Week 6: The Countdown

Well the days are counting down things are getting pretty crazy right now. Made our last trip to the temple as a district this morning and possibly my last temple trip for a couple of years. We had to sit in in field orientation for 9 hours yesterday, it was the absolute worst. We just are sort of getting ready to leave. As you can probably imagine, our room is spick and span;) 

I'll try and do more puncuation, but sometimes you just have the creative juices flowing, ya know what I mean. My companion is our travel leader for our group and the only thing he has been talking about since we got our travel plans is that we are going to Chipotle and that he is getting a bunch of crap to eat on the plane ride there. (haha its pretty funny). I've been enjoying the voice recorder. I like having an audio journal makes me feel like I'm in an interview. Thanks for that also. I'm doing good and am ready to get out of the MTC and head to Nicaragua. We got to talk with our new mission president. He gets to Nicaragua on the 28th. He is a pretty cool dude.  Love you guys and have a good week.

Love,
Elder Thackeray

Week 5: Bal-Ti-More

Days are counting down. It is getting pretty crazy. We basically have about eight days left and then we head off to Nicaragua. I saw Rosemary at the temple.  

Funny language mistake of the week: My companion said,  "Tenemos un mesaje sobre jesucristo." Which is, "We have a MASSAGE about Jesus Christ." Instead of, "tenemos mensaje sobre jesucristo." Which is, "We have a MESSAGE about Jesus Christ." So, that was pretty funny. 

We got our travel plans on Friday. I will upload a picture of it. There is a return flight in case my visa doesn't go through. So hopefully it does. (ha ha) Sunday was Fast Sunday. Not looking forward to dying in that heat in Nicaragua. 

We memorized the first vision and one of our teachers makes us do wall sits while we say it one word at a time. Elder Bednar came and spoke to us. That was pretty cool. We sang in the choir and sang a song Elder Bednar wrote and it should be published in the New Era next month, so, look for it. It is called, "One by One." I was the first group to sing it ever. Pretty special, it was a good talk. 

We got to talk to one of the new mission presidents from Argentina and he didn't speak English very well, but we could still understand him so hopefully that is how it will be in Nicaragua for me when I get there. (ha ha). My companion is from Maryland, Baltimore area. 

We were supposed to Skype someone from Nicaragua on Thursday for a TRC appointment but they cancelled, so we talked to someone from Spain. I could understand mostly what she was saying. 

I will get to call while I am at the airport they said. It is crazy that we are basically done at the MTC. The days go by slow, but the weeks go by pretty fast. Our diligent scripture ready yielded Proverbs 21:19: "It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman." Sound words of wisdom and you all should try and work that into your next talks.

Love, 
Elder Thackeray

Week 4: State of Jefferson

Well, everything is still going good here at the MTC. Our zone leaders left early Monday morning. We should get an email from them saying how hot it is down in Nicaragua. They are all going to the South mission. When they left, they gave a cool hat, some Nerf guns, a rubber band ball and some other stuff. (haha) It's a big party in our residence right now. 

Keep it up with those letters and make sure everyone knows that the Thackeray family loves their missionary the most. My team destroyed in kickball so that was good.   Things are progressing with Spanish. Every lesson I am able to say more and more and sometimes I even surprise myself. One of the guys I was talking to at the vending machine knew where the State of Jefferson was, so that was cool. 

Hope ya'll have a good week.

Love, 
Elder Thackeray

Week 3: Kickball & 4 Square

Well, everything still going the same old same old. Keep it up on the Dear Elder. We are showing everybody up so that is good. Tandy sent me some cinnamon rolls from Dear Elder that were pretty good. Spanish is coming along fine, it's a lot of time in the class and sometimes I wish I could bang my head against the wall (ha ha) but other than that seems to be going pretty well. 

We got rained out last Saturday, so we didn't get to play kickball, but we are going to play today. Our zone leaders are leaving Monday. We are going to miss them, especially playing four square. (ha ha) I started playing four square again. I should have been trying to go to college for four square. 

Our district got to host new missionaries. I really don't know where some places are still, so me and this kid were just walking around the MTC looking for his residence.  Today we got to sleep in, but the other elders in our zone locked themselves out of there room when they went to there shower so we had to go get a key from the front desk for them. 

I spoke on Sunday. You have to prepare a talk every week and then he will just tell you that you are speaking in Sacrament meeting. We are teaching four different investigators right now, which is hard because sometimes we have like no time to prepare but its going well for the most part. 

Also, at our devotional we got to listen to an apostle... Elder Renlund. Hope everything's going good. 

Love,
Elder Thackeray 

Week 2: Living that MTC life!

"Every good companionship needs a secret hand shake!"

Wade with his MTC teacher 

Hola famillia! Espanol es coming along alright I suppose. Mitch sent me a package with some toys and candy and stuff. He gave me a little basketball hoop and we were having an intense game in our apartment and some missionary from the second  floor came up and was like, "You guys need to keep it down. We can hear you on the second floor."  I have tried to 
stay away from the store as was advised by Mitch. We spend basically twelve hours of the day in the classroom, either having a teacher teach us or studying. Some days I get so bored. We had some good lessons with Marty and when we got to class she was our teacher. In one of our lessons, I wanted to ask her "Como sintio?," which is "How do you feel about that?", but I said, "Como sin tio? which is, "How is your uncle?" so it took a while to figure out why she answered, "El es murte." Which is he is dead, I believe. Spanish is a work in progress. We start teaching this other guy named Eric on Monday. Our district has been chosen to host the missionaries on Wednesday and show them around.  This should be interesting considering I only know where the cafeteria, our classroom, the gym and our room is. The sisters get mail twice a day so you guys need to step it up with the dear elder thing. I don't even care if you guys just send a joke or a funny quote. Just make it look like our family loves their missionary the most! ;) We eat at five, and sometimes four, so we get out of class and finish planning, we get super hungry. If you all were feeling generous or wanted to take some money out of my account then send me some snacks or Cup of Noodles. Anything like that so that I don't feel

The bounty of Missionary work.

like I'm starving before I go to bed every night, that would make me happy. We went to the temple again today. Elder Carico and Elder Spears are going to Nicaragua. The rest of our district is going to Argentina. Everyday I live for gym time. It's like recess. (ha ha). We have a kickball game against the the other district in our zone, so hopefully we bring home the "W".

Love, 
Elder Thackeray

Week 1: He is there all the time!!!

Hola! Things are going pretty good here. On the first day, we went into our classroom and the teachers just started speaking straight Spanish at us and I really didn't know what was going on. Most of the stuff they were saying was just going straight over my head. Yesterday, we taught our first investigator. The sisters came back and said she was real nice and let them right in.   When we got down there, we couldn't remember how to ask to come into her casa, so we basically just stood out there for five minutes it felt like an eternity.

We then just tried starting the lesson from the door finally she let us in. It went a little better once we got in, but she only spoke Spanish and we really didn't know what she was saying most of the time.  Later that night, I started to understand a little bit of what the teacher was saying so that was "Bueno".  Days have been long and we are pretty much in the classroom all day. We didn't have exercise time on Wednesday or Thursday, but Friday we finally got it and we have it at 2 pm, so we get a break in the middle of the day which is nice. We played basketball and I still got it... I was making it rain threes (Ha-Ha) My companion is Elder Calico. He is from Maryland and is always giggling, but we have a good time joking around. The other elders that live with us are Elder Spears and Elder McKee. Elder Spears is our district leader and is from Utah and Elder McKee is from Texas. We have a pretty good time together. We are the only ones on our floor so we have the bathrooms and showers all to ourselves. We are just trying to enjoy that while it lasts. The food is pretty good for the most part. We eat meals with our zone is what I think it's called.  There's a thing called dearelder.net and you use my address and you can send an email to that and then it will be sent to me that day in mail form. Saturday is my preparation day so that is when I'll be emailing.

Love,
Elder Thackeray

P.S. It is weird having to have your Companero with you all the time (haha) but I'm sure I will get use to it.

Leaving the Nest & Dropping off at MTC

Wade and Troy both trying not to cry

See ya in 2 years.

A little BP before the MTC.

All Packed Up

The Dropping Off Crew