Week 3 - Home MTC, Woodstock IL

 I know I've started all of my emails like this but I actualy almost forgot again lol. This week was good, we did a lot of learning how to teach this week, as well as practicing how to teach lessons. By a lot I mean like all of this week. We have gospel study review where we talk about the gospel principles in the lessons, we teach our teachers in short lessons, watch our teachers demonstrate a lesson, and we practice with the other district that started at the same time as us. I'm out of time so I'll end it here. :)

Elder Crenshaw.

Week 2 :) - Home MTC, Woodstock IL

Hey everybody!

I almost forgot to write this again but I remembered so I'm proud of myself lol. This week was good, We started practicing teaching in spanish this week. Me and my companion are teaching "Isaias" who is actually just our teacher Hermano Betancourt. He does a great job pretending to be a real investigator tho. It's difficult to try and teach in a language that I still don't know very well but we are all getting better fast. The amount of stuff we have to memorize in a day is kind of crazy and the fact that we are all keeping up for the most part is even crazier. The gift of tongues is REAL. I've already learned more than I did in three years of spanish in school.

I went to the temple with my mom today which was great. While I was there I thought a lot about why I'm serving a mission. I think there's a lot of reasons that I could give but in the end it comes down to the fact that I know God restored his gospel through Joseph Smith so that we could come and live with him again. We can learn about how to do that by listening to the words of his prophets, both from the past by reading the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and by listening to the prophet that guides the church today. It's great that I know all of that but there are so many other people in the world that have never heard any of this, and never will unless we go and teach them. The great thing about the gospel is that you don't have to be a missionary to share it so I want to challenge all of you to see if you can find a way to share the gospel with someone this week. It could be anything from sharing your favorite scripture or quote from general conference on social media, to talking to a friend or someone you work with. I know that the Lord will bless you and all the people you share the gospel with so just do it! You won't regret it :) It's almost 10:00 and I've got a lot of stuff to do before I need to be asleep at 10:30 so I'm gonna end this here.

Love you all :)

Elder Crenshaw.

Elder Davis, Hna Suarez-CCM, Elder Meeks, Elder Marchant

Elder Godfrey, Elder Leatham, Elder Cowden, Elder Longhurst

Elder Crenshaw, Elder Bosh, Elder Williams, Elder Baxter

First week of MTC :) - Home MTC, Woodstock IL

 Hey everyone :D

This was my first week of home/online MTC! I almost forgot to write this but I just remembered so this might be short. This week we mostly practiced spanish and just like an intro to the MTC. I have 10 other elders in my group, 9 of us are going to the Medellin Mission and 2 are going to Bogota South. My companion is Elder Leatham. I'm kind of sad that we couldn't all be together in the actual MTC compound because we might not be able to see the Bogota South elders once we get to Colombia. Other than that online MTC is going well. We have a four hour class in the morning and another four hour class in the afternoon. In the morning our teacher is Hermana Suáres, and in the afternoon our teacher is Hermano Betancourt. They are both from Colombia but they speak english pretty well. The classes are already starting to switch over to more spanish than english but I've had to study a lot to keep up. I've been trying to read El Libro de Mormón en español but I still don't know a ton of spanish so I'm doing some of my personal study in english as well. Hopefully by the end of the MTC I'll be able to do most or all of my personal study in spanish. I didn't realize how many words we learned already until I started making flash cards of all the words in the basic core book that we have. I've only done two sections out of the seven before I started to run out of notecards. I haven't finished yet but the stack is getting pretty tall. I'm still not quite at the point I would like to be after a week but I'm doing ok over all. We start practicing teaching people tomorrow so that will be cool but a challenge. It's getting late and I still have a lot of stuff I need to do today so I'm gonna end here but I want to bear my testimony that I know that this is the Lord's true church restored on the earth again. Jesus Christ IS our savior and he suffered for our sins so that we could come live with our Heavenly Father again some day. I know that the Lord knows and loves each and every one of us and has a plan for us. I love the gospel and can't wait to share it with the people of Colombia or wherever else I might serve. I love the joy and peace the gospel can bring to everyone. I know I probably missed a bunch of people that I asked to get these weekly email things so if you know anyone that didn't get this that wants to tell me! I'll try to send these every week but I almost forgot this week and it's only the first week, so no promises :) If you have any other questions or comments about my week, or just want to talk, email me! I'm pretty sure I'm only supposed to do personal emails and stuff on p-day (Wednesdays for now) so it might take me a while to respond but it will help me remember to write next week so please do. This was longer than I thought it would be lol.

That's all I can think of right now and I'm horrible at ending emails so I'll just stop writing now

Elder Crenshaw :)