Hi everyone,
This past week has been rough. On Mon there was an incident with a pinata. The district leader didnt want to tell his district that it wasnt appropriate because he doesnt want everyone to hate him. Sooo Elder Jones and I said we would help him. So we knock on the door and the elders opened it but shut it really quickly. So we knocked again and right when they opened the door Elder Jones put his foot in so they couldnt shut it. Well they started pushing and some elders on our side started pushing and one of the elders moccasin's got caught and ripped, so he started yelling and screaming. We finally went in, got the pinata, gave them the candy in it and destroyed the pinata. The elder whos shoe broke was kinda angry at Elder Jones and I which was unfortunate because he was the only Chicago Bears fan here except me. Anyway after meeting with the Branch Pres and stuff like that everything turned out ok. But shoot I've never felt more like a parent than this time as a Zone leader. We keep telling the elders to be obedient and stuff like that but they just keep on rebelling... but esta bien cuz I leave on Monday! :)
We got our visas and we leave at 10 in the morning so I'll probably be calling you around 10:30 or 11ish. I dont know. It's just whenever we get to the airport and we get time to do it. So ya I am sooooo excited but at the same time scared out of my mind because I dont feel like my spanish is anywhere close to being good enough. I'm going get there and someones going say something to me and I am not going to understand a word of it. O well I'm so excited to go and start serving! Dang it...I had a whole lot to say in this letter but I forgot my sheet that I write all my stuff on. Oh well. Uh well I got a haircut today and the lady pretty much made me bald so I have no hair now so thats unfortunate but whatever...esta bien.
We taught on Tuesday and by this time we were thinking we were pretty hot stuff. Well we were humbled by the teacher we taught. He spoke really fast and asked questions we didnt know how to answer in spanish. So ya that was a humbling experience. We later found out that our teacher had told that teacher to be really hard on us! So that was a little reassuring but still not much.
Elder Jones is singing in mission conference on Sunday and he's a little sick right now so keep him in your prayers if you could. :) Thanks. ok :)
Next time you hear from me I'll be in Argentina :)
Love you all
Elder Schupple
Friday, September 26, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Zone leader issues, Flight plans!
Hola familia and whoever else reads this :)
Well I'll start with the questions mom had: No i don't need anything. I think I'll be able to fit everything in my bags. Oh I got the package! Thanks by the way! We listened to Christmas songs today. It was awesome. The memory card pics were great... at least the ones I could see. There were some that the camera couldn't read. So that was a bummer but thanks.
OK so life has been interesting since becoming a zone leader. We don't get any time at night to do anything because we have interviews with all the district leaders and give abrazos (hugs) to everyone in the zone. By the time we are done we are late for bed-- which is a bummer because we arent being obedient to that rule. But we're try our best, so I think the Lord will understand. OK so other than that, being a zone leader isn't that hard. We have a lot of meetings on Sunday and we have to give the spiritual thought every priesthood meeting. This Sunday we get to teach all of it because the branch presidency will be at another meeting but esta bien. We are teaching about the scriptures so it wont be that hard. The hardest part will be preparing because our mdt has been cut short. But it ll be OK. This past week, on Monday we got our first trial. A younger elder really wanted to go home and almost did. So Elder Jones and I were stressing about that big time and praying really hard for him. His district had a fast for him. When he was packing his bags and was almost ready to go we thought all hope was lost. But then out of the blue he decided to stay! O my goodness Elder Jones and I were so relieved! Lots of thanks to Heavenly Father for that one. Other than that there are only a couple other problems. We have a district that has a hard time focusing and needs constant watch. So that's a bummer. We keep trying to motivate them but not much is helping right now. Other than that, we are over booked because the district older than us doesn't have their Visas so we have 57 people in our district now. So its interesting trying to watch over everyone especially since that district is starting to get tired of the MTC. They are constantly in our prayers along with the rest of the zone but its a little stressful at times. Pero esta bien-- everything will turn out OK because we are all in the Lords hands :) Its very comforting to know.
Lets, see...oh...Elder Jones has a fan of his voice. It's Sister Boone-- the mission presidents wife. So we have been spending some time with her lately. Shes trying to put him in as many meetings as possible. Its fun.
So I just heard from an elder in my district whos brother is in Argentina that about 1 out of 7 letters gets there so :) I hope I have internet!
Hey we just got our flight plans!!! :) Im excited, but not too much because the older district got their flight plans but didn't get their visas so we'll see. But it was way exciting to see that we will be out of here some day :)
love you all
elder schupple
Well I'll start with the questions mom had: No i don't need anything. I think I'll be able to fit everything in my bags. Oh I got the package! Thanks by the way! We listened to Christmas songs today. It was awesome. The memory card pics were great... at least the ones I could see. There were some that the camera couldn't read. So that was a bummer but thanks.
OK so life has been interesting since becoming a zone leader. We don't get any time at night to do anything because we have interviews with all the district leaders and give abrazos (hugs) to everyone in the zone. By the time we are done we are late for bed-- which is a bummer because we arent being obedient to that rule. But we're try our best, so I think the Lord will understand. OK so other than that, being a zone leader isn't that hard. We have a lot of meetings on Sunday and we have to give the spiritual thought every priesthood meeting. This Sunday we get to teach all of it because the branch presidency will be at another meeting but esta bien. We are teaching about the scriptures so it wont be that hard. The hardest part will be preparing because our mdt has been cut short. But it ll be OK. This past week, on Monday we got our first trial. A younger elder really wanted to go home and almost did. So Elder Jones and I were stressing about that big time and praying really hard for him. His district had a fast for him. When he was packing his bags and was almost ready to go we thought all hope was lost. But then out of the blue he decided to stay! O my goodness Elder Jones and I were so relieved! Lots of thanks to Heavenly Father for that one. Other than that there are only a couple other problems. We have a district that has a hard time focusing and needs constant watch. So that's a bummer. We keep trying to motivate them but not much is helping right now. Other than that, we are over booked because the district older than us doesn't have their Visas so we have 57 people in our district now. So its interesting trying to watch over everyone especially since that district is starting to get tired of the MTC. They are constantly in our prayers along with the rest of the zone but its a little stressful at times. Pero esta bien-- everything will turn out OK because we are all in the Lords hands :) Its very comforting to know.
Lets, see...oh...Elder Jones has a fan of his voice. It's Sister Boone-- the mission presidents wife. So we have been spending some time with her lately. Shes trying to put him in as many meetings as possible. Its fun.
So I just heard from an elder in my district whos brother is in Argentina that about 1 out of 7 letters gets there so :) I hope I have internet!
Hey we just got our flight plans!!! :) Im excited, but not too much because the older district got their flight plans but didn't get their visas so we'll see. But it was way exciting to see that we will be out of here some day :)
love you all
elder schupple
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Pres Uchtdorf, Zone Leader, Language fast
So guess why I asked about Alice Carris :) It turns out that Elder Jones is related to her :) Shes his great aunt or something. So give her a call and tell her :) Anyway sorry I just thought that was so cool. This has been a crazy week-- hard, spiritual and stressful :) I'll just start from the beginning... uh i don't remember what I did Monday so we'll start on Tuesday. We had class like always and then Elder Jones and I left early to go to choir. We got our usual seats on the front row and after practice we went to dinner really quick but when got back to the devotional place we were surprised to see that it was packed! The only seats that weren't taken were the choir seats. We were all pretty excited to see who was going to be speaking to us. It turns out it was Pres Uchtdorf! :) Amazing :) How people find out Ill never know. He gave an amazing talk and left a great blessing for us. So in the past 4 weeks we have had 3 apostles speak to us: Oaks, Cook, Uchtdorf. What an amazing blessing. I put the notes I took in my journal so when I get back I'll have to show them to you. Oh goodness it was sooooooo cool! The spirit was so strong. So that was great. Then on Wed my district had a language fast. So no speaking english the entire day. Let me just tell you it was sooo hard for me. Do you have any idea what its like to have something to say but have no idea how to say it? Well its no fun and I struggled a lot but it was a good experience. It made me think of how in 2 weeks I'll be speaking nothing but espanol for 2 years. I'm so excited but it was a huge reality check for me. Im kinda scared but esta bien. On another note, Elder Jones and I were called to be zone leaders. I was kinda scared especially since it will cut a lot of my language time out, but I'll just have to pray more and use every second of my study time. So thats the latest update here. O mom could you possibly send me a cd of some good Josh Groban songs like "You are loved" and some of the Christmas songs, also this song i dont know the title of but it starts off like this, "And the roman soldiers laughed as they saw their prisoner stumble.... something something something...O lord my Redeemer thou hast done so much for me..." Sorry i dont know the name but thanks!
Love you all!
The Savior lives and he loves you!
Love
Elder Schupple
Love you all!
The Savior lives and he loves you!
Love
Elder Schupple
Thursday, September 11, 2008
MTC pics
Austin's companion: Elder Jones (from Mesa, AZ)
Aus
tin & Elder Spencer Washburn from home!
Elder Schupple demo-ing... with help of another elder...the perfect pushups (thanks Branhams for the gift!)
The 4 elders in his district going to the Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission
Aus
tin & Elder Spencer Washburn from home!Elder Schupple demo-ing... with help of another elder...the perfect pushups (thanks Branhams for the gift!)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Gift of tongues/teaching in Spanish
First off: Happy birthday happy birthday happy happy birthday to Nat! :) Sorry I dont have time to do the entire song.
Thank you all for the pics. They totally made my day, and I was so happy the next day was pday so I could look at all of them (this weeks goal was obedience and we aren't supposed to look at pics until pday) So ya I was so excited to look at all of them today :) my nieces are by far the cutest nieces in my district. Sorry I havn't sent the memory card yet. I was going wait till I had some pics with the Schreks but our appointments keep falling through so I'm just going send it without pics of them. Hey if you want, you could put more pics on the mem card and just send that. But I love the actual pics too, so if you want to do that then I'm totally ok with that also.
Ok, so the title of this email is teaching in spanish because this past week was our first time teaching in spanish. I was kinda nervous all week because I just wasn't remembering any of the stuff we would memorize the day before. I was getting more and more nervous every day especially because my companion Elder Jones is so good at spanish. Everyday we would practice and he would teach perfectly. Then I would try to teach and it was just terrible.... so ya the butterflies started flying in my stomach. So I prayed a lot this week and was just trying my best to study the lessons but it just seemed like I wasnt getting very far very fast. Anyway so Thursday finally comes and I'm just like whatever. It'll be over in an hour anyway. Maybe I'll just bear my testimony and Elder Jones will teach the rest. So we get started and when it came time for me to start teaching I just started saying what I would do in english and it turned out the spanish just came to me. I taught half the time instead of just bearing my testimony. Every time I'd finish a principle and hand it over to Elder Jones I would just think "wow that turned out nicely" After I taught the last principle and bore my testimony I felt the spirit so strong that I just wanted to jump up and down/cry. The spirit and Heavenly Father helped me so much I couldn't believe it. So I've had my first experience with the gift of tongues. After we finished and walked out Elder Jones just looked over at me and said "Where did that come from?" I was like "I dont know but it wasnt me." Heavenly father blessed me so much.
Gotta go I'm out of time.
Love yawl!
Elder Schupple
Thank you all for the pics. They totally made my day, and I was so happy the next day was pday so I could look at all of them (this weeks goal was obedience and we aren't supposed to look at pics until pday) So ya I was so excited to look at all of them today :) my nieces are by far the cutest nieces in my district. Sorry I havn't sent the memory card yet. I was going wait till I had some pics with the Schreks but our appointments keep falling through so I'm just going send it without pics of them. Hey if you want, you could put more pics on the mem card and just send that. But I love the actual pics too, so if you want to do that then I'm totally ok with that also.
Ok, so the title of this email is teaching in spanish because this past week was our first time teaching in spanish. I was kinda nervous all week because I just wasn't remembering any of the stuff we would memorize the day before. I was getting more and more nervous every day especially because my companion Elder Jones is so good at spanish. Everyday we would practice and he would teach perfectly. Then I would try to teach and it was just terrible.... so ya the butterflies started flying in my stomach. So I prayed a lot this week and was just trying my best to study the lessons but it just seemed like I wasnt getting very far very fast. Anyway so Thursday finally comes and I'm just like whatever. It'll be over in an hour anyway. Maybe I'll just bear my testimony and Elder Jones will teach the rest. So we get started and when it came time for me to start teaching I just started saying what I would do in english and it turned out the spanish just came to me. I taught half the time instead of just bearing my testimony. Every time I'd finish a principle and hand it over to Elder Jones I would just think "wow that turned out nicely" After I taught the last principle and bore my testimony I felt the spirit so strong that I just wanted to jump up and down/cry. The spirit and Heavenly Father helped me so much I couldn't believe it. So I've had my first experience with the gift of tongues. After we finished and walked out Elder Jones just looked over at me and said "Where did that come from?" I was like "I dont know but it wasnt me." Heavenly father blessed me so much.
Gotta go I'm out of time.
Love yawl!
Elder Schupple
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