Week 9 - Teaching English

Hey guys! Houston is beautiful and y'all are too! :)

I don't have much time, sorry! This will have to be quick! 

This week I attended English church for the first time in two months, and can I tell you, it was weird. The chorister was getting really into it, I was trying hard not to laugh!  I am not sure if I like it or not any more! I have also learned that people here actually do wear cowboy boots to church. Some of the men wear them under their dress pants. This makes me laugh and I am excited to wear cowboy boots to church one day too :)

I am not sure if I have forgotten to mention this in previous letters, but here in the Texas Houston Mission the Spanish Speaking missionaries get to teach English Classes. We teach them every Tuesday and Thursday night from 7:30-9:00. At first I was really nervous about this, as I have only been speaking Spanish for a grand total of two months, and my own ability to speak English has been decreasing since then, but really it has turned out to be great fun. All the people are really impressed when they asked me if I started learning Spanish when I was a child and when I tell them that I really only started two months ago. Their eyes get really wide and they are always really surprised. It is in these moments when I realize how blessed I am to be able to qualify for the gift of tongues. Sometimes I think back to two months ago when all I knew was 'Hola' y 'Adios' and about 5 other words, and I marvel at how good God really is. We had a Spanish lesson in an English member's home this week and the poor family had no idea what we were saying or what was going on as we were teaching their friend the gospel of Jesus Christ to this lovely lady named Elizabeth in her native language even though they had studied Spanish in school. But I could understood just fine, and I also helped teach. A door in my mind has been opened that I don't ever want to close and I am excited to see the other doors that this will open up in the future.

Because we teach English classes, we were required to go to an English Class Teachers' Training outside the Mission this week. It was really weird and cool to venture outside of our mission boundaries and go to the Houston South Mission to meet a bunch of other missionaries. It was so fun! For one activity my group was charged with a list of 25 items that we had to narrow down to four things that we would need to survive on an island and for some reason we really came down to only two: a swiss army knife, and a parachute. Although parachutes are awesome, I know that really the only thing we need to survive is the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we follow it we more than survive, we flourish. We do more than learn how to survive on an island, but our perspective becomes so much wider. How grateful I am to have this knowledge! I know that I would not be myself, or be able to happy in this world if I did not have this priceless gift of the gospel: that my family can be together forever, and that God loves us! Often I wish I had a giant megaphone so I could tell everyone in the world how marvelous it is, but that is besides the point. If God wanted to share his gospel with a giant megaphone, he would. But instead he has called this shortish (though in Spanish speaking company, really tall) 19 year old girl from Shelton, Connecticut and 80,000 other people like her to do it. What I have learned is that we should not be looking for a giant megaphone, but for small and simple means. It changed my life, and it could change yours too. You too can get off that island! Just ask how!  

Have a better week than I am going to have!! I love you guys! :) 

-Hna Madison McCurdy

ps. This is Daniel and my companions. He is getting baptized this weekend! 

ppss. This corn was SO GOOD. 

pppsss. Hope that all made sense. Gotta go