Hermana Barker in Bahia Blanca : Half Way Through My MTC Training

So this week was super interesting. Hermana Gibson and I taught a ton of lessons and some went really well and others not so hot. It is so frustrating because sometimes the language comes so easy and other days it's such a struggle. We are starting to learn the nitty gritty rules of Spanish grammar; I'm not even good at English grammar so it is definitely taking some extra work.

Hermana Gibson and I are getting really comfortable with the gospel aspect of the language it's the general day to day conversation in Spanish that is hard... It will come though (:

All four Hermanas in the district get along really well Hermana Ballard, Gibson & Snyder. There are so many "you had to be there" jokes that come from the MTC. Mainly because we are supposed to speak our new language as much as we possibly can…which leads to a SERIOUS amount of Spanglish.

Spanish is coming along but it's impossible to explain how good and bad it is at the same time. We have three 3-hour blocks everyday. We have a teacher during two of them and one of them is solely study time. We work on all sorts of stuff. We work on language A LOT and then we hit the gospel side of it but then we have to go back and learn the language for the gospel points we worked on, it's a CONSTANT process.

So we have 3 investigators that we meet with twice a week. Johnatan, Olga, and Jose. They are all so so different. Johnatan is almost there, I know it. I think I have told you about him before so since then not a whole lot has changed. Olga. She is great. She wanted us to teach her the basics of the gospel so we went in and we gave the best lesson ever. We used an object lesson and we used the chalkboard (yupp...you heard me...CHALK board) to draw some things out to keep everything straight and she did SOOO well! I'm really excited to see what happens with her. She helps us with the language, which is always nice.

We get to go to the temple twice a week once on P-day and we get to go in and do temple work and then on Sundays we get an hour or so to go for a "walk" so we always walk up to the temple and hang out it is so pretty but the flowers are nothing compared to Temple Square.

Life in the MTC isn't too hard it's just different. Sleep is an on and off sort of thing. So many of us sleep so close together I get woken up a lot at night but since I've been sick I've been sleeping better which is helping me feel better. Not being able to take naps is KILLING ME...(I got way used to that in college...whoops).

I'm dying to get out of here, but dying to stay at the same time. I'm so so, so excited to get to the field, but it's going to be so hard there because I KNOW I don't know enough Spanish to really get by. We will find out this Friday or next Friday if our VISAS have been approved, they literally wait till the last minute to tell you just so you don't worry about it when there really isn't anything we can do to change it, or speed it up.

I can only write letters on P-day so I'm trying to get to everyone. But please write me. I love getting letters.

I think that's it for this week!

I love you, thanks for all your support!

Always,

Hermana Barker