Hello friends and family,
I am happy to be emailing you all from half way through week 4 of 104 total in my two year mission! This past week was a really great week with lots of triumphs. There is so much to talk about however I think I would like to spend the meat of this letter home on a slightly humorous story.
Okay, imagine this... A group of 60-70 missionaries reporting to "service hour" in the middle of the day with no real idea of we´ll be doing for the next hour other than the fact that it will involve serving someone or something. We all arrived happily to the location outside the MTC tienda where we expected to find the person in charge, with more information about where to go or what to do to move along the chores of the MTC. When we arrived, we walked up on a small-framed, smiling Mexican fellow who was on a 6-speed bicycle in a working uniform with a clipboard in hand.
All of a sudden, to everyone´s surprise, he blurted out some rapid spanish, turned the bike around and booked it off through the campus. All of the American elders (about 20% of the group of workers) rightfully confused, looked around at each other and then decided that we had no other choice but to race after the unpredictable bike man. After a good 5 minutes of some hard chasing, we arrived at our intended location - the MTC water tower - that was surrounded with a plethora of empty water jugs. We confused Americans got a good 3 minute split time on all of the native, spanish speaking missionaries, so when we arrived out of breath, the man motioned us over off to the side.
At first we all thought that he was just separating us into spanish-speaking and non-spanish-speaking missionaries for ease of giving instruction. But then, once everyone had gathered, very similarly to the last time he spoke, he yelped out some more slurred Español and again we all looked around in confusion.
It wasn't until the one native companionship in our section turned around and exclaimed, " We´re done! He said we´re done!!" that we really realized what had happened. Apparently, the unknown hermano told us that who ever got to the service activity first, would be let go, off the hook! All of us white kids faced each other for the third time of the day, except for this occasion it wasn't driven by confusion, it was to cheer in pure excitement! We soon realized soon after shouting out that it was not a very good idea to make our inner joy known, considering we were surrounded by all the kids who would still have to do the chores and fill up water jugs for the next hour.
Extremely cheesy moral of the story: Always try your best, and always give your all to anything you are engaged in, even when you don't understand the process or the final outcome of a work. This is just one story of many that have taught me this on my mission, and I am so incredibly blessed to have learned this so early on in my time out here. I urge you all to do your best in all your endeavours, because I have learned that a certain peace of mind, a self-respect, and a self-confidence comes when we sincerely give all to our efforts. I have been able to apply this to my spanish classes, my teaching instruction, and even in all my relationships here. Things are good in the CCM and I hope that you all have a lovely week.
I would also like to extend a sincere gratitude to everyone who has written me and sent me prayers throughout my days here.
Until next week,
Elder Ericksen
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