September 8, 2021

 My Teacher Said the F-Word?!

I will start my email off this week with an update from my last email. Unfortunately, my attempt at selling a Book of Mormon for free on Facebook marketplace was a failure. However, my plan to teach my Colombian teachers fake English words was a huge success. Thanks to a suggestion from a replied email, I decided that rather than teaching them fake words, I would teach them English slang. During class one day Hermano Galeano gave us a 15 minute lecture on why the dating app Mutual was evil to use. After a thorough conversation on the topic I told him that he was "spitting fire." He had clearly never heard the term before but after I gave him the direct Spanish translation and definition he understood the concept pretty well and said, "Ohh, like when Elder Holland speaks." Not trying to add fuel to the fire but I think it's safe to say he understands what spitting fire means pretty well. A few other slang words we taught him were "hangry" and "bandwagon". He loves learning English slang and we love teaching him so hopefully we can continue to add to his vocabulary. 

This weekend I was able to do the MTC from Bear Lake for Labor day weekend. On Sunday my family and I went to church at a visiting branch. It's a church building built specifically to have enough room for all the visitors during the summer weeks at Bear Lake. The building is just a chapel and two bathrooms. No classrooms, foyers, or offices. During Sacrament meeting we learned that the building was designed to hold 780 people, there were people standing in the back so it was a full house. The first week in the MTC my district set a goal for all of us to bear our testimonies in Spanish on Fast and Testimony Sunday. I wish I would have known then that I had just agreed to do that in front of 800 people. Anyways, I took my chance when the mic was open and started with a few jokes about how I was serving in the Bear Lake MTC for the weekend and then I shared a brief testimony in Spanish. It was such a powerful and unique experience for me that I will always remember. 

This week we started teaching lessons to MTC investigators! I taught three this week and they have all gone fairly well. I script most of the lesson and if they ever ask me a question that I can't understand I just nod my head and say "Sí Sí, bien." Who knows what I have told these investigators but I'm sure they love telling their families all the funny things the gringo Elders say in the MTC.  

This week truly flew by and it's crazy to think that I am already halfway done with the MTC. I am loving it and the Elders in my district are a bunch of studs. We are getting better every day at getting our teachers off topic so we were glad to find out that they will continue to be our teachers for the last three weeks. 

As for the title of my email, I will end the suspense now. During a class this week we were talking about the Stripling Warriors. Hermano Galeano repeatedly used the term "fighted" to describe fighting in the past tense. He could tell he was using the wrong word and asked us what the correct word was. When we told him it was "fought" he immediately said, " Oh I cannot say that, it is a bad word." We assured him that it wasn't a bad word but when he tried to say "fought" with his Colombian accent it sure as heck sounded like the F-word. His second attempt wasn't any better. We got a huge laugh out of this and suffice to say he continued to use "fighted" throughout the lesson. Sorry not sorry for the clickbait subject but I gotta do something to get you guys to read my emails. That's all for this week!  

Love y'all,

Elder Nixon

I only took one picture this week and it's a cute mirror selfie of what I wore to our devotional with the MTC President while I was in Bear Lake.