot of people are like that. It was really quiet in our area and so we tried some door to door contacts. Not really successful. They have buzzers and intercoms and cameras so we didn't do that too long. Nobody talked to us. We found a few people who had been given BOM by other missionaries and they liked it and it was neat to see that and here how they were still reading it. Right now we{re learning Lesson 3 in spanish it is pretty difficult memorizing everything, every friday we are tested so to speak and give our teachers lesson 1, 2, and 3 now. Kind of nervous about that. We usually practice to a latin companionship everyday and they are really nice about that. Hna. Wilson asked me to practice a song for sacrament on the piano. I'm a little nervous about that because I haven't played forever. But I practiced a little bit and I think I can do okay. Last Sunday was good, well they are good in general because we get a siesta which is something I won't get to much of when I leave so I live it up. We also get to watch church movies. We watched church history seminary movies and they were really good. I am starting to get into volley ball down here, surprise surprise. It is really big down here and I really like watching the latins and playing with them. There are a lot of missionaries that are really good and the teachers sometimes play and we have quick tournaments during activity time. It is fun. Yesterday we were playing with an polynesian Elder from Oregon who plays for Oregon State and he treats the volleyball like a 300 pd lineman. It is hillarious to watch but sure scarey to be in his way and a couple of sisters found out the hard way. kind of funny. I really like my district they are really funny guys and we get along well. Which is good. I have also forgotten how to eat down here because I always spill and drop things. My companions want to take a picture of me with a bottle of stain stick. It is good, I think I will be ready to leave even though it is really scarey. I am sorry I don't have much more to talk about. Thanks again for the letters, prayers, and emails. I hope all is well. Te amo. I love you much.

Con amor, Tiffani

p.s. stefi and joseph get on the ball. I love you.