Hello again to all of my family and friends! I can't believe another week has gone by. I am almost half way done with my MTC experience and let me tell you...I don't speak Spanish haha. But I am working on it.

This week went by mostly normally, but I did have a few days that were totally awesome. This last week has been the New Mission Presidents Seminar, so a lot of the facilities have been shut down. They closed off half of the cafeteria so the lines for food have been ridiculous, and we didn't really ever get to see any of the mission presidents. But this meant that the devotional was going to be good this week.

The devotional was rescheduled to this last Friday, and at the beginning I think the Lord was really trying to test my patience. I had been singing in the choir this week (like I do every time), and one of the benefits is that we get fairly good seats for the devotional. But after a series of mishaps, after choir practice we were on our way back to the devotional and come to find out that our seats had been taken! We were quite angry, but luckily we at least got seats in the building still. We got 2 of the last 7 seats way in the back. I was quite angry at the start, but softened up after I realized that Jeffrey R. Holland was the speaker! There were 7 of the Quorum of the 12 presiding at the meeting, it was quite amazing. Elder Holland talked about Teaching with the Spirit, and of course it was incredible. Elder Holland never ceases to amaze me.

Also Elder Cardon (my companion) and I have set up a progressing investigator type thing where will be teaching a girl named Sabrina (not a real investigator) but I think we will get a lot of good practice out of it. But, of course, the best day of the week was Sunday. My roommates and I spent a lot of time in the Referral Center, and we had a lot of success. Beforehand I never thought I was going to have success on it because there are just too many jokesters who get on that and try to mess with us. But yesterday, I chatted online with a guy named Matt who was dating an LDS girl and really liked her and wanted to find out more about the church. He was concerned that he would be joining the church for the wrong reasons other than himself. I had a great conversation with him and gave him a number for a free Book of Mormon, and asked him to pray about it, then i testified, and he said he would do it! I also had an experience where someone called me on my referral center phone (those always scare me, I'm still afraid of phone conversations) but I got up the courage and answered it. The guy told me that he had been reading in the Doctrine and Covenants the other day and when he went to sleep he had a terrible demonic dream, and he was afraid it was a warning to stay away from the church. I shared with him the experience Joseph Smith had when he was praying in the Sacred Grove (JSH 1:15-16) and how Satan tried to seize power over him. I told him that Satan is very powerful in these days and he tries to steer us away from the church. He was very understanding and had a true desire to learn more. So I gave him the number for the missionaries in his area and he said he would call them! He even asked me about my mission and said he would pray for me. He was the nicest guy, and I definitely prayed for him as well.My experience with those investigators in the RC has really increased my drive to be a missionary this week. I had the experience to talk to real people, with a real desire to learn. I was always scared that I wouldn't know what to say when the moment occurred, but I know the Lord guided me with what to say. Who knows if those people will ever go to church or anything, but I do know that I planted a seed.

In other news, on the way home from gym one day, our whole district ran into our future mission president, Presidente Flores! It was an illegal visit but we had the chance to briefly talk to him and it was really great. It was hilarious since he speaks almost no English and we speak hardly any Spanish. But we loved that experience.

Oh, and I forgot to mention. We got rescheduled to clean the temple this last Monday (1 week ago from today) and it was...quite terrible. They had us do some dirty work. They ripped up the carpet that is on the outside of the temple doors, and they had us scrape with blades all of the glue that was on the ground. My shoes are plastered with glue, and it was a rough sweaty 3 hours, but we got it done. The glue was so sticky that we had to help each other off the ground sometimes. But all in all it was worth it, even though it was quite difficult.

Wow this turned out to be a long email! That is basically all of the meaningful events of my week. I hope you are all doing well back home and I wish you all well. I love you all and miss you.

Love,
Elder Tyler Tinkham