I really enjoy getting mail....keep it coming!

Dear Everyone,

Ok. We have only 30 minutes a week to email so if I miss anything, I apologize. 

This week has been great! This morning we went to the temple for the first time. It turns out the greatest blessing of going to the temple here is being able to eat the temple food. I think it was the greatest thing I have ever eaten. We were all so happy. 

This week we have been progressing a lot with Erika. In our second lesson, we committed her to baptism with no date and then set a date for June 4th for her baptism. Also, we got a new investigator last night named Graciela. We only got to teach her for ten minutes since the other missionaries took too long, but we will get to teach her more later on. 

The Spanish has been going great! I can pretty much pray without pausing now, at all, which is awesome, and I can understand almost everything fluent speakers say. I have a ton more words memorized than when I started, especially with church words. The Lord has really blessed me a lot. I still can't roll my r's, but I think I just need to be patient. 

That's another thing, I have realized a lot this week I need to work on patience. So that's been the project of the week is trying to be more patient; especially with the missionaries in my district. My companion has been great. We get along well and his Spanish is coming along, too. 

I really enjoy getting mail. I have gotten a lot since I have been here, and I would love for it to keep coming! Also, the cookies in the cafeteria here are so good, I couldn't believe it. In the cannon center, they were always stale, but here they are fresh. That's good and bad since I have like two cookies at every meal.

We had President Rasband come for the devotional. He talked about feeling the spirit. It was a great talk. We were all very happy. My favorite Spanish hymn, I decided is Hope of Israel. The Spanish missionaries in my zone walk around singing a lot. The coolest thing ever was when all the new missionaries got together (a few hundred) and sang 'To Bring the World His Truth.' We sang, 'We are now the Lord's missionaries' instead of 'we will be...' It was really cool to say that out loud. I'm so glad I get to be a missionary. 

For gym, me and Elder Greer work out three days a week, and the other three days I play basketball, which has actually been pretty fun. Every week we have to write a talk in Spanish. Then they randomly select two people right after the Sacrament to speak; so we get to write a talk every week. I was off the hook last week; though, because instead, I played the piano. 

The missionary I am probably the most close to here is Elder Hunt. He is a huge half Chilean-half Samoan guy who turned down a professional rugby career to go on a mission. He is friends with everyone. And actually it turns out he is a cousin of one of my friends, Dallin Hunt, from BYU on the rugby team. So, those connections are always cool. He is in a threesome with our zone leaders so we see them a lot, and we eat all our meals with them.
The best part about being a Spanish missionary, is that all the missionaries quote Nacho Libre all the time. Unfortunately we can't figure out how to upload pictures, but I do have a lot. Maybe I will have to end up sending you the memory card after I have a few more, and you can just send it back.
I'm not sure if you got my letter but I do need some small English scriptures because they are out of stock here and will be for a few more months. Also mom could you send my protein mixer cup and the container of muscle milk in the food storage room?
I saw Gustavo Barrios the other day and also see Elder Sanft a lot and ran into Sheldon Larsen and D-rock Christensen a couple times.
I really appreciate all the packages so far they have been great. Well I think that's about it. Send me an email with some questions for next Friday so I know what you guys want to hear about.
I love you all and hope all is well.

Elder Bassett

First Letter!

Dear Mom and Dad, (and everyone else)

With Elder Sanft

Well, the first three days have been good but verrry long. An elder in our zone told us when he got in someone told him the days are long and the weeks are short, but that he quickly learned that the days are long and the weeks are just longer. haha I think that will be true. I ran into Elder Sanft today. He said that he was definitely ready to leave, and he had only been there for four weeks. My companion and I looked at each other on the second day and realized it felt like we had been here for weeks, and it's amazing that it feels like we have been here for a really long time and its only been a few days.

Companions!

Anyways, my companion is Elder Wilkey and he is awesome! He is from St. George and going to San Diego. He is about six feet and a rock climber and he has huge forearms from that and can do pushups on his pointer and middle finger only, which is pretty cool. I was sure when I came in my trial would be having a tough companion, but that's definitely not true. He is very excited about being here, enthusiastic, talkative, and I feel like he knows everybody here already. He is a great person to have around he isn't afraid to stand up and talk in class and volunteer for things. The first day we met three investigators (I will refer to the people we teach as investigators, they are employees here that act like they aren't members but have a background story and everything, but you treat them as investigators and all the staff acts as if it's real it's pretty cool.) and anyways these investigators one at a time had different stories and there were about forty missionaries in the room teaching this one investigator. People would stand up when they wanted to talk and it was like a regular lesson, but with a bunch of missionaries. It was cool. My companion got up and told a story about his cousin then right after I stood up and talked about the Savior and it felt like we had companionship unity after being companions for only a few hours. 

Anyways, the food is not bad at all. I'm sure I will get sick of it, but it's definitely better than the cannon center. I actually really enjoy it. We have three big meals a day but we are still pretty hungry at night before bed, but maybe that'll be better. I'm definitely getting skinnier though, because my watch, belt, and ring all fit a lot looser. That's ok because now I can do like 28 pull ups. My goal before I leave is 35 (a few of us in our district set pull up goals since we have a bar in our hall).

 There are a total of eight people in our district. Since we are an intermediate Spanish group we are all going to different missions. The branch president came and introduced himself and had a fireside the other night and interviewed each of us. Then he called me to be district leader, which just means I conduct district meetings on Sunday (which is basically our Sunday school), I pick up mail, organize splits when they are needed, turn in district reports, collect mission president's letters, and a few other small things.

The District

Everything is in Spanish. We made a goal as a district, and we only pray in Spanish now. The teachers never speak English. I was surprised I can understand everything they say. The problem is finding words to say fast enough to be able to talk, but I'll get there. We taught our first lesson to Erika yesterday (our first investigator). We had two hours to prepare. We taught about the plan of salvation. She speaks only Spanish and speaks really really fast, but for the most part I can understand. I am a little bit better at Spanish than Elder Wilkey so I did most of the talking, but he said a lot too. It was hard listening to her talk about a dream she had where she was dead but could still see under the ground and her family was there, it was pretty weird all the words she used, but we basically just got talking about the spirit world with her, and then taught her how to pray, and got her to pray for us. Later today we will teach her the restoration. The lesson lasted about fifty minutes, which is amazing to me that we were able to talk to her for that long in Spanish. I have definitely seen improvement. At this rate, with some patience, I think we will be able to get better at Spanish pretty quickly.

I ran into the Derek's grandparents and also Porter yesterday so that's always good to see familiar faces. I was expecting to be homesick, and I'm not saying this to offend you, but I haven't been at all. You guys wrote me letters about the hard times, and I'm sure they will come but they won't be in the MTC, because I am very happy. It was awesome putting on my badge for the first time. I don't think I have stopped smiling since then. It feels great to be a missionary after all that waiting. I'm excited for everything the next two years has in store. I get along with everyone, I have a handle on Spanish for the most part and I don't miss home really because I know I'm supposed to be here. I think I might be homesick later but at least now it hasn't hit me at all yet, because I am having a great time even though time goes by pretty slowly.

We study a lot. Not including class yesterday, I had a total of seven personal study hours. It is very hard to focus. We all study together in one room and sometimes we get distracted and start talking or telling jokes, and I just have someone say a prayer then we can usually get back on track and focus. That will definitely be a learning experience though.

Can you put a reminder on facebook that tells people to put down their address if they use Dear Elder? If not I can't write them back, and I will want to reply to people. I can email once a week on pday-which is usually Friday, but I can read letters every night when I go back to my room so keep them coming!

Oh and I almost forgot the best part. We have gym time for an hour everyday, and they have free weights! I was happy about that. I will probably lift three days a week and then play sports the other three days. They have dumbbells up to 75 so there's not much, but we can work with that and just do lightweight things. Well, I think that's about it for now. I don't know if you want to put this on facebook or just send it out to a few people that you have in your address book but just let me know what you're going to start doing with my weekly letters from now on. I will probably just do a big overall week email every week and then I can write back hand written letters to whoever sends me letters. Well anyways, I want you to know I'm happy and having a great time. I know you guys are tough enough to hear if I'm struggling but really everything has been great so you have nothing to worry about. I love you all and hope all is well.

Elder Bassett

Oh and dad, we carry around our English scriptures EVERYwhere and aren't allowed to use backpacks... so using your small English travel scriptures would be VERY convenient if you wanted to send them. If not, that's fine too just let me know what you plan on doing. Also about that shot, I guess there was somewhere online I should have filled out info about my immunizations. We will have to remember that for Brandon and Jeffrey. It would've made things easier to have that done with.