Everett Escobar is leaving for the Provo MTC tomorrow!!!

His mailing address for the next 3 weeks is:

Elder Everett Alan Escobar
Massachusetts Boston Mission
Provo Missionary Training Center
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604
United States

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But for the remainder of his mission, his mailing address will be:

Elder Everett Alan Escobar
Massachusetts Boston Mission
182 W Central St
Ste 203
Natick, MA 01760
United States

Letter from Elder Waddell 8/25/11

 hola, wow it's been a busy week. It's still the same MTC nothing is getting easier always harder. This Sunday brother Tyler our walking scripture dictionary got reassigned to a different branch but we got somebody really powerful after him. That same day they called me as the District Leader ha. woohoo i get to check mail conduct meetings and make sure nobody wants to kill their companion. a few hours after they told me I had to give a 45 minute lesson to our district so I talked about accountability in PMG. It went pretty well. Monday we had a good lesson with David about the Prophet. for some reason that night and all the next day was just horrible. I was sad the whole time for no reason. I was just struggling with everything. And it's hard here because I can't do anything I used to do for stress like hang out or listen to music or anything ha. So I just stopped what i was doing and had one of the most sincere conversations with Heavenly Father that I've ever had. I didn't know why I was getting depressed I felt inadequate and like I was completely out of my league just in the learning sense I couldn't concentrate and just felt like trash. but there was such a feeling of comfort during and after that prayer it made me feel so much better. Then later that day when I was directing our district devotional review I testified of prayer in a way i wasn't able to before to that degree and everything turned around. don't ask me why or how all I know is that since then I haven't had a desire to do anything but work. anywaysss ha. how is school going now? It takes a while to get responses here and thursday is a horrible day to send a letter it seems so it would be nice if you get a letter from me if you just sent a confirmation dearelder or something so I know things are going through ha. Today I've been trying to get my passport stuff done. It's taken forever but I'm done. We had to leave the mtc to get a money order it was crazy haha i already feel weird in the "real world" there was music playing and people not wearing shirts and ties. They didn't tell us we were supposed to call them to get a ride back so we waited outside of the store for almost two hours before we got worried and called. a guy bought us a snow cone and talked to us about his son that's going to serve soon and a lady gave us candybars and thanked us for serving ha. was it like that for you in Utah dad?? I feel like it won't be in Alaska/Yukon. People were offering us rides and to buy us drinks and stuff it was weird. So i feel bad because i ruined our pday. I'm not sure that we'll even get letters written. I'm pretty positive our laundry won't be done by dinner. It's going right now. But maybe we can take things out early and make it easier ha. The language study is going a little better I think there are just so many tenses and words that mean multiple things ha but spanish is way easy compared to a lot so i've got nothing to complain about. Our roommates left to the Peru MTC but we didn't get new ones so we're on our own for this week at least ha i'm stoked about that. I think/hope we're getting better at teaching. though i fear at least recently i've been completely dominating and not letting elder smith get anything in. like the lesson with David about the law of chastity (scary ha) I talked the entire time except for elder smith giving the prayer. but he didn't mind at all. I'm almost done with the new testament I'm excited to restart the Book of Mormon. I started it in Spanish haha i'm not sure how far i'll get. it's tough to read it in spanish because as missionaries we use formal conjugations like usted y ustedes pero las escrituras usar tu y vosotros. but it's not too bad i just need to expand my vocabulary a little more and i'll be good to go. Every once and a while in a prayer or thinking about something i'll use spanish instead of english on accident so i think that's a good sign ha. so i've got a month down now only 23 to go! and one more here. it's crazy i feel like i've been here a while and not long at the same time. but i think i'll feel like it's been a while when i'm about to leave then i'll freak out ha. oh i forgot to ask you to thank mrs harbour for me for the brownies and mr brown for the note ha. maybe regan can volunteer at the mtc for TRC sometime i think that would be good for her oh and i'm excited for everett to get here next week and john in three!! they're going to looove it here it's awesome. okay i need to switch my laundry and my time is up. I love you all.

All is well in Zion.

             Love,

                  Elder Waddell                                                                                                

Samuels' address

Those of ya'll who would like to write Sam here's his address:

Elder Samuel Joseph Clegg
Idaho Pocatello Mission
1246 Yellowstone Ave Ste F3
Pocatello, ID. 83201-4374

He's wanting letters from friends.

August 18th email from Trinity

Hey Hey. I feel like i just sent an e-mail yesterday but I guess it has been a week. Okay so this is just going to be a random collection of thoughts with no particular order. sorry. So today in the temple I met Eric Shumway... I asked him if he was related to Pres. Shumway from BYUH he said he was so that was cool. I'm going to send my card today. Hopefully it won't break in the mail. Yesterday was the last day we had Hermana Domgaard and Madden. They should be on their way to theDominican Republic CCM right now. so now there are just three hermanas and five elders. Yesterday we asked Carlos to be baptised and such. We set a really tentative date because he doesn't know enough. It's so hard to relay all of the things you want to say completely in Spanish. The other day we invited David to be baptized but he said no. The next lesson we didn't even bring it up and he asked us if he could so that was pretty awesome. It's weird to think we've only been here 3 weeks and we can already teach a lesson in Spanish. Granted they aren't to eloquent and we're teaching our teachers haha. But it's still a crazy thought. We had an English fast as a district Tuesday morning. I owe fifty pushups because I answered a question in class in English ha. Our teachers are awesome. Though they're only a couple years older than us they really want to help and care how we're doing. Yesterday I think I created a more effective language study plan. I've been worrying because most people will go to the field and be companions with a spanish speaking person so they can learn more and stuff like that. But as far as we know we're the only two spanish speaking elders going to Alaska and there aren't any there. So the lessons being taught and all of that in spanish rests solely on us. They days are really getting redundant ha. unless i have a specific insight on a day there's not a whole lot to write about. I feel like we all get a lot of insights throughout the days but i seem to forget them pretty fast. I talked to Elder Farley a few weeks ago just a random thought ha. Oh they won't let me be the host for Everett because you have to only have two weeks left. so I might be able to be the host for John. Are the girls excited about school starting Monday?? D'nel has an awesome list of teachers. Tell Regan she better write me sometime. Especially when she's gonna be down the street from me ha. Oh can you tell David Banks and Samuel thanks for the e-mails but I can't respond while i'm in the MTC. Oh and I understand why Bro. Escobar thinks the line from Nacho Libre "Chancho! I need to borrow some sweats." is so funny now. This place is really helping my testimony grow. I've never had to rely on God this much in my life. It's a great feeling. There is hardly a moment when I don't feel his Spirit and I don't see his hand at work around me. We had a devotional about desire for missionary work and the main point I got out of it was any missionary you find in the Bible or The Book of Mormon as always working that PERHAPS they might listen to the promptings of the Spirit and PERHAPS follow their saviours example of doing the will of his father. I think i'm beginning to get the hang of what we need to do here in the MTC and what i'm going to need to do and who i'm going to need to rely on to help and love the people in Alaska. I can't explain how excited I am to do the will of my Father in this work. I love you all. All is well in Zion.

                                    Love,

                                           Elder Waddell

Escobar Family

It will not be long before our 4th Liberty Ward missionary will be on his way to Boston! Everett leaves on August 31st! We will miss him!

Letter from Elder Waddell

Hey how is Dayton?? The MTC is as busy as ever. We now have two investigators who don't speak any English. It's stressful. We taught one of them about the atonement and restoration yesterday. It went well. My spanish is better but my progression is slowing. But with faith in the Lord and perseverance It should pick back up. It's crazy how little of a difference there is between everyday and sunday here. Today we all have to write talks in spanish just in case we get called up to give a talk on faith on sunday. We also have to prepare our lesson for Carlos our Catholic investigator about the apostasy and restoration. It's slowly becoming much harder to spell english words correctly haha. It's probably because there are so many cognates like restauracion and such. but anyways..... Our investigators are actually our teachers pretending to be people they know. But we try to act like they're real investigators. It's really helpful. We have great talks by great people a lot of times. Elder tyler in our branch presidency told us a story about when he was a mission pres in san antonio. Ezra taft bensen spoke to the mission there and after his talk turned to elder tyler and (because he almost forgot key points in his talk) said "i didn't do a very good job did i?" he said he learned that day that even the prophet feels inadequate. He said that a newspaper wanted an interview and neal a maxwell grabbed him and said come with me. He learned even apostles need a companion. Later that interview was barely mentioned in the newspaper and he wrote to maxwell mentioning on how it was such a small post. Elder Maxwell said "I've learned never to be betrayed by my own expectations." We have great experiences and stories like this all the time. It's like a constant spiritual high. Time moves strangely here. The times between some things seems really short and the time between some other things moves really slowly. Oh i finally got a letter from pres beesley. It turns out i need a passport haha. So either you can do it or just send me my birth certificate or a legal copy so i can do it here with the travel people. she said to expadite it it would be 200 dollars. eh. Oh and on the dear elder address for me you wrote i depart the 25th so they take a day longer to get to me. my real departure date is the 26th. so that would be nice lol. I'm enjoying the dearelders though. thank you. I just need a couple more pics and i'll send the card. No se if you faxed my shot record to the MTC llegar a ser ustedes didn't set me up for the shots today. pero if you didn't it might be okay ha. You should send me some addresses of like regan and everett and john and people the girls think i might write. that would be cool. but everything is awesome. I love and miss you all. All is well in Zion.

Elder Thomas

I swear we are going to have to muzzle those dogs if they keep this up. I can't believe your still having a drought it seems its been going on forever. maybe soon we are going to be a desert just like west Texas is. Things have been going well for us. our mission president just left and gave the mission the privilege of eating members back so this is going to be a new experience for me. I went up with  a member to my old area to baptize one of my investigators in my old area it’s always fun hearing mission stories from members especially since this guy went to England like dad did. it took a few tries but we finally got him baptized. he is a real nice guy but he has some real freaky friends. one says he is a pastor in another church but he looks like a 60 year old Micheal Jackson with lipstick. The other friend had a mountain man beard and looked like they had just let him out of the loony bin. another had long blond hair and sun glasses(in the church?). he freaked me out because he said he was from Pasadena and Id met someone just like him when I was in Pasadena(and that guy was actually in the loony bin). mom I would not know what to say I want for my birthday you’ll just have to surprise me (besides missionaries can't really do a whole lot with presents anyway lol) well I love you mom and especially love hearing from you

adam

Trinity's 2nd email 8-4-11

Well week one is down. It was quite a week. Still just as busy as before but we're definiteley getting used to it. Our teacher Hermano Stornetta is awesome! He looks like Alan alda! We're teaching Ryan still. He usually keeps his commitments. ha. All we have left to teach him is the plan of salvation and the commandments. We asked him about baptism yesterday. he said no haha but we testified and explained what our invitation means more fully and that it's not going to go away and it's dependency on his progression. It's weird that we can still teach with the spirit even though he's already a member and won't get baptized again. Elder Smith and I got new roommates yesterday. They're going to Peru. They'll only be here for three weeks so I guess we'll get more then. They seem pretty chill and obedient. We're still striving to grow closer as a district and learn together. we memorized our purpose in spanish now we're working on D&C section 4. I still haven't met anyone going to the Texas houston east mission but a lot from different texas missions. I'm not sure if i said before but i leave here on the 26th of september and my mission ends the 29th of july. just a tidbit of information. We're getting better at spanish and the gospel. I can pray in spanish pretty well and give a basic testimony. I'm starting to get a little of my scripture knowledge back haha. I can't wait for the next few weeks to get better at spanish. sorry my thoughts are a little scatterbrained i didn't prepare this earlier. We went to the temple today and participated in a session. it was great. For the 45 minutes of gym everyday i've been playing soccer. That relieves a lot of stress ha. But it's still great. We're all in the swing and I have a feeling most things aren't going to change for a while. oh thank you for the package i'm excited to eat the stuff haha and i still need the record of my 3rd hep B shot. I've been keeping my journal pretty well. it's pretty helpful in keeping my thoughts together. oh Gerald Lund spoke to us at a devotional tuesday about faith. he's the guy that wrote the work and the glory i hear ha. it was a good talk but afterward elder tyler in our branch presidency taught us more about faith and it's definition. it's amazing how well he knows the scriptures. he explained that faith is trust and the old translation of trust is to hasten to refuge. so when we have faith in the lord we find refuge or hasten to him. so that was pretty cool. all in all it seems like my testimony is growing a lot in the lord and our purpose as servants of god. i'm starting to see more and more scriptures relating to missionary work and it's inspiring. I'm excited to teach the gospel/doctrine of christ to the people of Alaska haha I miss and love you all. All is well in zion.

 

                                            Love,

                                                      Elder Waddell

Elder Waddell

This is from our first letter from Trinity which was written before his first e-mail to us. We just received this in the mail yesterday......He says.....

 I am in Branch 16 and the Branch President is President Stone with Brother Tyler as 1st Counselor and Brother Jackson as 2nd Counselor. My companions name is Elder Smith and he is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. My address is 2005 North 900 East Provo, Utah 84604. My mailbox number is 321. My preparation day is on Thursday and is the only day I can write/email. 

Hola, I'm doing great. I'm super excited about learning Spanish and how to teach. It's been two days and it is almost overwhelming how much Spanish has been spoken to me that I don't understand. They say that after a week we'll get used to it. Hopefully they're right! I got to Kenton's house and it turns out Vince was visiting too! So it was almost the whole gang again. I've seen so many people from BYU-H here it's crazy. I hope all is going well at home. Tell everyone I love them. It turns out that I can only e-mail family while in the MTC so I'll send separate letters to people. Tomorrow we have an investigator (i'm positive he's a member) We have to speak as much Spanish as possible. It's exciting but scary because none of us know enough Spanish to teach at all so we're worried about what's going to happen. My ministerial certificate expires July 29th, 2013 so I assume that is when I'll be released. My projected date to leave the MTC is September 26th so it'll be a while. I have to go! Love to you all.                 Elder Waddell

A great way to send setters to me is through dearelder.com It is free to the MTC and only the cost of a stamp while in the mission field. I receive a printed copy in the MTC the same day.