"...3 days shy of a month in paradise".

Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Ty & Jared Barton (a buddy he has grown up with)

Como le va? I hope everything is going well! I am just 3 days shy of a month in paradise! If you count paradise as working as hard as you can 16 hours a day to learn Spanish and how to teach people. As hard as it is I'm loving it. I have been working as hard as I can and its nice to see some of the results start coming in. I can't tell you how cool it is to understand what people are saying to you, what you are reading, and what you are singing, after all this hard work I have put in! It is so amazing to see results. I have been having a good time in the MTC!

Its starting to get cold up here. I has snowed on us a couple times but it hasn't stuck to the ground yet. Gym time when we play basketball out hands are so frozen that dribbling is like hitting the ball with a 2x4. We still have a fun time at Gym though. Yesterday we took a break from basketball for the day to play some volleyball and it got pretty intense. We have some pretty good athletes in my zone so we were going all out! It reminded me of this summer at Newport beach having all those beach volleyball games and getting super jacked up whenever anybody scored a point. Half the fun was just going crazy after a point. I felt like how you, Trent, are everyday in the house hahaha.  Definitely a good stress reliever. I'm not going to lie I'm kinda jealous of the weather back home. Mom, your letter about the beach and Trey your pics of you getting shacked you drew didn't help hahaha. But keep those letters coming! I love them! Its a good thing that I am out of here in just 2 weeks! If all goes well with visa stuff for Argentina in two weeks I will be down at the beginning of an Argentino summer! That will be weird!

I changed companions again. Now I'm in a trio with Elder Baum, from Harreman Utah, and Elder Hegerhorst, from Napa Idaho. We get a long pretty well so that is good! We work well together. Our district is definitely the most disciplined and it shows which is good! This week I got to see some friendly faces which is always nice! They moved everybody spanish speaking down to the west campus so since that has happened I have gotten to see Elder Jared Barton, Elder Wyatt Corbin, and Sister Dapper. I don't know how many more times I will get to see Elder Corbin because he is out of here next week! I got a chance to talk with Elder Barton which was super fun. We were talking about how weird it is that just 4 months ago we were at the river messing around and doing dumb stuff from the odds game, and now we are missionaries. Not that we don't still play the odds game. I got my whole zone going on it now. We have had some good ones. Probably the best is when this Elder had to drink coke, chocolate milk, and salt and pepper. That was fun. For those of you who don't know the odds game... you can think of anything that wont cause physical harm and ask somebody what are the odds they do it. somebody gives odds, lets say 1/5, and then you count to 3 and then say a number between 1 and, in this case, 5. If you guess the same number then the person has to do whatever you challenged them to do. It is way fun and with me and all of my buddies on missions in on 5 of 7 continents right now.

Don't worry, I do more than mess around up here though. This is hard work. I have 16 hour days every day. I study spanish and the scriptures around 10 hours a day. Since my district is so small now we just absorbed all the people that were being taught by two companionships. We teach 4 investigators a day all in spanish. You can see how hard we must be working and how much the Lord has blessed us for our work when you can see that we can teach 4 people in their own language about the gospel and have them understand. It is so amazing for me to be able to understand what people are saying to me, what I'm reading, and what I'm singing. It has been such hard work but the reward is so awesome! My testimony grows everyday about the truth of the message I have been called to share with the world. Life is so hard but as I have been able to simplify life and look at it through a spiritual lens it is so amazing. Family, its really hard hearing every week about some of the trials you go through and I wish more than anything that I could just do something to help you. But, Mom, it has been amazing to see in your letters your faith. That has been what I have been praying for specifically for you is to have the faith to overcome the obstacles and when you look past the obstacles we have been truly blessed as a family and individually. How lucky are we to have the family we have? I read a scripture in Doctrine and Covenants section 100:1. It felt like it was talking to me about my family. I know God is our father in Heaven and loves us all. I know Christ is our savior and redeemer, I know that prophets guide us today like they have in the past, I know that families can be together forever, and I am so glad to share this message. 

Yo se que esas cosas son verdaderas.

I love you all and hope you write me. Letters take a long time to get here and I only have 2 weeks left so it might be better to send me a dear elder. Hasta Luego!

Elder Tyler Whitaker