Elder Payton Thorpe : Last week in the CCM (MTC)??

Familia!!!

I received your letters a couple days ago, and I loved them! Brooks, thank you so much for the awesome picture! It is hanging up on my wall right above my bed! It is so great to hear you all are doing good. I love the picture of you boys with my life size banner, haha it's awesome! My birthday was so incredible, and it might make a run for the best one I have had yet. Which is weird becauseI had no familia there to celebrate it with, but I could sure feel your spirits! We had TRC, which is where we go in and teach a random volunteer from Mexico, usually a recent graduate from this school before they changed it into the MTC. Our previous experiences have not been the best with TRC...so I am always nervous when we have it. The natives speak soo fast so it makes it very hard to understand what they are saying, but I can usually get the gist of it. Elder Rowberry and I were waiting to go teach when our teacher told us to pray and prepare for our lesson. This confused the both of us because we had no idea what we were supposed to prepare for someone that we have never met before. We asked our teacher what he meant and what we should do. He responded by saying, "What do you think you should do?" This kind of frustrated us even more. We prayed together asking for the Spirit, then shared some of our favorite scriptures, but that was the extent of our preparation. Our teacher returned to us and asked us what we prepared. We looked at each other and both responded, "I don't know." He paused for a second and then said, "Well, if you both don't know, then at least someone does, right?" Once again, the both of us were very confused. He explained to us that we didn't necessarily need to know exactly what we should do, because the Lord does. On that note we left into our investigators room and began teaching. Both Elder Rowberry and myself had never felt the Spirit so strong in one of our lessons. We both knew exactly what to say and everything flowed so nicely! It was incredible.

After we all taught, we had a district discussion on pride and how sometimes we need to not try to do everything on our own, and just rely on the Lord because He knows everything. One of the elders in our district was feeling very unprepared for the field and that he couldn't speak any Spanish, which none of us really can. Haha, but he was feeling pretty down so I felt the need to share with him something another teacher shared with me the previous week. I read the scriptures Exodus 4:10-12. Which is about Moses and how he says to the Lord that he is slow of speech, and not confident in his abilities. The Lord responds to him by saying something like, "I created thee, so I know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are. Go forth and teach, and I will give thee what thou shalt say." As I was reading this, Hermana McKay, the teacher who had shared this story with me the week before, walked into the room. When I got done reading and bearing my testimony I looked up and saw her. I was pretty embarrassed and I'm sure my face was all red, the other missionaries started laughing a little haha. But Hermana Mckay just walked over to me, looked at me for a second, and just shook my hand and said, "Gracias Elder". I'm not sure why, but I felt the Spirit so strong with that short exchange of words. It's hard to explain the Spirit I felt to you with out you being there, but it was really cool. So yeah, my birthday was awesome!!

I'm happy to hear my little brothers are representing on the football field! Keep up the good work boys! It's also so incredible to hear about Karson! Hummer emailed me and said the same thing. I'm so excited for him and proud of him!! I knew he had it in him! He will be an incredible missionary. He hasn't emailed me yet but I hope he does soon!

I did send more letters, but the stamps they gave me were Mexico stamps? Idk if that makes a difference or not. I hope not! I love the pictures! I miss those corn days a lot!! I'm glad you guys got to do some, hope through out this next year you will enjoy some of that corn for me!

Have you checked out the world report video on lds.org about the Mexico MTC? I'm not in it, but my district is! They are the kids sitting at the lunch table about half way through the video. Oh, I still don't know the exact date I leave for El Salvador, but we all think it is next Wednesday or Tuesday. So just 4 more days! I am so excited to get out there. Can't wait!

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Talk to ya next week from El Salvador!

Hasta luego!

Elder P.R.Thorpe

Oh p.s, I get to call you from the airport next week!!! I don't know when that will be but I am allowed to email before we leave so be expecting that either Tuesday or Wednesday! Love you!