Week #4 I'll be what you want me to be....

So much has happened this week so I am just going to just jump right in and get started.

Ok so first there was contacting. For contacting, they had us leave the CCM, walk twenty minutes to a park, and do some contacting, and come back. It was fun but really scary too. It served a constant reminder to me that I need to consonantly be studying Spanish. I can understand my teachers and the other missionaries here at the CCM. But the natives are hard. They do not pronounce very well and they talk really quiet. That means a lot of work on my part with my listening skills. 

The piano number with Elder Zeballos went well. I got a compliment from President Brady afterwards which was a huge plus because President Brady is kind of strict and it is kind of rare when you see him smile or laugh very much. He is an incredible guy though. Such an example of faith, obedience, and service. 

Proselyting was awesome! I am so excited for the field. I went on splits with an Elder Shirrod in the Santiago South mission. He is from Mesa Arizona so I told him about Cameron. He actually goes home the day I go out in the field so maybe he will run into Cameron some time. Proselyting was a great lesson of how much I am going to need to trust in the Lord and act as his representative. Walking down the streets of Santiago, you can feel all the eyes staring at you, friendly or not so much. It´s beautiful here in Santiago. I love it more each and every day. 

After proselyting, later that night, I had a really cool spiritual experience. I have 4 roommates other than my companion. Two of them are the zone leaders. Their names are Elder Johnson and Elder Guitterez. The other two are Elder Hall and Elder Marchant. They are all fantastic guys. That night, Elder Marchant came to Elder Myers and me and asked for a blessing. He said he has been suffering from separation anxiety pretty bad. He has had a hard time eating and a hard time sleeping. We were more than happy to do that for him. I had the opportunity of being the voice during the blessing. It was the first one I had given that I had to speak out loud. It was incredible that as I listened to the Spirit, the words that I needed to say for Elder Marchant just came. It was an incredible experience I will never forget. 

So every P-Day and every Sunday mornings, we have a devotional where we watch General Conference talks or MTC devotionals. I don´t know why but we have spent most of our time watching talks given by Elder Bednar. A lot of people complain that we watch him too much but personanlly I could listen to him all day. Every talk we watched I felt so spiritually uplifted and ready to serve. Here are the talks we watched:

1. Planting Christ in our hearts(in connection to Alma 32 and 1 Nephi 8. If you find the talk, try to figure out the connection Elder Bednar makes. It blew my mind)

2. One by one(I don´t know when but I remember before my mission hearing that Elder Bednar wrote a song called One by One.In this devotional, he debuted his song early to the missionaries and talked about how we can learn more about God by following the pattern of one by one)

3. The Character of Christ(I can´t do this one justice. Just look it up.It was fantastic.)

Ok so for the last part of my email, I need to vent really quick. As of late, I have discovered that I have a very bad problem with being self critical. If there are instances during my time during the CCM that I am not exactly obedient, I mess up my Spanish, or somehow I feel like I fall short of the mark for being a representative of Jesus Christ, I beat myself up pretty bad for it in my head. Often it gives me motivation to work harder and do better than next time but as of late, it has constantly worn me down with the worry that I am not a good missionary. While this has been hard, it has taught me a great deal of patience and humility. If I didn´t have the Lord on my side while I was doing this, I would be home already honestly. These times have taught me to trust him and to wait for the promised blessings in store for serving a mission.

Love you guys,

Elder Evans(Landon)

p.s. Sorry if my English is really bad. The more I learn Spanish, the less I remember English. These are going to be a fun two years

Me and my district and our teacher Hermano Cuevas in front of the temple

 Myers, me , Inouye and Ramos

Myers, Ramos, and Me