Una Semana!!!

Well I have been here for one week.  Crazy! The first 3 days were ridiculously long, but now that I look back it is crazy how fast time goes.  Where to start.  I already talked about my companion, things are still going good and we are still doing our best to be the best missionaries that we can.  One way that we really improved our teaching, our language study, and our study was to ALWAYS start out with a prayer.  At first, when we remembered we prayed, but now every time we pray.  It is amazing the difference that it has made.  We have progressed leaps and bounds since that began.  So pretty much everyday here is the same.  We wake up at 6:10 so that we don't have to wait in line for the showers, and then we get hot ones.  I've gotten used to that so its not bad at all now.  Next we go to breakfast, where we feast on cereal, sometimes some meat, some fruit, yes I have been eating fruit, and those fake eggs that taste like rubber.  Fruit is the only thing that doesn't make your stomach hate you.  Best thing about the food.  THEY HAVE BARQ's rootbeer.  Wait let me say that one more time.  They have not just rootbeer, but Barqs.  You have no idea how excited that made me. Then we go to personal study for 1 hour, then class for 3 hours.  Then its lunch time, more class, more study, dinner, GYM!!!! The best part of the day. Spencer circled his meal times, I circle gym times.  It is the only thing that keeps us from going stir crazy.  The first few days we played basketball in the gym, but that is now closed due the mission presidents being here, so now we go outside.  The first day we played soccer, and I was so frustrated at everyone yelling BOOT IT that I had to quit. So I took on a new sport.  Four Square.  yeah, that game we all played in like 1st game is pretty legit here.  Its not supposed to get competitive, but it does.  Its way fun though.  Sunday was kinda weird to not be in our church building.  It is all in Spanish so I pretty much understood this much.                           Yep, it was really hard, but I know that with faith I will learn this language.  For sacrament meeting everyone is required to write a 5 minute talk in Spanish, and then they just randomly call on you.  I thought President Randall was bad for doing it every once in a while, this is every week!!! But it will be good preparation for the mission field. Mom, I spend all my time in 6M (my dorm) and 17M (my classroom).  All of my immunizations were good, so no shots for me.  Anyway, enough of the boring stuff.  This week we had some great devotionals as well as a great fireside.  The one thing that I keep hearing is that Fear and Faith cannot coexist.  I believe this to be true.  If we have faith that the lord will bless, help, or protect us, he will.  It's amazing.  Faith is something I believe we can all improve on.  On Saturday we had a zone teach, and we were teaching a second lesson to our "investigators".  Well as soon as we said the opening prayer I had this feeling that we shouldn't teach this lesson, but that we should go over the first one.  Needless to say, I said nothing.  We continued with the lesson and it went horribly.  Moral of the story, act on your promptings of the spirit.  No matter what it is, how small  or big, act on it!!!   It will bless our lives more than we can imagine.  On Sunday, at our fireside, we sang Called To Serve.  It was a special version of it, and all I can say is wow.  The spirit was so strong in that building.  It was amazing to hear 2000 missionaries singing to our savior.  Music is so powerful.  Today, P DAY, was very needed.  It was so nice to go to the temple and just think.  I hope you are all taking advantage of the opportunity to attend the temple every week.  If you aren't, please start.  I promise it will help you with anything.  I realize more and more that we try and do too much by ourselves.  We don't have to.  Let the lord help us.  Anyway, on our way back to the MTC, we were crossing the street and a security guy ran across the road and told us we couldn't come in.  We were like como? Well needless to say all of the sudden 3 cars pull out and drive past us, and guess who was in there?  Well President Uchdorf rolled down his window and waved to us,  as well as President Eyring and President Packer.  Pretty cool huh.  Tomorrow we have a devotional and word on the street is that the 1st presidency will be there.  I'm way excited.  Also exciting, I have travel plans! WAHOO!!!! so here it goes.  July 7, 2011 I get to report to the travel office at 3 AM.  I'm super stoked.  Then, I get on American Airlines flight 416 at 6:00 AM to Dallas FT Worth, arrive at 9:35.  Next flight 1970 from Dallas to Miami.  Leave 12:35, arrive 4:40.  Then 6:10 I leave Miami, and at 8:25  I arrive in Santo Domingo.  Sorry I am out of time, hopefully that makes sense.  Dear Elder me if you have questions, and to tell me what works best for a telephone call. I'm so excited to get there!!! Anyway, I love and miss you guys, but know this is what I need to do. I love you guys and might send a written letter including my travel stuff. 

Riley AKA Elder Reeder