Friday, January 30, 2015

Week 2

 Thanks for emailing me! I pray for you guys every day too! I am not even kidding! I pray for about 10 or more minutes every night because I have so much to be thankful for and to ask for. Glad you're feeling better as well! 
  This week was so great! My spanish is improving a ton! My companion and I are super good together when teaching lessons. We have 2 fake investigators at the moment and they are both our teachers so they can give us feedback. But they pretend to be someone else and its really hard but I love it.
  The lessons are of course only in Spanish. My companion is still struggling with the language a little bit but most of the time we can find an awkward way to say something to get the point across and the Spirit does the rest. We taught about the love of God and prayer in the first lesson and he prayed and then we taught about eternal families and I took over the second lesson. I told him in order to have a eternal family we must make covenants like baptism and others in the temple and if he would pray and prepare for baptism on like the 28th of February. He accepted! The Spirit was super strong and I wanted to do a little dance after he said sí. Elder Myler and I make a great team when we are playing sports or teaching lessons and I am super blessed to have him as a companion. 
   The food here is pretty great and I can always get seconds!
   The Latinos in our house are soo funny. They barely speak any english and its super fun to laugh at each other and try to figure out what is going on. We taught each other slang words. Now there is a bunch of Latinos walking around the campus saying "Sick" and "Dope". Its hilarious.
    I am doing really well and I am really happy here! The people are great and the Spirit is constant. I am still nervous to go out to the mission field but I am excited at the same time.
I did forget my orange shoes but thats it so Im pretty good. Thank you for all your support! I LOVE YOU!


***Duncan added an additional post that requested that I give his email address out after all because he IS allowed to write back to others not just close family! Yeah! You can all write away at duncan.birrell@myldsmail.net .***

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Elder Birrell's "Super" First Week!

Dear Everyone,

 The first week was really awesome. My companions name is Elder Myler. Look him up on Youtube, Tanner Myler, he was in a band called Beyond 5. Its a boy band and hes a super good singer. He is super awesome, I of course tease him about being in a boy band but hes super weird and we get along really well. The food here is good sometimes and really weird other times, today I think we had dog food for lunch. I room with Elder Myler and we are the only two people in our room so far, we may get more but I hope not. 
 I really like it here, my spanish is coming back to me more and more plus I am learning gospel words too. We had to teach a fake investigator and her name was Alexa. It was really hard because she doesnt understand any english at all but we managed. The first few especially included some awkward silences. Im not homesick at all yet, which I cant say for some of the other Elders here. We had a really good lesson on I think the third lesson, the spirit was super strong and Elder Myler showed her pictures of his family and we talked about eternal families and el Espiritu Santo really helped us with our espanol.
The weather has been beautiful every day so far, around 70-80 and sunny. The rims here in the inside court are a little lower than normal and i can dunk with two hands, so it makes me feel good. The only actual 10 foot rim is outside and thats where we play pig and horse. I already scuffed the front of my new shoes. And no I have not worn my combat shoes yet. I get tons of compliments on all my ties and they have a thing here called a tie trade. At night a bunch of the Elders gather in someones casa and trade ties and you just trade ones you dont like for better ones. I am still too attached to my ties to participate though haha. 

My P days are on Thursdays, I just didnt get one the first day so I had to wait a whole week.

Im glad to hear that everyone is doing well though!
 We can only take pictures on P day so here are a few of the ones we took this morning. Also gmail is terrible and i can only send 25mb of data so ima have to send a few different emails.
 Love you all lots! Elder Birrell


Companions!


 Elders Birrell and Myler


  Elder Myler is the king of mission selfies!


 MTC Playground? Lol

  
 Mysterious and Exotic Elders

 
Mi compañero es muy fuerte! It's gonna be the Best Two Years!



Thursday, January 15, 2015

Safe Arrival in Mexico!

Elder Birrell flew out of our tiny North Platte Airfield yesterday on his way to the MTC in Mexico City and arrived safely around 10pm. He sent an short email to let us know:

"First class flying was awesome. This keyboard is a little weird so excuse my punctuation. People drive crazy in mexico, there are no rules. The airport was super confusing because i couldnt read anything or ask anyone for help haha.
Love you so much!"
-Elder Birrell

Plane out of North Platte, Nebraska


                                                  Last pic with big brothers for awhile!