January 30, 2014 - Week 5 (last full week in MTC)

Mom! :)I  just got your first letter you sent like a month ago!! Pouch mail I guess is the way to go, I just sent my responses today so we will see how long it takes to get there! Im so happy to hear about your good news! I have been praying really hard for you these past few weeks! Thats so awesome about the Paul Iverson kids!!! hahahaha,  poor Ash, I'm sure he would've had a really awesome time! I'm buying a ping pong table when I get back for sure! We play that so much while we are in gym, and its kind of my new favorite pass time! haha.  I was just thinking about that new watch.  I completely forgot to get it fitted to my wrist before I left, so I guess I will be a watch worker the next coming days! :) So im really happy that your scans are going well! hopefully theses stupid tumors in your head are affected by this new treatment of Gamma Knife Radiation!!!!!!! Ill keep praying for you!

So this week has been pretty uneventful, as of today we leave in 3 days to Nicaragua, and we leave at 9:18 in the morning!!! We are all itching to get out of here! It's awesome here but it's time to do some real teaching.  My Spanish is coming along really well, and I credit that all to the Lord. There's no way anyone without the gift of tongues could have improved this much in a foreign language! I'm so grateful for the Spirit and how helpful it has been to me! I'm actually quite surprised at how easy Spanish is! There are just a lot of little rules and all of the different forms that you have to conjugate verbs too!

Any way, like I said, This week has been pretty uneventful, except for the past few days.... 

Book of Garrett Chapter 1

And, it came to pass that on the night before the Last, there were four of us dwelling in the land of casa 36 room 3, and we all become exceedingly hot. So hot as to exceed all other feelings and a few of us, began to murmur exceedingly much because of the awful temperature that had seemed to come from nowhere. So whilst the mourning commenced, I thought to myself, I will go and do, for I know I can conquer this heat! I lifted the hearts of my fellow brethren by convincing them that we had to open the windows.  Now this was a grievous tasks for my brethren because of the awful stench that seemed to always exist outside in the city of Mexico. The stench was a stench that was nearly unconquerable, however the commencement of spraying our new found weapon, cheap cologne (AXE), made our burdens exceedingly lighter, so as to get some sleep upon our beds.

But behold our night was not over yet. For the use of our weapon seemed to have drawn together a swam of flying beasts to the screen of our window. And it came to pass that as we were in our slumber, these blood sucking beasts commenced there infiltration of our casa. For the hour was early, and we sound asleep full of pride in our defenses and slept not with our swords beneath our pillows.

 And behold, we awoke to a buzzing noise in our room, that was piercing to the soul, and touched each of us with awful fear. Not knowing how long these mosquitos had been in our room, we quickly hid ourselves under our blankets. Behold the West Nile virus and Malaria seemed to encompass us.  We hoped with all our hearts that the bugs would lay low. Before long, the noise stopped, and we then re-claimed our sleep. 

However, for what seemed like only a second, I awoke, and realized I had been severely wounded by one of these beasts. Behold, I could only see out of one eye, I then began to fear that I was blind and would be lost to this mission. Quickly, however I realized I was not blind, but that one eye was swollen shut.  Oh my family, how I would exhort you to never open a window in Mexico City and use the strength of man scent to over power the stench that has settled here in the City. I quickly jumped out of bed and unknowingly woke the beasts up which then again began to encircle my fellow brethren.( At a later date I sincerely apologized for my selfish actions.) 

As I further inspected my eye, at the hour of 5 and a half, in the morning, I realized my then current appearance made me look like Quasimodo (Disney Reference).   I resolved the only way to be healed was to give myself a blessing, so i prayed to make sure my actions were right, and the answer was no.  So not being able to help myself, I realized I had left, upon our table my sewing kit. Grabbing hold of one of the needles, I tried with all the force to release the blood from my eye lid, but it was to no avail, for the pain was exceedingly strong, and I had not the strength to even break the skin. For behold the eye lid seems to be the most sensitive skin on the entire body. My last attempt at saving my eye from utter destruction was to take the herbal medication of Vitamin I (ibuprophen).  I weighed the consequences of gaining a stomach ulcer from not taking food with vitamin I (Ibuprophen), and the healing of my current appearance and condition. And it came to pass,  I took Vitamin I, taking upon myself the power of earthly medication. My burdens were made extremely light, and by the mid- afternoon my eye was saved. My joy exceeded  all my expectations, and it seemed to overflow  my entire body! 

The following night, we conquered our foe with a weapon bestowed upon us, a fly swatter. The massacre was one that has never been seen before. But behold my joy and the joy of my brethren was so great, because none of us had harmed or killed in this new battle! We thanked the Lord greatly that night! 

Thanks Mom for everything that you do, and I hope you enjoyed the letter this week! I love you and I'm so grateful for doctors in Seattle. I believe my P-Day will be Monday, but I will try and email from the mission home :) LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!  

Elder Naisbitt 

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Dad,

Awesome pictures!!! 

 

The guys in my district thought they were the best! This week has been a really good one, not a lot happened, but it went by really fast and it was fun! So we leave Monday at 9:18  to Nicaragua! I don't know what time I  will arrive or anything yet, but we get our itinerary sometime today,  so I'll email you again latter to let you know! 

I think my P-Day will be Mondays, so i'll probably get a chance to email from the mission home Monday. But, I think the next email I can send to you will be the following Monday! :) Its finally here, I cant believe it! I feel like we have only been here for a few weeks, not 6! 98 weeks left!!!!! :) I love you Dad, I'm grateful for you and mom's weekly emails, I look forward to them every week!  I have learned so much from you and mom, and I use a lot of the teachings you guys taught me during FHE. We were talking the other night about some of the stuff we wished we would have done before we left, and Ash came to my mind. I wish with all my heart I would've done more stuff with him! He's seriously one of the coolest kids I know, and I seriously regret wanting him to act like he was my age rather than his age. I miss you guys a lot! Have a great week! Have fun up in Seattle!

Love,

Elder Naisbitt

p.s.s.

Got my flight itinerary! 

I leave Mexico city, Monday 9:18 am and its a three and a half hour flight

arrive at 1:57 pm at Panama city

leave Panama City at 7:02 pm-hour and half flight

arrive at Managua at 7:48pm

We are all really really really really excited!!!!!!!!

Week 4

Hi, I Loved the pictures of our family! Those were huge milk shakes Ash Dax and Stockton were eating in Las Vegas for Lauren's soccer tournament.

So just a little about this week! We found out today that the five of us that are going to Nicaragua,

leave the 3rd at nine o'clock at night!! we are all freaking out! :)

 So a really cool experience this week teaching.  My companion and I were teaching one of our investigators, and we were teaching about the Plan of Salvation. We really couldn't get the spirit to be there, it was really hard. Eventually the guy said he had like five minutes and I was super impressed by the spirit to talk about you and your cancer, and how I know we can be as a family forever. I shared that all of this my mom is going through is because God has a plan for her, and that He created this plan of salvation for families. It turned into a cry fest pretty quick, my companion and I couldn't get a grip cuz of how strong the spirit was! I love you mom, and I Miss You! I miss all of the time we spent together, I tell the other elders that all the time! You're my hero!  I Know if  everything else were to fall apart, I know i would have you, and the Lord supporting me no matter what! 

Elder Soifua and I got our second investigator to commit to baptism!! First in our District to get him to commit! On Monday we got oil vials, and oil, and consecrated the oil, pretty cool.

Tuesday we had an all Spanish Devotional! All the New Bee's in the CCM got translator things, however everybody that had been here for more than two weeks had to listen without it. The first twenty minutes were so hard!  I thought my head was going to explode!  However, I quickly adapted and ended up understanding like 80% of what was said! 

The Elders and I  had another sleep out in the living room! These late night talks have made all of us soooooo much closer! 

I finally got your letter!!!!! so pouch mail takes like 15 days to get here haha :) Pretty sure the pony express could get it here faster! ;)  I was the first to get an actual letter in our district! Im so grateful to have an awesome mom like you! I'm really bad at folding my clothes, and i keep wishing i had you here to teach me! I love you!

Finally, we only have  11 more days here! It feels like we have been here forever, but then we really haven't, and Pdays come so much faster now! I love emailing you guys and reading the emails, it keeps me happy and sane.  I have so much to be thankful for!

Have a great week! Scripture of the week: Alma 7:14-15

Love you to Pieces!!!

Elder Naisbitt

HELLO!!!!!

Another week bites the dust! This week has been seriously been one of the best weeks of my life! Spanish is coming along really well! Just a quick over view of the week! :) 

1/10   Friday: Today was pretty much uneventful, my and I companion decided to start getting up at 5:30 in the morning to read scriptures in Spanish!  I'm so tired, but i think that is what is helping me so much with the language! 

1/11  Saturday: Day full of classes, and lots of learning, but that night we talked wayyyy to long about our first kisses, and how they all went down! It was so interesting to hear people's stories haha :) I  have grown so close to these guys! We are like a brotherhood! We all get along so well, and we all are on the same page!

1/12  Sunday: No Talk for me!!! haha we had an awesome devotional by Elder Holland, about missionaries and how we are the symbols of the church. It was so empowering and made all of us really sit down and think about our missions so far, and how much we really need to improve. He is such an amazing speaker, and really can draw the spirit in!

1/13  Monday: At lunch we all got talking about what life will be like heaven, and we all kind of agreed on the news station that would broadcast in Heaven, "Ceilo News" (Ceilo in spanish is heaven) hahaha. we were all laughing so hard haha :) My companion and I  taught Carlos tonight, and it felt like a pretty amazing! The Spirit was so strong. He has had Dolores y Pecados (guilt and sins) and so I felt impressed to tell him to kneel down and ask him to pray to His Father in Heaven who Loves him Siempre, and ask for El Perdon de sus pecados. El Espiritu Santo was so strong and as he prayed it really hit all of us and we all were crying pretty good haha :) After the prayer we asked him how he felt, and he said in spanish, Optimistic! This Gospel is a message that You can receive revelation from God for yourself, and that God Loves YOU!!! God will always forgive and has his arms open to all of us, all we have to do is take the first step. 

1/14  Tuesday: Tonight we had such a great Devotional by Elder Bednar and Sister Bednar. The spirit was so strong, and at one point he talked about spiritual gifts. All missionaries that will be speaking a foreign language are promised the gift of tongues, however if we are praying to receive them for ourselves, we will never get them. Every Aspect of a mission is to serve others and to be there for others. If we want these spiritual blessings we need to want them to help benefit others lives, rather than to benefit our own. He closed the devotional be telling us that we need have patience in the Lord. The Lord works on his own time, and we need to accept that, and be patient. That message was exactly what I needed to hear. It was such an amazing answer to prayer.

1/15  Wednesday: Tonight we decided to take all of our beds out and make a huge blanket fort our of all of the sheets and blankets in our front room of our casa. It was so Awesome! There is a picture attatched of it :) Best night Ever! :) 

This week has been the greatest! I love you guys and I miss you!!

Moroni 10:3-5 

ALL of God's children can receive personal revelation!

Elder Naisbitt

Week 2 in the MTC Mexico

Dear Mom

Week 2 complete!! It has been a crazy hard, but good week! we all have been really leaning on each other has we all are trying to learn the language, so we have all grown really close with each other! We all had a really humbling and kind of a discouraging night on Monday. Our investigator, who we have been teaching, and who me and my companion committed to baptism, told us he had something happen with his girlfriend and him (keeping it pg for the kids) and they didn't feel bad. We were so stunned and shocked and distraught, that we just tried our best to finish the lesson, and try to reclaim the spirit enough for us to testify of Christ, and for him to feel bad for his sins, and repent. BTW this is a fake investigator, he is just our teacher at night, but it is so real, and you really learn to love these investigators. So our whole district, 6 boys and 4 hermanas, had the same experience on Tuesday. We all were so sad and felt totally discouraged. I don't think anyone was taking this whole teaching thing very seriously, and it really just hit home tonight that this is something we have to be able to cope with because we will be teaching people in 4 weeks with these same problems. We teach him again tonight, so Ill let you know how it goes next week! 

I haven't got any packages yet, but I'll keep checking. 

In class last night we had a really cool experience when our meastro was teaching us how to get an investigator to pray, and i was paired up with one of the Hermana's in our district, and we were both feeling the spirit so strong. Its such a cool experience to be able pray and to ask if the Book of Mormon is true. The classes are crazy long, and mostly in Spanish, but I'm getting pretty good at understanding, speaking is slowly trailing behind ha-ha. I miss you guys!

Last Saturday night, there was this huge tie trade party thing at one of the casas on campus, and the guys all went, and we got some pretty sweet ties!!

Love you guys! Its so nice to read your emails! 

Alma 26:27

Elder Naisbitt!

(from mom....I sent a dozen donuts from a website that was recommended and it was NOT fulfilled!  Lame.  I've tried to get a hold of them through email/phone and no response!)  Hopefully I can get it to work out and he'll have a fun surprise!

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Dad!

Thats so awesome that you are working out! Our gym time is spent playing ping pong ha ha :) I have kind of become really good at it, and I have committed to myself that the first thing I buy when I'm home is a ping pong table!! haha

I'm glad my patriots are doing good! There is another elder in our district that is a patriots fan, and its been fun to talk about it! Im glad the Utes are rocking it too!! I'm singing Utah Man in my head!

It's been a super spiritual week, hard, but spiritual. Mom has the full story, but basically our fake investigator that we committed to be baptized decided to have relations with his girlfriend, so its been tough trying to figure out how to teach him.  As a missionary we tend to fall in love with not just the people, but who the people are! Even if they are fake, its been hard! 

So I figured out the best way to get packages down here is by Religious tape or put pictures of the Virgin Mary across all of the seals of the box, and the Mexican or Nicaraguan workers wont cut through the picture of Mary because  its like defacing a religious image :) so give that a whirl next time you guys send something!

I love you! Read Alma 26:27-29 it has brought me so much strength this week!

Elder Naisbitt

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Lauren and Ash both rec'd emails as well.  

Week 1......Guess What Day it is?.....P-Day

(disclamer from mom....Our family loves the Geico auto insurance add "Hump Day" and the camel on the commercial says it the way Garrett writes it in his letter.  For Christmas I bought all of them t-shirts with a camel and the word Day on it.  That is what Garrett is referencing.)

Mom!

Guess what day it is?? Guess what daayyyyy it issss?? P-DAY!!!! :) thurdays are our districts prep day! it feels like its been forever since i have talked or emailed to anyone except a missionary haha! Our casa has four rooms, each with four elders! Elder Soifua and i are in room three with elder Roney y Elder Naupoto! its a total blast! We sit and laugh and joke all day haha! its been a pretty crazy week! lots of meetings and even more investigator teaching! Every night this week our district along with another district all have had "progressing investigator" which is you and your companion teach an investigator of the church about the gospel... worst part is, they know very little English! its soooo hard cuz i know barely any Spanish and my companion can barely pronounce half of the words haha. its a great teaching experience, its just really hard to be able to invite the spirit to there because both of us are stumbling over our words and trying to figure out what words to use haha, we will get better though.

On Saturday night our Branch President told us that every Sunday like 6 missionaries have to speak in sacrament, and they don't know they are going to teach until that day right after the sacrament is done being administered. Just my luck, i first get the assignment of talking about the law of chastity for five minutes, then i get called on that morning to speak haha! I felt like i did alright for talking about chastity on the spur of the moment and in broken Spanish haha. The rest of Sunday was really awesome though! we watched an awesome devotional that elder Holland gave at the Provo MTC and then the six elders in our district memorized the missionary purpose in Spanish! 

The food is really really good here! Tuesday night is Pizza night! Im already eating a lot of beans... refried though! haha the food is generally pretty traditional Mexican dishes, but like last night we had Chinese food! yummm! Lunch tends to be the best meal!

Gym started on Monday! all we do is play basketball and table tennis haha our six group of elders don't take much seriously, so on Tuesday we decided we would play 5 on 5 in basket ball with another district, they wrecked us, but they didn't have any fun! One elder had played 2 years of college ball before coming out haha its crazy! We had a table tennis tournament yesterday, i have 0 hand eye coordination so i was out really quick, but there are some really good elders! 

The language is really hard! its coming along slowly, but it will come with time! 

Last night and the night before was the best nights so far! Tuesday night we stayed up with the entire casa till midnight celebrating new years! its been so crazy in Mexico! especially on new years! I guess people have cannons or something and they would just blow off cannon blanks all night, so we joked about that in the morning, if we survive, we have to write our own rendition of The Star Spangled Banner! hahaha! And Yesterday night, my companion decided he was going to go to the shower in the room next to ours! so while he was in the shower, we got everyone in whole casa to start flushing the toilets!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha we sincerely apologized, through hysterical laughs, after he got out of the shower :) 

On Tuesday we have devotionals, and we watched Elder Bednar's devotional at the Provo MTC! it was so amazing! it was about the character of Christ, which is giving when you are in hard times and all you want to do is turn in wards. The spirit was so strong! My favorite line he said was "if you go looking for yourself, you wont find it, but if you lose yourself, you will find yourself." How true that is! If we try to become like Christ by constantly thinking about what WE have to do, we will never get there, but if we simply turn away from the natural man which is constantly begging us to make everything about us, we will find ourselves more like Christ than we ever imagined! 

I really miss you guys! I have totally taken for granted having a family at home that you can always talk to!

I love you guys!!        **from mom....(the EEEEEEEE before Elder is a quirkey way  Lauren and Garrett talk to each other)

EEEEEE Elder Naisbitt, Signing off :)  

    

Dad!

Here are some Pictures! The MTC blocks all websites that aren't lds.org oriented. So here a select few! We went through the Mexico City Temple today! it was so pretty! I have been having a total blast! i wrote mom the main update email,  but i just wanted to write you and tell you how much i love and miss you. Its so hard at night to lay there and think that i am so far away from you guys and i don't have an amazing dad to lean on for strength. I love you and I'm so grateful for the hero you are to me! The spirit is so strong here, i have never felt so close to my Heavenly Father, and that is pretty much what gets me through each day, is knowing i have an amazing supportive family back home that loves me, and that i have God and Christ that are with me as well. I grabbed my gym clothes before i left, and thank you for sending the watch. I can't wear bracelets in the MTC, or Pins, cuz i guess its not professional. But hopefully my mission president will let me wear the bracelet cu z i know ash spent a lot of time on it. I love you guys! Tell Lauren and Ash I love them, and that I'm proud of the wonderful siblings they are. I found the pictures  mom packed me! they have been such a help to me to see you guys! I'm sitting at the computer trying to cry! haha I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Naisbitt