Dear Utah Sept 16, 2013

Hi!

Are these weeks going as fast for you as they are for me? I have already been in the field as long as i was in the MTC!? Crazy stuff. This week was really good! I just have to brag about my juggling real quick.. So pretty much i am a professional juggler and the whole ward was impressed at my ability. Especially when they heard i learned in a week! Yeah, Thats how we missionaries do it. It was a way fun activity because i lured them in with my juggling talent and elder hansen kept them there with his killer voice. It was a grand ole' good time!

Transfers are next week. I cant decide if i want to leave or stay. I am torn because i want to leave to a Spanish area, but i want to stay because i am in the best English area in the whole mission! (mostly cause the members cook dinner for us almost every night) I havent had any exotic food yet though. Probly cause i eat at american's houses. Speaking of food, I have some awesome news! I have gained twenty pounds since i left for the MTC! I weigh more right now than i ever have in my whole life! Its fantastic!! Probly because the members are super good cooks and we have a car so we just drive everywhere. Exercise time is great but a half hour of pushups and sit ups can only get you so far.. I thought about trying to go for a run, but Elder Hansen doesnt even excercise in the house, there is no way i could get him to come on a run with me. I did have a realization this week though- if i continue my eating habits, i wont fit into my pants in a month!! ;) So i decided to start eating healthier. I dont really know if you care about all this, but its okay. I dont feel bad for making you read my boring emails.

I will find out if i am transfered or not next saturday, and then transfer day is wednesday. That means probly dont send me any letters after friday or saturday in case i am transfered. But i will let you know next monday. 

I hope all is well! Love you all!

Elder Doman

Dear family of mine Sept 9, 2013

Howdy fellas!

How are things in Utah? I am pretty sure i have the exact same weather that you do, but I doubt you are having as many forest fires as me. Wenatchee is crazy. Its super dry and every single rain storm starts a forest fire from the lightning. I am getting accustomed to the smell of smoke. Good Stuff! 

This week flew by. I feel like i just barely wrote an email to all of you, so i dont really have too much to say, but i guess i can just ramble for a bit. Elder Hansen and i are still getting along really well. We have a 12 week training program that is supposed to train me as a missionary but its been a little frustrating. I am all for the training, but they make it seem like you have to wait until a certain week to learn certain things. I told elder Hansen that i wanted to act like the senior companion for a week so that i could learn everything quicker, but he turned me down.. Something about obeying the rules..? I dunno i wasnt really listening.. :) However i did convince him to let me do my training in whatever order i want. So that was good. 

I am trying to think of the "story of the week" but this week was a little more mellow.. I think my favorite part was on exchanges. I went to an area called Leavenworth with our district leader and we went tracting for most of the day. He is a super awesome elder and we get along really well, so we had a lot of fun tracting. We made up games and stuff as we were knocking doors and we were just being goofy. But the best part was when we knocked on a door and this guy answered and said, "I dont think this is your kind of house boys, I am gay and happily married to my husband." You could say we were stunned for a few seconds. You would not believe the type of people i have met out here. There are some interesting folks in the world!! 

We have a ward "Get to Know You" party this friday with all the members and less actives and hopefully investigators. I am really excited, except me and elder hansen were asked to do a talent. He is a super good singer so he is set. They said i cant do anything with a soccer ball and that kinda stumped me because i dont really have any other talents. I told them i would come up with one. I am learning how to juggle!! Yeah, its pretty cool. I have been working on it during our meal times this week and i pretty much have it down. But i wanna become a master so i will continue to work on it. I will let you know how it goes next monday! I have come to the realization that i need to stop worrying about being the "stereotype missionary" because thats not why i am here. The Lord sent me here because my personality and talents can help the people in this area come unto christ. So thats what im working on. I dont know what that has to do with juggling, but whatever. 

I love you all! Have a fantastic week!

Love, Elder Doman

All the Elders at the Mexico MTC from Bingham!

Week 3 in the field Sept 2, 2013

Hey Fam!

It has been a fantastic week. It seems like every week is just going by faster and faster. That kinda worries me because in a few months the weeks are going to be flying by faster than i want them to! I am started to adjust to all the hustle and bustle of the mission life. Not gonna lie, its pretty crazy. My favorite time of the whole day is between 8 and 9 in the morning because that is my personal study time. That is time where i can just read the scriptures and listen to what Heavenly Father is trying to tell me. I wish i would have dedicated an hour to studying before i left for my mission. Everyday i get more and more excited to learn new things in this time. It has really opened my eyes to how much i don't know. If you all have the chance, maybe try dedicating a half hour or an hour to studying the scriptures or General conference talks or something every morning. (if you arent already doing it)

Me and elder Hansen have had a challenging week. We realized at the beginning of the week that many of our investigators arent too interested or are losing interest quickly, so we decided we would dedicate this week to finding new people to teach. That involved a lot of tracting. And a lot of rejection. It was a really depressing week at times, but we learned something. (by the way, we didnt come up with a single potential investigator with all our tracting efforts) Anyway, what we learned is that the Lord knows what he is talking about when he asks the members and the missionaries to work together. The only successful "finds" we had this week were referrals from the members. We likened this to the story in the bible when the Apostles are fishing out the left side of the boat all night and they dont catch anything. Then the savior appears and tells them to fish out the right side of the boat, and they catch a whole multitude of fish. The Lord has asked the members and the missionaries to work together, that is fishing out the right side of the boat. However, this presents a problem. Not very many members have referrals to give us, and i cant blame them. I never gave the missionaries any referrals before my mission. So we are now trying to figure out how to get the members involved more in our work. It will be good! :)

So i have a pretty cool story this week. This experience pretty much turned this week from "not very good" to fantastic. Emotions are all over the place out here in the field. Everything is super dramatic. (if you couldnt tell from my emails) Anyway, so we were having a tough week, lots of rejection. Then on Friday the Sister Missionaries in our area asked us if we would go to the Migrant camps(these are camps where all the mexicans live during the picking season of all the fruit) with them because there was a less active man there who wanted a blessing. So we went with them around 6:00 and the less active guy wasnt even there. But a drunk guy who wanted to "learn God" started talking to us. So we talked to him quite a bit and eventually all the Hispanics started flocking to us! It got to the point where me and elder Hansen were teaching 7 different guys and the sisters were teaching 7 different guys. It reminded me of the stories you hear of old times when everyone is in a big group listening to someone preach. So we taught the plan of salvation to all these men for two hours!! In Spanish. You know in the scriptures when it says "the spirit of the lord was upon them and they spoke with tongues" or something like that. Yeah that happened to us. The spirit was with us and we didnt have a language barrier at all. Or if we did, it was at different times so we could still continue teaching. For example if i didnt understand something, Elder Hansen did. Or if he didnt know how to say something, the words came to me. It was a very cool experience that just made the whole week! Then after the lesson elder hansen gave the less active guy a powerful blessing. It was really cool.

My favorite part about being a missionary is all the service we get to do. Not too many people want to hear what we have to say, but there are a lot of people who need help chopping wood or weeding or putting up christmas lights or even moving. It has been fantastic. I made a book this week and i am organizing all my emails and written letters that i receive. They lift my spirits when we have a hard day. I have no doubt that all these challenges are to help me grow. Sometimes they arent very fun though. I pray for you all everyday. Thank you so much for all the love and support!! Until next week!

Elder Doman

Week 2 Aug 26, 2013

Hey Family and Friends!!

Okay, to start i would like to apologize about my letter last week.
Things were super hectic and i was just happy to get it done. This
week i have a better feel for what i am doing out here so my brain is
able to think a little more normally! So i am sure you all have many
questions about my area and companion and all that good stuff, so i
will explain my life out here as best i can.

So i forgot to say in my last email, i am in an English area. We are
covering the Wenatchee River Ward, which is three seperate towns. It
is a pretty big area. Good thing we have a Car! There are a ton of
Spanish speakers up here because pretty much all it is, is big farming
areas. The reason me and elder Hansen dont get to teach spanish is
because they have Sister missionaries in the ward as well. So
basically we have all the english work and they have all the spanish
work. It is kinda cool because we have been able to work with the
sisters a lot, exchanging referrals and such. I am finally getting the
hang of missionary life in the field. It is so much better than the
MTC. The days have seriously been flying by. The only hard thing is
that because i am in training we have an extra hour of companion
study. So a typical day is wake up at 6:30-excercise, eat, get ready.
8:00-personal study. 9:00-companion study. 11:00-language
study(Thankfully they still let us study the language). 12:00-lunch.
1:00-Serve and Teach. 9:00-plan for the next day. The studying part
goes by kinda slow sometimes, but the rest of the day flies.

We have been doing a ton of service lately. We found a couple that
doesnt want anything to do with the missionaries, but they had a ton
of wood that needs to be chopped. So we have been there four seperate
times chopping wood for them. They still dont really want to hear our
message, but they said we can come over anytime we want. This is just
in two weeks too. I can already see their hearts softening. I really
havent had anyone swear at me or chew me out yet. I am kinda looking
forward to the first time.. Mostly just to see what my first reaction
is. (I will probly start crying). The people up here are all super
nice. They have a lot of problems in their lives, but they are all
very nice. The ward we cover is awesome as well. There are some funny
people in it. Last Sunday me and Elder Hansen taught a gospel
principles class and yesterday we spoke in church. So most of the
people know who i am by now. The hard part is learning all their
names. Especially because half the ward is related some way or
another. About a fourth of the ward has last names Webb or Smith
because there are a bunch of brothers that all live in the same ward
and have their own families. So that has been fun to decode.

Elder Hansen is the man. We get along so well!! I dont think we would
have been that great of friends in high school because we have
completely different interests(he doesnt like sports but is huge in
singing and playing the piano). However, we are really becoming close.
We spend a lot of time joking and keeping things light, but when we
want the spirit in our lessons it is there. I have learned a lot from
him. He has some awesome mission approved music we listen to in the
car, and i am pretty much hooked on it. Not all mission approved music
is boring! Who knew?

My Story of the week is when we did exchanges with the Zone leaders on
Friday. I went with Elder Decker in his area and Elder Davis came to
our area with Elder Hansen. Me and elder decker taught one lesson,
went to our dinner appointment, and then got in a car accident. It was
elder deckers fault, he tried to do a UTurn but didnt check if there
was a car behind him. We were there for two and a half hours figuring
everything out. No one was hurt but there was a lot of damage done on
both our mini van and the 2013 Honda Civic he hit. So the one thing i
learned in my exchange with the zone leaders: Check your blind spot.

Thanks for all the love and support from home. I pray for all of you
often. I love what i do. Look for missionary opportunities around you.

Love, Elder Doman

Week 1 in the field. Aug 19, 2013

Wow. What a week!!

Okay, so here is the deal; I don't exactly know how much time i have to email today, but i know that it is less than i had in the MTC. Also i need to email my mission president and stuff. So this week will be more of a test week for me with emailing. I will try and get everything in this general email and if i have time, do some individuals, but no promises. Worst case, you might just have to wait til next week for me to answer your questions.. Because i have a TON of them to answer!! Also, i am going to send a letter home with my area address on it so if you want to write me a letter you can get that from my dad. (i dont have any other addresses...)

Okay, well here goes. I know that i am going to forget a lot of things but i will try and get the important stuff. Leaving the MTC was interesting. I was happy to finally get out to the field, but at the same time i was sad to be leaving all of the friends i had made there. We stayed up til about 11:00 taking pictures and packing and saying our goodbyes. We then went to sleep for and hour and 45 minutes, and woke up at 1:45 because our bus left the MTC at 2:30. By the time we got through security it was 5, so we slept for about an hour and a half in the airport. It was a fantastic nap. There were 14 of us. Sorry i am being distracted because there is a latino in my zone who is sitting next to me and keeps asking me questions! Okay. Anyway, i had been praying for an opportunity to give away a Book of Mormon on the plane. In spanish. So i asked Heavenly Father to prepare someone for me. And he did. I sat next to a lady and her daughter heading for Vegas, her daughter spoke a little english but the mom didnt. So i talked to her for most of the flight, she helped me with my spanish a lot. She was catholic, but i introduced her to the book of mormon. I wrote my testimony in it and challenged her to read the last two paragraphs in the introduction on her next flight. I also challenged her to pray to know for herself. She was very grateful for the book and said she would. I have no doubt the Book of Mormon will change her life. 

We landed in Dallas and went through customs. The lines were super long and we had to run to our flight, made it five minutes before it left!! I slept that whole flight. It was amazing to be in america. I was ready for some food though. We landed in Seattle at 4:30. Which, if you do the math, means we didnt eat all day. So you could say i had a good ole time at the Wendys in the airport. I got their biggest burger, (3 patties), a large fry, a frosty, and a water (with ice cubes!!!) It was a fantastic american meal. We had an hour layover then flew on through to Pasco. The mission president, his wife, and the assistants were waiting for us when we landed, so that was cool. The mission president (president Ware) is awesome. He is seriously the best. He is super goofy and funny and relaxed. But in a good way. Everyone really respects him. We stayed the night at the mission home, and then the next day was transfer day! I found out my trainer/companion. His name is Elder Hansen. I also found out my area, Wenatchee River Ward. Which is almost as far north as i could get in this mission. It was a six hour drive up here, so i spent the whole day on Wednesday in the car. Got to Wenatchee, met my companion, and then we went and visited an investigator. There are so many details i cant include or this email would be 18 pages long. I will just include most some basic details about the rest of the week.

My companion is from Pennsylvania. He has only been out for 6 months and he is already training, which is a great sign. He is super obedient, very hard working, and extremely spiritual. I kinda felt dumb asking questions at first because he isnt too friendly sometimes, but then i got over that and decided i am here to learn and he is here to teach. I will tell you more about him when i learn more about him. I am in an area that is actually very pretty. I heard its one of the prettiest places in the mission, so that is pretty cool. I have met a lot of people. I am having a hard time keeping track of them all! but i will figure it out with time. It is really different out here. I expected it to be different from how it is, but it is great. I am excited to write again next week! Hopefully i wont be so scatterbrained! Keep the prayers up please! I sure have been!! Love you all!!

Love, Elder Doman

Hello from Mexico!

Mitch had lunch with a reporter from Deseret News!! His buddy Bryce Rodabough from Bingham is to the left.

Me Faltan Una Semana En la CCM! Aug 6, 2013

Hola Family and Friends!

What a pleasure it is to write you all on this fine PDay! If you dont speak spanish, my subject line translates to "I have one week left at the MTC" and i dont really know what to think about that.. Its so weird! It is going by so quickly! I hope my whole mission doesnt go this fast or i wont even have time to enjoy it!! Thank you for all the emails. They make my day. PDay is great and all, but the only part i really like about it is hearing from all of you. Sorry if you dont like receiving this general email, i am kinda just throwing everyone that emails me on this list. So you dont have to read it if you dont want to. It wont hurt my feelings at all.

I am filled with all kinds of emotion with this being my last week. I am really going to miss mexico. The weather is the most amazing thing in the entire earth. Heaven is going to have this exact weather- only less mosquitos. Or 'mosques" as the natives call them. They think its hilarious that we call them mosquitos because in spanish "ito" means tiny, so we are calling them tiny mosques... I dont really understand latino humor. That is something i am going to have to work on. However, i am not going to miss the food. Remember how i said my stomach was starting to hurt in my last email? It did until yesterday. Everyone has been getting colds too. I got the bug on saturday and today i woke up a little bit better! You cant come to mexico and expect to not get sick though, so i am okay with it! We have been talking about eating a burger at the airport on the way home since the third day we got here. I cannot wait for that moment. I love america. I will never live outside of america. Unless its australia. Yeah.

If you are wondering what i did this week, refer to my last email because at the MTC you do the same thing everyday. Have you guys seen the movie Groundhog day? Thats how i feel. I can tell you exactly what is going to happen everyday and who is going to say what and everything. Except i dont get to wake up to that catchy "Put your little hand in mine" song that he wakes up to every morning. I wake up to dog fights and sirens and yelling in spanish and an alarm clock that i have almost thrown out the window a few times. But i love It!! Seriously i love the MTC. That doesnt mean i dont wanna get out of here, but i really do enjoy it here.

Me and elder hacking had two really cool experiences here. They are both really long stories so i will just sum them up and you guys can fill in the gaps and details with your imagination. However you have to have a pretty intense imagination, just incase you think these stories are boring or not cool. But trust me, they were....

Once upon a time in a city far far away, which happened to be called mexico, there was an elder named me. Okay thats enough of that. So, on saturday we had our personal study in our classroom and one of our teachers came in and walked straight to me and elder hacking if we would do her a favor. We said Sí. She asked us if we would be the example of teaching the restoration to her in front of her district because she wants to teach them a lesson about asking inspired questions and listening to the investigator. We were a little nervous but said sure. Then she told us that she wanted the lesson to be an hour. In spanish. And we had twenty minutes to prepare. Now this doesnt sound like that big of a deal, but keep in mind that our longest lesson here has been 25 minutes because there isnt enough time to have everyone teach super long lessons. Also, we dont speak very good spanish. My spanish is the best in the district and its not even very good. Okay, so anyway, we said yes and she thanked us and left. We prepared as best we could, prayed our guts out, and went to the lesson. Yeah, you could say the the spirit took that lesson and ran with it. Honestly i dont really remember all that i said, but all i know is i spoke pretty flawless spanish and understood everything that our investigator said, and that when the spirit prompted me to challenge her to be baptized at the end she wouldnt have been able to say no. It was a really cool and humbling experience. I wish i could take some of the credit, but i didnt do anything. Oh, and the lesson was 56 minutes. We had a bunch of the elders and sisters from that district thank us for doing that and tell us how much they learned from it. I was just honored that heavenly father gave us that oppurtunity to learn that it doesnt matter how well you know the language, if you do your best and put it in the lords hands, the spirit will teach them between the lines of your broken spanish. Sorry this email is so long, but i just like sharing these kinds of experiences. Hopefully these emails can be saved somehow so i can read them later because my handwriting is pretty bad in my journal..

I will make this story much shorter. yesterday me and elder hacking had an opportunity to teach someone who was pretending to be a catholic. We were told we had twenty minutes for the lesson so we went in expecting that. As we were getting to know him, he changed his role to his real self. Which was weird because he didnt tell us. As we continued to figure out what was up with this guy, he shared one of his problems with us. It was a pretty big problem regarding his ex girlfriend who will not even speak a word to him. He is trying to repent but he cant feel the peace because he knows she still feels the guilt but she wont let him talk to her. I know i will have problems like this on my mission, but this was intense. And i knew it was real. We spoke to him a little more and tried to feel inspiration on what to tell him, but nothing came. Finally i had the impression to tell him that i have no idea what he should do, but that god knows. I asked if we could pray about it so we knelt down and he offered a heartfelt ten minute prayer, much of which i didnt understand. We then left, it had been 45 minutes and we were beyond depressed because we felt like we failed in helping him. And we were confused why he told us two different stories. We told our teacher all of this in a negative way and she went and asked him about it all. Come to find out later, he broke his role because he trusted us as representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ. He knew that we can help him because he felt it in our spirits. We felt as if we didnt help him, but he received an answer to his prayer, to his real problem. He also shared that there are two classes of missionaries. There are messengers, and there are representatives of jesus christ. Somehow i guess me and elder hacking have blindly stumbled upon being representatives of jesus christ. I know it is because we work our tails off and are obedient while a lot of others mess around, but it was a huge tender mercy to me. I finally felt like i did something with all this effort and time i have put in. I helped someone with a real problem in their real life.

I know that as to my own strength i am nothing. I do not boast of myself but i boast of my god. -Ammon

Sorry that was so long. I am getting pretty quick at typing!! I will end this letter here. Thank you for all the support. My prayers are with you all.

Love, Elder Doman

Mitch and his Roomies!

Wow. Its been a month! July 30, 2013

Hola Family!

I cannot believe i have been here for a month already!! It feels like i have been out for twelve years, but then again, it feels like i just barely left! I am doing really well though!

 I would like to start out on a happy note, The language is starting to come along! Yesterday i went almost the whole day without speaking english! However my vocabulary is very limited. I spent a lot of time saying "me gusta..." and "quiero.." aparently i like and want a lot of stuff! I am trying again today to not speak a word of english, but its really hard because most of the missionaries here are from the states and they dont even try and speak spanish, so its dumb, but i dont mind!

My companion and i are getting along much better. Its really hard to be with someone every second of everyday for this long, but we are both learning patience and figuring things out. I have come to the conclusion that i have to treat everyone here like they are my special needs friends because thats the only way i can be patient with them. Turns out the most valuable class i took in high school turned out to be peer tutoring!! Who knew??

Everyone is getting super sick here. The food is really starting to destroy our stomachs. Yesterday three of the ten people in my district were out sick, and thats about the ratio in the whole MTC. A few people have paracites! Scary huh! My stomach really hasnt hurt at all until i woke up this morning. Its a really strange feeling, not really a sick hurting, but more of a bloated pain. I feel like i just ate myself sick at a Cheesecake Factory buffet or something!.. Except i didnt get the priveledge of enjoying the food, just the sickness after. Its a good thing we have the priesthood!! Blessings have been healing people all over down here, its really cool to see the power of the priesthood so often!

There are a ton of people down here! I am grateful i was the first wave to the mtc because we arent even at full capacity and it is already way too crowded. The lines for our meals take forever!!

I had a cool experience yesterday. So one of the sick missionaries from my district was an elder, the other two were sisters, but they cant be alone- so the rest of us elders took turns staying with them. My turn was an hour and a half, and the elder just slept the entire time, so i was able to practically be by myself for that long!! It was fantastic! I have been struggling lately because they run us on such a tight schedule, we dont have any time for ourselves. So its tough to even find time to pray! But i had all that time, so i prayed! For all of it! It was the coolest experience ever! I still didnt get to say everything i wanted, but i have so much to be grateful for! And i prayed pretty specifically for each of you guys too, so keep your eyes open for Heavenly Fathers hand in your life!

Thank you all for all of your love and support. It means the world to me. I am so grateful for all of you! I will try and get some pictures sent, if i can figure out how to hook up my camera again! Im not very good with technology..

Love,  Elder Doman (or as the latinos call me, Elder Doomun)

Half way through the MTC! July 23, 2013

Halfway through the MTC!!

 

That is the start to this email because i feel like shouting it to everyone i see today! Dont get me wrong, i love it here. However, i am excited to go into the real world. Not much has happened this week.. The days are starting to fly by though! I feel like i was just barely here writing you guys! Mexico City is really growing on my. Mostly the weather. It is 70 degrees every single day. We also get a pretty intense rainstorm everyday between 6-8 at night. Which wouldnt be a big deal, but they changed our gym time to 7:30, and its always pooring outside. Which means no more soccer.. But maybe its a blessing in disguise because i am getting dang good at ping pong! Almost like i were Asian or something..

 

One thing that i dont like about mexico, the police!! Their sirens are so loud! I have become accustomed to falling asleep to a beautiful lullaby of Police Sirens. Its fantastic! I dont know if i told you this, or if you knew, but most of the MTC is outside. All we have are classrooms and our apartment buildings. Its kinda like a college. I need to learn to write my general email first because i am all emailed out already!! I have been typing for an hour and a half! Missionary Problems..

 

Its really cool to see how many new elders come in every week. There are six of us from Bingham High and i know a couple others through soccer or some other way. Oh! I remember What i was going to telll you!! When we first got here from the US, they had Liahonna Photographers taking pictures of us! I think i got in a pretty good one, so keep your eyes peeled on the liahonna magazines! (i know you all love to do your studying in spanish, I sure do) The language is slowly coming to me.. I feel like i hit a plaetau... (i dont know how to spell that...) But anyway, I feel like i have kinda stopped progressing with my spanish.. I know i havent because i am still learning 20 new words and memorizing phrases everyday, but it just appears that way. I never really put it together that learning a new language is basically just memorizing your life away. It is exhausting!!

 

I didnt have any amazing spiritual experiences this week, but I just had some assurences that i am exaclty where i am supposed to be in my life right now. That is a comforting feeling because i know that Heavenly Father put me here for a reason and he is in control of everything. All i really have to do is work my hardest and listen to the promptings of the spirit and the next two years will be taken care of! I have kept you all in my prayers.. As usual. I never realized how much i have to pray for! There is so much in my life, i feel like i cant get it all covered in my prayers! I have come to the conclusion that in the Scriptures when it says "pray always", it really does mean always. 100 percent of the time. Not necessarily always praying, but always having a prayer in your heart. Heavenly Father gives us so much! and we have so much we are in need of! How are we supposed to get it all covered. That is my answer. Always pray in your heart. Even while you are sleeping. I had a dream i was praying the other night... I think Heavenly Father was trying to tell me something.

 

Sorry my emails are so random. I kinda just pick a sentence and write it, no particular order. I hope you are all doing well. You are always in my prayers. (i hear spanish prayers get anwered quicker than english prayers.. maybe its just a myth though..) Oh! I almost forgot! I recieved a letter from mattie the other day, which proves that it is possible! Also, they will forward it to my mission if i am gone by the time it gets here, so feel free to write to me! It means a lot to hear from those i love. Even if i cant fully respond as well as i would like to to each of you, i am doing my best. Stay strong. We arent ever alone.

 

Until 7 days from today!

 

Elder Doman

Week 2 at MTC July 16, 2013

Hola familía!!

I figured out how to beat the email system! This morning we came and printed off all of our emails- only using seven minutes of my time on my email- so we were able to read them, and now I am typing this up in a word document so I can just copy and paste it into my email!! It feels so good to be able to just write without having to worry about how much time I am using!

Hopefully I figure out how to email my pictures to you, I only have like four because I am still not very good at remembering I have a camera, but it’s better than nothing!! So I figured out that it takes two and a half weeks for a letter to get here from Utah. I was kinda depressed when I heard that but now that I have all the time I want to email it makes it much better! You can still mail me letters, I enjoy hand written sentiments, and I will definitely write back, but it just might take a while.

Okay, so many of you have asked me the same questions, so I am just going to answer all of them in this email to save my fingers from falling off with a typing disease. First, and most important: The food!! The food is actually really good! We have a lot of meats, especially chicken. We get tortillas with every meal and refried beans as well. They really like their bread here. I have eaten so much bread since I got here! All of their bread is amazing because it’s all dessert bread. We eat a lot of croissants and turnover-type stuff. However, the food isn’t always good. It’s definitely hit and miss. I hate it when they try and make hotdogs because they don’t cook them at all and it tastes like you are eating raw meat. I have also had my fair share of the food going straight through me in less than three hours. Every time you swallow something it’s a gamble!

Second topic of business: Spanish! I feel like I have learned so much already! It’s amazing to see how far I have come in only two weeks. I get kinda frustrated because I am in a beginner Spanish class and no one else in the class really knows anything so the teachers teach really slowly, but it’s good to review sometimes. Most of the time I just figure out how to say things that are of use to me. The first phrase I learned here, and the most used one is “mas despacio por favor” which translates to “hey listen, I don’t actually speak this language so if you don’t slow down your mouth I will kick you in the shins.” I say it to natives a lot. I feel very comfortable speaking the language now, to anyone- as long as we are talking about the gospel.. That’s about as far as my vocabulary goes at the moment. But I’m working on it!

My district is pretty cool. I am not the district leader but sometimes I feel like I am because everyone just messes around all the time and I am always the one to bring them back in. There are a few kids in our district who don’t really want to be here, which is frustrating because the rest of us are trying to prepare for our missions while they just mess around. We are becoming close as a district though, which is cool. Most of the elders and sisters are still really homesick; Heavenly Father has completely taken away my homesickness since last Tuesday, which is really nice.

I had an interesting experience this week. I really have been doubting my testimony lately. I know that a lot of things are true, but there are a few things that I can’t testify about because I haven’t figured it out for myself. We had a lesson this Sunday about making our prayers specific, so I put it to the test.  It was a cool experience. I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to answer my prayer at precisely 4:30 that day. From 4-5 we watched a devotional on the screen from elder Scott, and guess what, at exactly 4:30, not 4:31, not 4:29, Elder Scott spoke about exactly what I was praying for and said exactly what I needed to hear. I challenge you to put this to the test. Just don’t do some ridiculous thing like; I want a cat to bring me a two dollar bill in his mouth while I am eating breakfast.

Sorry this email is so long, but I just have so much to say!! This is the one moment of the week that I look forward to most, so I want to make it last! It’s weird to think I have only been here for two weeks. It feels like I have been away from home for a year. I am just glad I have pictures to look at; I didn’t think I would want them but they are the most valuable thing to me. Thank you so much for taking the time to write me throughout the week. It means the world to get emails from home. I have had a few people ask what a typical day is like at the MTC, so I will outline one real quick. 6:30- arise, prepare for the day, study. 7:30- breakfast. 8:00- personal study. 9:00- language class. 10:00- teaching class. 11:00- book of Mormon class. 12:30- lunch. 1:30- Gym!! 3:00- language class. 4:00- teaching progressive investigators. 6:00- dinner. 6:30- Language learning on the computer, which is horrible. 8:00- language, personal, and companion study. 9:30- go home, write in journal, and prepare for bed and the next day. Then we get up and do it again! A lot of elders are having a hard time because it’s such a busy day, but I feel like I have been prepared so well with my whole senior year being insane that it’s not much of a change.. My favorite part of the day is definitely gym. We all play soccer because everyone wants to get better so they can play on their mission. It is so much fun! Especially cause they act like I am a soccer god or something. The other day an elder asked me “are you a professional player or something?” To which I promptly responded “No elder, I’m a missionary.” And I walked away. I thought it was funny.

Well that’s all for this week! Thanks for all the love and support. I love you all so much and I am praying for each of you specifically more than you could ever know. Until next Tuesday!!

Week 1 at MTC July 9, 2013

Holy Cow!!! Haha i have had a busy schedule for the past year, but being at the MTC makes it seem like i have been asleep for my whole life!.. if that makes any sense.. Its finally P Day! I didnt think this day would ever come! You will have to excuse my email if it isnt grammatically correct or spelled right or anything like that, because i only have an hour to email and it takes a quarter of that time to read all the emails you have sent me! I have come to the conclusion that i am going to write one generic email to everyone explaining what i have been doing, and hopefully i have time to write each of you individually. But for now, just be happy with this because i am typing as fast as i can!!

 

My companion is awesome! If i have time i will upload a picture or two and send it so you can see him. His name is Elder Hacking and i have already seen a couple reasons why heavenly father put us together. We get along great! he is from salt lake- also those of you who were at the airport met his mom! We became friends right after security and then figured out we were companions when we got here! It was really cool!

 

My week has been completely packed full of ups and downs! I really dont think i have ever had a week last this long in my entire life! The first full day we had here felt like a month and a half, so I guess thats Heavenly Fathers way of giving us enough time to learn the language since we are only here for six months instead of nine months! We have had class after class after class! The language really frustrated me and elder hacking at first because we couldnt talk and it was getting annoying! Especially because there are a lot of native speakers here (including our four roomates) who really humble us when we try to talk to them. We had to teach a lesson IN SPANISH our third day here! It was horrible. But since then we have gotten much better. Me and elder hacking are a great companionship because i can talk pretty well and he has a testimony that can clean all the water out of your eyeballs!!

 

We had an amazing experience on sunday. Both me and elder hacking were extremely heavy and depressed because we spent all our free time studying the language but we didnt feel like we were improving at all. Also both of us were extremely homesick. That night after our last class (9.45) we were walking back to our room feeling very discouraged- elder hacking was on the verge of tears, I felt impressed to ask him if he wanted me to give him a blessing. He said he would love that. So when we got home we knelt down and asked Heavenly father to help me to know what to say in the blessing. I then gave him a blessing and had one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The spirit told me word for word what to tell Elder Hacking. It also bore testimony to me that the same things i was saying to him, were true in my own life. It was incredible!! I wrote a lot more about the experience and what was said in my journal, but i dont really remember now... The only thing i remember is how strongly we both felt the spirit and that we were both assured that we have the gift of tongues.

 

Since then i have had a new method of studying my language- I dont study until after i have read my scriptures so that i can have the spirit when i study. It has been incredible!! I can have a basic conversation in spanish!... unless they are a native speaker because natives talk 15 WPS. (15 words per second) Email is great here, but letters would be really nice because then i dont have to rush so much. I will try and find the address. see if its on the internet somewhere?

 

I have seriously been looking forward to today since i wrote my "im safe email" last week. It is finally here i cant even remember everything i was going to say! We went to the temple today! it was incredible! I thought i was confused during the session in english, spanish was a little harder! ;) But it was an extremely spiritual experience. The weather here is fantastic. If the city wasnt so gross and dark, i would definitly move here! Its really entertaining being out in the city because everything is so different! They have skinny parks between roads, it would be like if we had a ten foot strip of grass separating bangerter highway with swings and slids on it for kids to play on!!

 

Thank you all so much for all your support and prayers. You have no idea what it meant to me to get on my email and see how many people had written me! It seriously has been an automatic cure for homesickness! It still hasnt set in that i am a missionary- but i can feel a new spirit that i couldnt feel before. almost like i finally have a purpose!! I love you all so much!! Keep me in your prayers, i have been keeping you in mine! Pay special attention to the blessings you recieve in the next few days and weeks, and make sure you thank heavenly father for them.

 

Love,

 

Elder Doman

First Email at Mexico MTC July 2, 2013

¡Hola familia!

 

I am here in Ghettoville mexico city. It has been a long day!! By the time i got to my gate there were already ten missionaries there waiting for the same flight. We ended up having about fifteen missionaries on the flight to Atlanta, most of them were elders with a few sisters. Within the first twenty minutes of the flight i had someone offer to buy me coffee. It was a little unexpected because i came to learn that he is a member from Idaho.. I guess they drink coffee up there?

 

I didnt have a layover in Atlanta at all. By the time I got off the plane, through the subway and to my terminal, my flight was already boarding! About half the flight was missionaries so i was able to make quite a few new friends! Arriving in Mexico was overwhelming. I didnt really know what to expect, but EVERTYHING is in Spanish! Who knew? I feel like i am already behind because a lot of the elders already know a lot of spanish. It is very humbling to say the least! Most of the elders are cool, some of them are really weird and some of them are tools, but i feel like i can get along with any of them. I think my companions name is elder withers. It will be interesting to see how we get along. He seems like a nice guy. The MTC is beautiful!! Amazing. Its like a mansion in the middle of a bunch of ant farms. Hopefully next time i will have pictures for you.

 

Thank you so much for all the support! I love you all so much! Prayers are always welcomed!

 

Elder Doman