Christmas #1 MTC Style

hi everyone!!

   Christmas here was soo cool! on Christmas eve we got to listen to a devotional. then christmas morning me my companion and another elder put our santa hats on, rubbed shaving cream all over our faces to make awesome white beards, and we ran around our residense hall throwing candy at the elders just waking up and yelling merry Christmas. we put all the candy we didnt want in a huge red santa present bag and would grab handfulls and just chuck it at people. i had a pillow and was going aroung smacking people with it, probably a little to hard sometimes but who cares, its CHRISTMAS!! we opened our presents, ate breakfast (cereal), then went to a talent show. all the acts were missionaries in the mtc, it was so flippin cool! we had people playing the yukilaylee and the guitar and some mozart(i think thats his name..) some crazy piano people were mobbin. theyre fingers were flying across the keys and they never messed up. some russians did a remake of a lady gaga song, bad romance? they called it 'you missionary now' haha it was so stinkin funny, they did her crazy dance moves and threw in some thriller dance moves too. we had an elder from our zone do a magic trick that was SWEET. he kept turning 5 one dollar bills into 5 twenty dollar bills. he even had the cameras zoom way way in on his hands only so the whole audience could see what he was doing and he was still to good and too fast that it literally was magic. he called chris angel and david blaine out saying that they cheat and that he himself is the real deal. it was awesome.

     but during Christmas day we also had an apostle come, elder Nelson, he was so cool, they named off the kids and stuff he had, i believe it was something like 10 kids, 32 grandkids, and 59 great grandkids.... yeah he is the man haha. but we emphasized Christ so much that day. there is a talk by President Monson that asks what is the spirit of Christmas. he later says for one to find out, we only need to drop the last syllable in the word Christmas, and we get the spirit of Christ. yup he is a genious. plus he has a photographic memory and is the coolest person out there.

    as a district we did the nativity scene play in our classroom haha. we all dressed up in sheets and scarfs to make it look like we were living in olden times, we filmed it all! i was playing the mean innkeeper who throws joseph and mary out, and i was a wise man who gave breathmints to the baby Jesus (a stuffed bear). it was fun! we did it once through and another district that is in our zone wanted to see it so we did it again all the way through without stopping, yeah i know we're awesome :)

    oh yeah im not the district leader anymore... me and my companion are now Zone Leaders! so yeah instead of being the man over 8 people, we are the manliest men (aka an Elder) over 40 or so missionaries. i think its actually easier to be a zone leader, idk why though! im loving life here, besides the food of course. on january 17 when im in the airport im excited for 2 things, one is being able to call home, and the other is FAST FOOD!! holy stinkin buckets im excited for some real fake food! and maybe if im lucky i might even drink some caffeene, but keep that on the down low :)

    over this Christmas i missed you all alot, my family and my friends, but i know for a fact that i have never felt more closer to Christ than i do right now. wow he was SUCH an amazing everything! the perfect example, the perfect leader, and the perfect savior. we should all strive to be like him, a mission is actually helping me to grow so much more than i thought it would. i feel like for the first time in my life really that i am doing everything that i can to serve the Lord.

    i do miss music though.. in the mtc theres no music allowed. so we resort to singing all the songs that we can remember haha and sometimes it aint that pretty. usually we sing disney songs, alot of aladin and mulan songs. also i want all of you who can to watch the lion king and look for simularities in that movie to the gospel. my awesome teacher hermano penialillo always refers to that movie and i just want to watch it soooooo bad!! if you really pay attention to the words that they say in it and the message it is sending and all the things that can be used in the gospel it is really quite fascinating :)

 i love you all so much, ive grown to know how to love while ive been here this short 6 weeks and i know that only through love for others can we truly have eternal happiness.

 paz!        love Elder Summers

ps go RAMS!!!

Confession

sup errbody!

nah im kiddin hi there everyone :)

so the mtc is getting a little boring now.. its okay though because theres lots of snow here! oh wait.. there isnt.. rain in december is so odd. in argentina its gonna be a million degrees in december so here we go! our room is packed with presents and a tiny Christmas tree and such. it totally feels like its that time of year even without family around. not as fun though, definately more spiritual in a sense. we heard from a 70 last night about a lot of things but he said a couple things i liked. he said to make this Christmas the best one youve ever had. and to do that for every Christmas from here on out. especially on a mission cuz you only get two and why not make them unforgettable.

     Christmas's arent unforgetable from the sick presents you get but from the memories you may have from serving others. aka 12 days of Christmas stuff and so forth.

    i love my district! all 8 of us are just mobbin life (in a spiritual sense) my visa is in the wind. i have no clue whats going on with it but there is no bad news yet so imma keep thinking that nothing is wrong :)

   oh yeah mom and dad. confession. so i think it was a year or two or three ago when you put that code on the tv so we couldnt watch stuff that was locked.. yeeeaaaahhh.. i kinda found out that code the second day and lied that i didnt know it. and i told the brothers about it. and we watched all kinds of bad shows.. Kidding! but seriously we know it. 4266. sorry for being such a sly sluether and figuring out it :) but i seriously never got the computer password which i tried really hard to get sometimes. one time i think i even used my phone and video taped when you typed in the password. but the screen on my phone was to fuzzy and too small so it didnt work. so thats my confession for the day :)

    i think that i have portrayed spanish to be so simple here.. but it is definately not at all.. the spirit does help us learn quicker sometimes but all in all it is SUCH a headache haha. but its a headache we gotta go threw to make it in the big leagues. aka argentina. where i leave to in, holy buckets, less than a month!! bring it on. im betting my companion will be an all spanish elder and never even heard english in his life so with that good assurance im ready to try to learn more spanish!

    celestial rooms are the best btw. if you havent been in a while you should definately make time to go. and yup theres a million excuses to why not to. and if its closed then i encourage you to go, thats the closest place on this earth to our father in heaven and why not be close to him at this amazing time of the year. so yeah the dumb devil will try to make you rationalize things and make things come up, but i promise that itll be worth your time to go there.

   i have only 30 minutes to type stuff and sometimes i start talking about the most random stuff.. the wife of the 70 last night said that it doesnt matter who you were when you stepped into the mtc, your a different person now. imma believer of that! ive never prayed or pondered or studied or stressed or had bigger headaches than i do here haha. but all in all im the same lazy kid who spent his last days at home playing a video game and watching countless netflix movies. only my video games here are the scriptures and my netflix is lds.org. by the way there are some INTENSE mormon messages on that site! maybe ive forgotten what an awesome video is but if i havent then those on that site rock my socks my. theyre the bomb dot com.

    oh idk if ive told you my teachers names. so there is Hermano Culbertson, Hermano Peñialillo, and Hermana Peñialillo. good luch trying to pronounce those names cuz it took our district a good week and a half to get it right haha. they are all amazing and return missionaries and speak super fast spanish. its humbling. when we think that we are cool and can talk lots of spanish they say like 8 mumbles and it was supposedly a sentance and yup we are humbled. im still the district leader, usually they get realeased after 4 weeks of being one but i think we going on week 6 now and im still hangin around.

    life is good though. and it is possible to have a good fun conversation with people while still staying spiritual. haha i wasnt the best at that before i left but we are kinda forced to do it here, not by anyone hounding you about it but by your own concience eating away at you. they are right when you feel bad about the littlest of things while your here. my time is almost up. i could ramble on about who knows what for all day but 30 minutes is all i get. and it flys by so stinkin fast. i love you all.

Agency and Obedience

hey everyone!!

    so we got to watch a talk that elder holland gave a while ago about missionary work. he gave it in the mtc so i dont think you can look it up or not but if you can i would want you to try. he speaks with such emotion and is just the best. he said alot of things and kind of got onto a tangent when he was speaking and talked about missionaries who are called to go on a mission and end up going home. he said that if it is medical reasons or complications that it isnt the missionary's fault. but to those who get called and go home because it is too hard is a disgrace. they are pitiful members of the church and they will be forever in regret for not doing as the Lord asks. he is very blunt haha but its a good point. if you commit to doing something you better stinkin do it. thats what Christ does, what God does, and we want to be like them.

      we talked alot about agency this week. that it is necessary for us to have agency or else we can never become a like our heavenly father. through the choices we make with agency defines who we are and who we will become. elder pieper from the 70 spoke yesterday about the subject. he said that we will never do something that we dont want to do. that we should decide NOW what our choice will be when faced with the adversary. they say that if you make it so that you have to make a decision every day that eventually you will slip up and make a mistake and screw it up. satan knows the natural man and our desires. what makes us tick. what distracts us from the truth and the righteous path. he doesnt make us choose the wrong. he only makes us get tired of choosing the right. like in the morning when you wake up. if you have decided that you will get up at 630 every morning no matter what then that is what you will do. but if you wake up everymorning at 630 and think to yourself should you get up or not, then eventually you will just say it doesnt matter and roll over and sleep longer. this is what satan wants. he wants us to be worn down by our own will. he doesnt force us to steal or lie or cheat or be offended by someone. he wears us down so much by having us make a decision every day. then we in our own minds will find that the wrong thing to do isnt that bad. that taking a break from doing what God wants is okay because our backs hurt, because your kids wont settle down, because someone didnt say hi to you one day. are you really going to let a simple and pointless thing eventually destroy your faith for the Lord?

      through him all things are possible. i cant say that enough.

     but in other news im doing great! DL is easy now but i still forget when the meetings are. all the missionaries that were here my first week are gone now. we are almost the oldest in our zone. every sunday we have to prepare a talk in total spanish (frustrating) and we dont even know who is going to talk. after the sacrament our presiding authority gets up and picks two speakers from the crowd. its sooooo nerve racking! but once you find out you dont have to talk you can relax. sometimes, well most times, i relax to much and wake up during the closing hymn haha. oh well my subconcience is getting smarter. the food sucks now. ill leave it at that. but my cereal blueberry muffin top still rocks. did you know there are 52 languages tought in the mtc?? mind bottling. and spanish has the most of all. people going to finland and speaking finnish are the worst off cuz thats the hardest language to learn period. poor missionaries. i dont know if ive said this before but in the mtc they ask us to call each other either elder or hermana. im still battling with it. saying 'hey dude' or 'maaaan' or 'bro' even is like my life. but all things must come to an end and obedience is key.

     someone said that obedience is the gateway rule to everything. you will never do anything wrong if you arent obedient. and you will never do anything right if at first you werent being obedient. so thats fun. obey and become a God. why does it seem so hard at times? life on earth isnt a sneeze compared to eternal life. dont waste your precious seconds on earth envying, lusting, being mad, or even just doing nothing. because if your not progressing then your getting further away from our father in heaven. i love you all very much and thank you SSSSSOOOOOO much for the christmas stuff!!! paz

ps i cant call on christmas cuz theres 2000 missionaries with 5 phones

The weeks are FLYING by!!

the days drag on but the weeks are FLYING by! we continue to get most excellent speakers for devotionals and firesides so there is no absense of new things to hear. ive noticed that most of the talks we here is about Christ and faith in Him.  theres a billion different ways to explain that fact haha. but all in all they always say that the closer you are to Christ the more you can do for Him through His name. which is sweeeet. im doing great if u were wondering :) me and my companion Elder Sargent tought a lesson yesterday in pure spanish! he did most of the talking but i knew what was going on and asked some questions too. then we did an english lesson and it was stinkin HARD! with spanish you only know the basics and the questions you ask are simple and stuff but with english... we know way too many words and trip over ourselves and accidentally get carried away with unimportant things that have nothing to do with what we are trying to teach. so yup im thankful for spanish :) we as a district always set huge goals and somehow always acheive them, its great! yesterday and last friday we could only speak spanish ALL DAY LONG.. so we did, and we mobbed, until dinner then we were sick of it so yeah, all things must come to an end.

    thank you everyone!! all of your letters and thoughts are so awesome to me and i am very stinkin thankful that you care for me, or at least act like you do ;) nah just kiddin. and yes i LOVE the treats and snacks and goodies and sugar and chocolate and cookies and pies and all that you send! i get to share it with my fellow district members too, so your allowing me to show charity, which is a Christ like attribute, so basically what you all are doing is helping me to become more like him and i cannot thank you enough. i learned this week something basic but staightened my mind out quite a bit. we have these spans of time in class where we ask whatever doctrinal questions that we want to our teacher and he answers them as best as he can. we somehow got onto very deep and mind bottling subjects that make you question everything. after he did his best to help us out, he blantently said to all of us "this doesnt matter!" at first i was taken aback thinking he had lost his marbles but he explained that these questions about God's God and Satan's Satan are all irrelevent to our salvation. we are here to learn and accomplish the ordinances that will save our souls from eternal misery. knowing what a cherubim looks like and things like that is essentially pointless to our salvation. if i think dinosaurs lived here or not it has absolutely NOTHING to do with my eternal life. yup i thought it was cool and it got my mind to be at rest.

        on a different note ive discovered the best cereal on the planet! blueberry muffin top. aka heaven in a bowl :) that is my breakfast now because the eggs here are not eggs and the biscuits and gravy are just dissapointing.

       we heard Elder Zwick from the quorum of the 70 last night talk of his experiences on his mission. he served in argentina as well, traveled to bolivia in a train car with his three companions and all their horses. he told that they had to go to a distant city and get supplies to build a chapel in their little town. they rented donkeys to haul the supplies. they were going up a switchback up a mountain when it started to rain like crazy. the trail became unbelievably muddy and the donkeys were slipping. one donkey slipped off of the side of the trail and fell with all its supplies down to the rushing muddy mucky river below and Zwick thought they were never going to make it home alive. he got to his knees and at that moment in the rain he felt Christ at his side like never before. he told us that we all will have our switchbacks on our missions and in our lives but as we pray and submit our will to the Lord, we will have peace in dire daunting situations. i love this church with every ounce of my being. i love you all. BYE!!!! :) 

Elder Holland at the MTC for Thanksgiving

hey everyone!

     alot has gone on since last wednesday, ill start off with how fun it is here! its like a whole different world, its an eye opener to what our lives are really supposed to be like and i really like it. i cant wait till the world realizes we are right haha. thanksgiving here was awesome. Jeffrey R. Holland came and talked to us about family and our missions. he is an incredibly powerful speaker and said things that will make you afraid to not go on a mission. its sweet. he said that little kids all around the world look at missionaries like they are the perfect person and they can do no wrong, Holland told us the we better not even DARE to let those kids down. so i wont :) on the theme of thanksgiving he told us to not turn away from those who need help or are needy. if we turn up our noses at those who are less priveledged than us and ignore their plea's for help then all of our prayers are in vain. who are we to say no to help someone out when Christ sacraficed his life so we could have a chance to be back where we belong. he also told us all to listen to our wife's when we are married haha. He who crusifies Christ afresh is lost and damned. Elder Holland stressed that fact as well. it means if we accept the gospel and the holy ghost and Jesus and God for all their glory, then deny it, we are in BIG trouble. as a missionaries we serve so that Christ doesnt have to do it all alone. in a sense we are their vessels to bring about change to the world. THANKS FOR THE LETTERS!!!! and im just gonna say that when a missionary gets a package in the mtc they are THE coolest elder or hermana ever, just sayin ;) we learn here to love everyone. Jesus loves all of us. so to be like him we must do as he does. holding hatred in our hearts against others for even the smallest of misunderstanding is NOT ACCEPTABLE in his eyes. if anything is not acceptable in His eyes then we certainly shouldnt be doing it haha its as simple as that. spanish is okay now. i can rattle off in a conversation now, some times i dont even know what i am saying but hey it works! something about the spirit, when u feel it or even think you do, DO AS IT SAYS. the spirit knows whats up. it wont lead us astray, but will keep us safe and help us do the things we were forordained to do. i think a mission is for every person on this earth. being set apart as a missionary isnt just a way for us to be called elder rather than brother, but it is setting us apart from the world. from every vile, vicious, wrong, crude, low, cheap, or vulgar thing out there. you are set apart for a higher plain of thought and activity. there is no room for mistakes or else you will lose the spirit. before a mission you feel the spirit on different occasions, but never as constant or as strong as it is here. i love this place, i love my district, i love all of you who care about me, i love the Lord. there are no words to describe how my love for Him has grown and how much he means to me. there is no happiness without love. there is no love without forgiveness. there is no forgiveness without faith. i wish i could type my testimony to you all day long. keep praying and reading the scriptures.

       love Elder Summers

First Letter!!!

 

 

hey!!!

 

sooo the internet has been out all day today so i wrote a letter to all you guys and now just before our class starts it is back up again haha. life here is definately unique.. the food is inbetween plane food and badly cooked home meals haha. i think it is cool here though. i got made the district leader of my district. there are 12 of us, 5 are going to the dominican republic in 2 weeks now and the other 7 of us are headed to different parts of argentina.  the spirit is soo very strong here. its like there is an angel on both of your shoulders wispering awesome spititual stuff all the time! its great. my companion is cool, my roomates are all kinda short and have bad eyesight haha. but they are cool and fun. being thrown into a leadership position has helped me to grow exponentially and to work harder every second of every day. i pick people to choose spanish hymns, the spanish prayers, the spanish spiritual thoughts, and all sorts of small things like that. also meetings at random times, sometimes with no warning at all haha. it is very cool, i think as a district we have grown together to start becoming stronger as a whole. at first we sat in silence, no one said anything even when asked to talk haha. now we are having fun and learning all sorts of cool stuff.  learning how to teach someone is rather tough. the goal of a missionary is to find what the person needs to know, then to teach them it and bring them into our gospel.  its super hard in english!! but in spanich ive heard it is easier because we only know the most basic of words and phrases. we do know how to pray completely in spanish and how to testify as well. i am not understanding mostly anything that people say in spanish but as i trust in the lord he will help me to have the right words come to me in the right moments. i watched the joseph smith movie and it was awesome. pretty much all of sunday was the best day ever. my testimony super sized that day and hasnt stopped growning since. i didnt think it was possible to believe in anything the way i am believing in the lord our savior and joseph smith. it seems kind of silly if you wouldnt join this true church. i learned something pretty cool the other day, it was a quorom of the 70's talk. he said that our spirits have Christ's light and truth since the moment we were born. and when our spirit hears the truth again there is no way that they can deny it. their spirit will make them believe because they already believe in it, the earthly man just doesnt realize it if no one will tell him. so yup my first week has been awesome my time to type is up. i love everyone supporting and praying for me. le amo!!!!!!