Elder Eli Christensen in Uruguay: Week Five.

Citizens of the Earth,

I have been here for over a month now and as of next Tuesday I will only have a week left. Pretty exciting. It is kind of funny becuase from day to day I am not sure that I could say a whole lot about what I have had learned, but looking back all the way we have really come a long way. One way that I know this for sure is that we are starting to have lessons where I can reallly feel the Holy Spirit guiding them. It is such a great feeling when you say something that you feel impressed to say and then your investigator responds in a way that shows that they really want to progress and come closer to Christ. I can only imagine what it is like in the field with real investigators. I guess I don't have to wait much longer to find out though. One of my favorite things about studying here at the CCM is group scripture discussions. That is where somebody in the district picks a chapter from the Book of Mormon or the Bible and we all sit in a circle reading it and discussing what think and feel. That is a really good way to bring the spirit and gain insights that you never would have other wise, and I would definately recommend it to anyone.

As for what happened this week: our Tuesday night devotional was broadcast live from Provo by Elder Bednar where he talked about what to do with your notes from general conference afer the fact. It was very informative. Elder Holdaway challenged me to a contest where we each have to memorize all of the wordds n our exteneded core dictionary, which is a missionary study tool, by next saturday and then battle each other to see who knows the most words. There are about 2,500 words and I have only gotten through about 450. We will see what happens. During Church this past sunday, Prsident Eggleston, the councilor to our branch president told a story about when he was serving his mission in Portugal a general authority came and had a conference where he told all of the Missionaries there to keep working realy hard "because for every door you knock on here in Portugal they have a baptism in Brazil". It was pretty funny. I laughed. The only other thing I can think of is that we were playing volleyball yesterday against another district in our zone. I was front and center, and the ball was right over the net. An enormous tall person jumped up to spike it down on me. I anticipating certain death, Ducked down like a total wimp and covered my face. He slammed the ball right down on the top of my head, which bounced right over the net and scored a point, leading my district to victory. It was without question the most spectacular athletic achievement of my life.