Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! I love you so much and I wish you could see how much I have changed already.
Mondays are my preparation days, so that's when I write my emails. I was curious why they didn't put the 4 Viña missionaries together too, but then I started picking up a bunch of letters out of our mailbox for an Elder Crist who is going to Viña del Mar, so it turns out he was in our district until the last minute when they moved him into an intermediate level Spanish speaking district, but his family still sends letters to our mailbox.
Last week, I forgot to put in a good word for Elder Gong, my friend from BYU, whose classroom is really close to mine, so I see him a lot. On the Wednesday I came in, he had been here for about 8 weeks and spoke to me for about 3 minutes in Mandarin, barely even stuttering, while his companion translated. It was impressive. I also forgot to tell you about our 4th of July celebration here! On the 2nd, we got together as the whole MTC and sang patriotic songs and then went outside and watched the Stadium of Fire fireworks at BYU LaVell Edwards Stadium!! Don´t worry, we stayed at the MTC and watched it from the fence, haha! It sounds like your 4th of July was pretty fun too!
Last night, we had the farewell for the oldest district in our zone, so the whole zone crowded into their bedroom and sang God Be With You Til We Meet Again in Spanish, then they bore their testimonies. It was so awesome, and it´s amazing how much I will miss them! I spent a lot of time with them, actually, because 2 of them were our zone leaders and taught me a lot about being a district leader. One of the elders in that district was actually Elder Mark Hallstrom! He, Tristan Mayfield and I would run a lot together and we always played night games together at BYU! Good times.
Speaking of being district leader, it has been a refining process and I´m glad! I have been focusing hard on DyC 121:34-46 and have really made an effort to love each individual missionary and go out of my way to serve them. My other roommates besides Elder Barela are Elders Stetler and Glade. It turns out Elder Glade had about 5 classes with me at BYU, but we never met before. Elder Stetler is the #2 shotputter at BYU and is kind of massive! The other Viña missionaries are Elders Umbach, Nord, and Maxwell. Elder Umbach was in the Canadian military and is straight up Canadian. It is hilarious to hear a Canadian speak Spanish, wow. Elder Nord is a really good rugby player. Elder Maxwell is a FIRST Robotics nerd!!!! He is was on team 67 from Michigan!! As in the legendary team 67, the one who won 3 world championships, 2 back-to-back, 2009 and 2010. He was on the design team for both those robots, and we played against each other at the woprld championships in the Curie division last April. Crazy. Someone tell Chris Sherwood that.
It's so great to have gym with Elder Burnett, because we rock it on the outside sand volleyball courts. Otherwise, I play soccer! We play the Spanish speaking missionaries against the German speaking ones every day, and the German speaking missionaries have some really good players. We lose every time, but it has been slowly getting closer in score, we only lost by 1 on Saturday! I haven't scored yet, but when you play 20v20 soccer, it gets hard to get to the goal. I did have one chance where I dribbled through 3 missionaries, took a strike from 18 yards out and hit the upper left corner post, aaaauuuugggghhhh!! It was stupid-ridiculous. I'll let you know when I get one. Don't worry, I don't dwell on the past and as soon as I get off gym I get my whole focus back on the work, because this is the Lord's time I am on, and literally every second counts.
On Sunday nights, we can watch videos the MTC puts on, mostly general conference talks and whatnott, but last night we got to watch the Testaments, which is basically the best Book of Mormon movie ever made! I've probably seen it 6 times but it gets me every time!
Craig Skousen, if you read this, I thought about what you said with being able to pronounce vowels correctly when I get out there. So, with the help of one of my teachers, I got this exercise I call "mi armadura secreta" (my secret weapon)! Remind me to teach it to you when you get here, it is beautiful.
James Skidmore, if you read this, your mission call is coming soon!! My official guess is the Philippines! Let me know when you get it!
Brandon, could you send me quick updates about the goings-on in the Women's World Cup? How are the US Women doing?? Estaré muy agradecido!!
Kelby, could you ask Rachel to start writing me? Please and thank you.
Love,
Elder Kimball
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