Elder Hinrichsen in Missouri: Week 1

Hola!!!

The first week on the mission. It is a weird feeling, and I definitely know the saying of weeks feel like days and days feel like weeks... well not so much the second part yet but everyone says that bout week 3 it flies by. The first day was basically just a bunch of welcome meetings, we met with a doctor to see if our shot records were good, ate dinner, got a bunch of materials and talked a lot about our purpose. We got some materials, more meetings then to bed. The second day was just meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting... lots of time to think about home so that day felt so long!!! We talked to a fake investigator with a bunch of missionaries. We basically just sat in chairs and were lectured about things here, how life was gonna be and honestly I felt like they made it seem a lot worse than it is, because once we got into the swing of things it got a lot better. We had a ton of meetings about obedience and about being a successful missionary. Friday is when we really got going into our regular schedule. We met our morning teacher, Hermano Tanoco, who served in our Las Vegas West mission!! he got home like a year and a half ago. Friday we woke up and had 30 minutes to get ready and to our classroom, which is basically where we spend all day every day, and had about an hour of study time, then we ate breakfast (the food is really hit or miss here, some days its awesome, others its rough, for example, some elders said the worst thing they had here was a single hot dog for breakfast, no bun, no condiments, just a hot dog, cant wait until that day haha) then we had our first lesson with our first investigator... IN SPANISH ONLY, and the lesson was supposed to be 45 minutes long, it was really scary preparing but when we were in there it was way better than I thought. the investigator talked a lot so that took up a bunch of time. we taught the power of prayer and that we have a God who loves us... in VERY broken spanish haha. after the lesson we had to do the missionary investigator cycle... (prepare, personal study, companion study, language study, teach) We prepare a lesson and decide what we will each teach, then study our own part by ourselves, then with our companion we talk about our part, then we translate our part, then we teach the lesson. This is the process we do all the time, when we are not eating, or sleeping we are doing a step in this process. Our day starts and 6:30 and ends at 10:30 the days feel to long because the middle of them is at 2 oclock!!! haha we eat in the comedor, which is just a gym type thing for the school that used to be here because the real comedor is under renovation. so we eat in a little gym type thing. we get an hour of gym time every morning but my zone but other people get it at different times every day. our zone is our branch, and there are 3 districts in our zone. our district has 2 companionships of elder and 2 of hermanas. my companion is elder gibb from American Fork Utah, he is going to Chesapeake Virginia. Most days are very repetitive, but Sunday was great. We had study time in the morning, the siters went to relief society, we studied, then we went to priesthood and the sisters studied, priesthood is all in english, thankfully. after priesthood we had a district meeting where we just discuss a topic of the gospel, this week was prayer, everyone just bore testimony of prayer, it was great, then we had sacrament meeting, this was fun... how sacrament works is, it is all in spanish and everyone is told the topics for the meeting during the week and everyone has to prepare a 5 minute talk and then people are told who is talking when whoever is conducting announces the schedule form the pulpit... luckily for me and our district, we had a bunch of kids leaving so they all spoke this week on testimony, service, and gratitude. the rest of the day was good, we had a devotional, which was a replayed video of a Holland devotional about our generation of missionaries, then we saw some videos about sister missionaries in the church, the stone cutter, and faith in Christ. We finished the day with something like a district testimony meeting, it was great. Every day other than that is very similar, we plan and teach almost all day. Its hard, its demanding, but I really do love it. My companion and i get along great, and we teach well together. Love you all, and hope you are doing well. I pray for everyone all the time, seriously though we pray here like 20 times a day. haha take care, talk to you next week.