February 4, 2014

Hello Family,

So with this new transfer something really unexpected and funny happened. One of the new elders is also named Elder Halverson. I wanted to see if we were related but he didn't bring his family history stuff so we don’t know. We had fun though on our P-day and the day after where we got the MTC all to ourselves because of the transfer. This week has felt really weird though because my group is the oldest but i feel like I got here only like last week. Time really does fly when you do the Lord's work. I almost feel like that after my time at the MTC is over I should be going home because it almost feels like when I worked at the scout camp. But it’s more like my mission is just starting and the MTC is the warm-up. Me and my companion have been doing good as the new zone leaders. All we basically do is assign people to do stuff for Sundays or devotionals and if anyone has problems that can’t be solved in their district they then come to us and we have to try and solve it and if we can’t then we have to go to the MTC president.

Ok so on Wednesday we had a combined physical activity with the other English district and we played kickball and it was super fun but I did something stupid and slid to a base and scraped up my knee. It wasn’t anything big but it got infected so we went to the doctor to get it cleaned up and he said that it wasn’t really infected but in order to clean it out we had to scrub it really well with a gauze pad and anti-bacteria stuff. Well me and my companion went up to our bathroom to do it and it hurt really bad because we basically had to scrub off the scab and all the gunk around the edge. It basically felt like someone was rubbing sandpaper on an open wound. The funny part though that our dorms are in the same building as our classrooms so our bathroom is right above the girls’ bathroom on the first floor with all the classrooms. So in the middle of me yelling in pain we hear 2 sisters yell up if we were ok. I felt so bad because I’m pretty sure I scared them for life. Anyway as far as my knee is concerned, it’s better now and after we cleaned it I just used some anti-bacteria\pain cream and it stopped hurting within a few minutes. I’m really sad though because the p-day we had last week was the last time I am going to be able to go to the Lima temple because it’s closed this week for maintenance.

The rest of this week has been really good though. I’m having a good last few weeks. I leave for Cusco on Tuesday morning so I probably won’t get to write you for another 2 weeks. I’m gonna miss Lima and the experiences I’ve had while at the MTC but I’m really glad to finally get into my mission and start working. I have one more time to go proselyting on Friday so I’ll write you how that goes. Every time I tell people where I’m going though they always tell me how beautiful Cusco is so I’m really excited to go there.

The language is going good but I need to do better at arranging my sentences because I want to translate what I want to say directly into Spanish but that doesn't make sense in the Spanish grammar so my companion has been helping me out with that. I know that most of the learning will come for the first few months while I’m in the actual field though. I’m a little nervous going out with as little of the language I know right now but I know I’ll be taken care of. I’m gonna miss all the friends I made here though (luckily me and my companion are going to the same mission so I may see him again in a zone conference which would be really cool.) but I’m definitely gonna keep in touch with all of them. That’s also super cool that the Seahawks won the super bowl. There are 2 other people from Washington here so we had our own little celebration.

Anyway I love you all and I miss you but I’m thankful for the work i can be doing here. Until next I write, goodbye

Elder Halverson