Los Nativos y El Planamiento Son el Mejor!

Elder Souza and I on preparation day.  He was my
former home teacher that's in my zone here.

Companions:  Elder Fitzner, Elder Boyd, & me

Nice tie I obtained during some tie trading-
goes well with my suit!

Mini Preach My Gospels!  English and Spanish- if they aren't
available to the general public I could probably buy some and
send some home if specific people want them.

Me voting!

Buenas Tardes!

Another week gone by here at the good old MTC.  Time is just accelerating- this week seemed like it went by faster than ever.  Things are still going well though!  I'm picking up more and more Spanish everyday and getting more comfortable and able to speak and teach.  Estaban usando Rosetta Stone?  Espero que puedan hablar un poco de espanol en dos anos.  Anyways, we got a new district of natives in our zone last week (two of which are going to Denver Sur- Elder Lopez and Elder Deboin) and we've made a special effort to become friends with them.  In turn, they've been able to help us out with our Spanish, especially as we're becoming more and more comfortable speaking.  They're great!  I love los latinos and I'm really looking forward to teaching and working with them in New York.  They're a faithful, humble, and ready to learn group of people, and they're really funny too!  Haha but it's been a great blessing to be able to hang out and talk with them.

Once again, I really don't have anything specially to report.  Lessons with our "investegators" are going well, I'm making individual improvements, we're improving as a companionship, I shined my shoes today, and the list goes on.  I'm just finding pretty much everything super fulfilling and I'm trying hard to not waste a minute of my time here.  I know there are a lot of MTC haters out there, but I love this place- it's such a great place to learn and progress, if you put the effort into it.  One of the things I've been working on this week is planning and having a better purpose with the time I've been given.  The idea of planning out studies, planning out lessons and planning out how the day is going to go has been coming up a lot lately.  As I've created general and more specific study plans for my language and gospel studies, I've been able to go into the time with a specific goal and I've just been able to get a lot more out of it than when I try to come up with an objective as I'm studying.  I've learned that it's good to write out a list of available resources, long term goals or bigger ideas, specific ideas or tasks and then activities that can accomplish these tasks (such as chronological reading, topical study, conference talks, etc.) and then just plan out what I'm going to do during specific times ahead of said specific times.  This might seem like something that really only applies to a missionary, but I know that we can get a lot more out of our personal gospel study or even school study if we have a plan.  Even better is an inspired plan- when we put the effort into making any sort of a plan, we make something that God can work with and help us to tweak so that we're best using our time and learning what we need to accomplish our purpose.  I enjoy planning and can't wait to see the continued fruits of my efforts in regards to it!

And that's about it.  I'm sure I have plenty more I could say, but nothing comes to mine.  Things are pretty routine here, but that's not bad when it's such a good routine.  And I love my companions- Elder Boyd and Elder Fitzner are great!  We're really able to build off of each other and we work together well.  They've been a great blessing to me as I've been here and I can't wait to see what kinds of things we're able to do in the next two and a half weeks!

Thanks for the letters and the support!  I really appreciate it.  And sorry if I'm not writing specifically to any reader of my blog that would like me to do so- unfortunately I didn't get as many addresses before I came into the MTC as I would have preferred.  So yep, I'd love to hear from you if you feel so inclined- I'm mailbox #355 and I'll be here at the MTC until November 6th.  And I'm not really soliciting letters, just throwing that option out there for anyone who was wondering.

Que tengan una buena semana!

-Elder Griffiths