September 28, 2012
Dearest Family,
I'm starting to get the hang of MTC life to the point where
it's all becoming habitual and repetitive. So, this means that I have to work harder to make sure I
don't lose my energy and urgency in my studies. After all, I only have 3 and 1/2 weeks until everything I
learn or don't learn will have to be used ligitly...on real people! (Not just the volunteers who help us
practice our Spanish while we are here @ the MTC.) So I try to keep this in mind when I notice that I'm not
being as productive in my studies as I think I should or could be being.
Not sure if I already told you this or not, but I have been
playing soccer a lot during my gym times recently. It's hard to satisfy my desire to have tons of fun while
still feeling absolutely dead tired @ the end of gym time. But playing soccer is the best of both
worlds when it comes to meeting these desires when I only get to work out for
50 minutes per day. I always am
the first and usually the only one to run and get the ball when it gets kicked
out of bounds. I do this for two
reasons. One, I get to run more
when I'm the one to go get the ball.
And two, the game gets started again faster because it doesn't take up
time waiting for people to decide "who's fault it was..."
In our zone we have this really funny elder who played
college baseball. He always tells
us and jokes around with us that soccer is his 2nd best sport and that if he
were actually trying, he could kick all our butts single handedly. The funny thing is though that he has
never played in his life. Usually
he just parks himself in front of the goal and calls for the ball the whole
game so he can try to get easy goals...
But he usually isn't ever able to put the ball in the back of the net no
matter how open of a shot he has.
But it's ok. He totally
makes up for his lack of soccer skills with his humor. This past week, I really wanted to help
him get a goal just for fun. So, I
did. I had some fun sweet little
jukes and ended up in front of the goal with just me and the goalie so I dribbled
straight toward the goalie and instead of scoring, used my body to shield the
ball from the goalie as I stopped the ball two feet in front of the goal. Then while I was boxing out the goalie,
the aforementioned baseball star elder ran up and kicked it in. It was great fun. But even better was that this Elder
went running around the entire field jumping around (more physical activity
than he had done the entire game) acting like he had just scored the winning
goal of the world cup! It was
absolutely hilarious. And because
that wasn't enough, he talked about his goal for the next two days. And each time he retold his goal story,
it got better and better. Then
when he had finally grown tired of telling the story, he walked up to me at
dinner and said, "Oh hey!
Ostler, thanks for setting me up for that goal." Maybe you would have had to be there,
but it was pretty entertaining for me.
Well, as far as language goes, all my extra study time has
allowed me to see and learn where some big gaps are in my Spanish
knowledge. So, I have been working
on filling those gaps. One of my
biggest struggles is conjugations.
But as of right now, my biggest struggle of all is understanding this
thing called subjunctive tense. I
am so lost with it that I don't even know what I need to do to begin studying
for it.
Elder M and I tried to speak ONLY Spanish for an entire day
with each other. It was way
hard! Whew...next time we do it, I
hope I'm able to at least feel some personal improvement. We tried to plan a lesson that we would
have to teach while we were doing this Spanish only day. And man...I rely on English so
much. We both do. Our lesson plan was super fast. Not because we didn't have anything
else to add, but because after struggling to add more to our lesson plan, we
realized we weren't able to communicate in Spanish well enough to add anything
else. I'm hoping that next time we
have a dia de Espanol that I can see the improvement from this time to the next
one. But overall the Spanish day
was really good for me because it reminded me that while I have learned a lot,
I have a long, long way to go.
Well, no mas tiempo in my p-day.
Much love from your one and only,
Elder Ostler
P.S. I received the packages after sealing this envelope. Thank you so much! Every loves their pens! Especially me. Also, the cookies are amazing! Peanut Butter! My favorite. And they were a hit with the entire zone tambien. Elder M likes his chapstick. I didn't bring the apples out though because I want them to last. Only for me and my District. Love You! Oh, and gracias for the pictures!
