Mason's letter -- Nov 2, 2009

Hola Familia!!!

Well this week has been really good. It seriously flew by. I don't even know where the time went this last week.

On Tuesday Elder L Tom Perry came and spoke to us at the Tuesday night devotional, so that was pretty cool. We all were expecting an apostle to come visit us this week and we got one! It was really neat. You could feel that someone special was there as soon as he walked in. He talked about Elder Holland's talk. Haha he gave us 5 teaching techniques that E. Holland gave once. It was really good though. He talked a lot about how missionary work is the life blood of the church. It is really what keeps it going, what brings people in. He also talked about how we need to use the scriptures. So many people sacrificed their lives for the translating of the Bible and the BOM, so we should use them more effectively.

On Wednesday we had the best TRC session of the week. We taught a lady from Mexico City, so she was a legit native--and i actually understood her...well most of her. We taught a pretty good lesson. We did good just foegetting about the "structure" of the lesson order and just taught her what she needed to know. I think it went really good.

Thursday we had the RC and it wasn't that great once again. I talked to some guy in India for awhile on chats. He didn't speak English very well and I dont know if he really understood me. He wanted to go to a Mormon church there so I sent him a map of all the churches in India (there are like 5 haha). So I asked him if that helped and he said no. Haha so I tried to help him but it was tough because he couldn't really understand me. Then my computer freaked out and shut down or something so I lost the conversation--that was frustrating. But the supervisor guy there was listening in on my calls and he came over and complimented me on some calls I made. The people didn't accept the message, but he said I said the perfect things. I just need to concentrate more on why our message is so unique. So hopefully I will continue to get better at all that.

Friday was just a regular day, nothing really happened. Haha seriously I dont even remember Friday, it was that boring. But I did study hard. This week was my best week for studying and working super hard. I really tried to use every minute of the day I had.

Saturday was Halloween...I guess. It was just another day here, so that was exciting to think about what you all were doing. But as for me I didn't really care that it was Halloween.

Sunday I got called to be the new District Leader, so that should be a really good experience for me to grow my leadership skills and whatnot. I'm excited to see what I can do for my district. So now we have the zone leaders and a District Leader in our room. We better be good examples these next 2 weeks. It's not really much time to do much as DL, but I'm going to try to unite the 3-some companionship--they just have bad attitudes, and I'm gonna try to fix that. So that will be my main focus these last 2 weeks.

Can you believe I only have 2 weeks left?? That's so crazy! We are now the oldest district in our zone and the next ones to leave. The elders in the other district left this morning except for 4 of them. They are having some real troubles with visas to Argentina. and our whole floor basically left today, so we will have a ton of new guys on our floor and maybe some new elders in our zone.

It's just great to know that we are next. We should be getting our flight plans this week. It's so close I can smell the ocean air!! I'm so excited to get there and start the work. It will be amazing. I just want everyone there to hear our message. I can't wait to get there and be so lost and know almost nothing! Haha it will be so hard, and still I can't wait for it.

Well fam I love you all. Do work back at home

Love, Elder Mason Hanks Cardon