November 28, 2012

Bounjour ma famille et mes amis,

So first of all, I'm sorry this email is a day late. I promise it's mostly not my fault. But I'll get to that-I find myself wanting to move chronologically.

 

So last Tuesday, it was my first time using the email, and I feel like I didn't really have a good grip on it, so I spent lots of unnecessary time trying to figure it out. Hopefully that will be done now.

 

Thursday-Happy thanksgiving! We started the day with a morning devotional from Elder Holland and his family-It was really cool, and was especially beneficial because it really gave me some new things to be thankful for. More on that later.

Friday-The first big holiday I've missed on my mission-hopefully Mom celebrated for me.

Not much else notable through the end of the week, all the way until...

Monday, I went and got mail after lunch, and received a little notice from the MTC that informed me that I did not need a visa for the country that I was traveling to.

...

So...I went to the travel office, because I was pretty sure that was wrong. They assured me that it wasn't, so I asked when I might be getting my passport back, which they had kindly requested as a part of my visa paperwork. They said it would be given to me right before travel. Oh well, no big deal. Roughly six hours later, I was in class when I got called down to the travel office. I go down, and who should be in there but Elder Millett, as well as a few others from his district! They then, a bit after 6pm, told me that I would be leaving for the French Consulate in less than 12 hours-at 5:30. With Elder Millett. So that was a surprise.

Tuesday, instead of going to the temple, doing laundry and emailing you beautiful people, I woke up at 4:15 to get ready, and throughout the rest of the day spent 4 hours in a plane, 3 in a car, 3 in airports, and the rest of the 16-hour round trip somewhere in-between. And you know what? It was awesome! San Francisco isn't any Seattle, but still...it was a fun place. After going to the Consulate (all I did was get finger-printed and had my picture taken), we went down to the waterfront for a while, and eventually ended up in Ghiradelli square. Which was, without a doubt, one of the best smelling places I've been to. Lots of fun.

 

So anyway, those were the highlights of my week. Elder Millett and I got to hang out for a while, sung too much, talked too much, and generally went about our business as usual.

 

As far as day-to-day life, the language is coming along well, and I'm enjoying the learning opportunities as they come. I've never prayed so much in my life. Starting tomorrow I will have two new investigators, so pray for me on that front!

 

Now for some other news.

 

It's in the little things: This is the new segment where I talk about what I'm grateful for. This week, I'm going to be talking about showers.

The MTC shower experience is a little bit different. I mean, we have six normal showers and two hanicap showers, and roughly 30+ people on the floor. This, as a general rule, leads to the same, unusual situation every morning. Should someone walk into our bathroom at 6:05am, they would find a half-dozen 19-year old boys, wearing not much besides bath towels, and all of whom had not been awake five minutes ago. Just kinda standing in line, trying not to look at each other. But you know, you're never the first one to use your shower, which means that after waiting in line for a while, you go to shower, you turn the water on, and, miracle of miracles, it's already warm. None of the usual period of trying to avoid the stream of glacial ice-melt until it gets to a reasonable temperature. And for that, I am grateful.

 

Spiritual thought for the week: This one comes from Elder Holland's devotional.

Elder Holland made one point that really stuck out to me-that we have no idea what an amazing privelage it is to be alive, to be in the church right now. Thousands of people, for thousands of years, have been church members in dispensations that would ultimately end in apostacy-no matter what they did. What's more, the prophets during that time knew exactly what was happening. They KNEW that they were going to fail, and yet God just told them to cowboy up and keep on working. And then, magically, we get to win. We have the amazing gift of the knowledge that we are building a church that will never again fall. We don't know why we're so special, why we're the ones that are here. "I know what we say almost glibly, about why it's us-that we must have just been so GREAT in the preexistence" (-JRH). But we cannot have been all that much greater than the people who were alive 200 years ago. Ultimately, we don't know why it's us, and we really don't even know how much of a blessing it is that it's us either. But it is us. And we are incredibly blessed that that's true.

 

Things I learned about myself:

So when we went to SF, we were met by a senior couple going to serve in Paris. The five of us (four from Hansen's district and myself) introduced ourselves and where we were going to the Brother, while his wife was in the bathroom. When she came out, he announced that "all of them are going to Tahiti-excpet the Spaniard".

...so that's what I learned about myself this week.

 

Out of time, but I'm grateful for the opportuinty to email-thanks for all the letters, they are very appreciated. This church is true. Until next time!

 

-Elder Kamalu Santos