Pagina Treinta y Tres

I am so grateful that my district is awesome here in the CCM. Our classes are great and we love practicing talking spanish and improving each other. I can tell that my spanish is getting better, and my english is getting worse. I think that's a good sign.

I am also thankful for the white "missionary handbook", basically this small book with rules and guidelines to be the most effective missionary you can be. If you flip to page 33 (pagina treinta y tres) of this book, it contains the section that says basically dont flirt with a member of the opposite gender. So, due to my keen powers of discernment, I highlighted and dog-eared this page waiting for the opportune moment. So during one of our district's spanish studying sessions, one of the Hermanas was correcting one of Elder Viel's sentences and just like reached over and touched him on the shoulder completely innocently and he started flipping out and started yelling "pagina 33!" and I came over to his rescue and flashed the highlighted page of the handbook and everyone was flipping out, it was priceless. We always flash page 33 now, even for other districts, it's a pretty solid inside joke. 

Also this week Elder Eveskcige accidentally broke one of the lights in our room with a meter stick, and we put the pieces in the trash with a piece of paper reading "lo siento -distrito 7B" haha, and later i tried to chug a 1.5 liter water bottle. I almost succeeded, before it ended terribly. I'll spare you the details, but I did have to brush my teeth.

So this last sunday, we were talking about how we are all sons and daughters of God. (Nosotros somos hijos de Dios) and that, sometimes we take that lightly. But it really means a lot. We saw this video, entitled "Our True Identity", and I want to share it with you, I definitely teared up: https://www.lds.org/youth/video/our-true-identity?lang=eng I know that God loves us as his children, just as earthly parents love their kids. It's more literal than we understand. Our Heavenly Father wants the best for us. He mourns with us when we mourn, and rejoices when we make correct decisions. He wants us to talk to Him through prayer, and wants us to listen to Him through reading the scriptures and feeling the Holy Ghost.  I love my Father in Heaven and love serving Him by telling others how they can feel his love as well.

See ya in 2 years,

Elder Merrell