E-mail April 2, 2010

Dear all,

Thank you everyone for your continued support. I love hearing about everyone's families and the happenings in your lives. Emily, I woudld have emailed you personally, but I don't have your email. and I do love your stories. they make me laugh. I love to hear about how things are going. Mom, thank you for you reports on american idol, but now that Didi is gone, it doesn't matter :) Umm, yeah, Elder Kunz was one of my second zone leaders. They just left like almost 2 weeks ago. He was really awesome. I took some pics with all of us. I printed some off of my and will send them in a letter this week, but I will try to print one off with elder Kunz in it. There were 3 from that district who went to Nic and we got a pic with all of us. Everything is going really good here. I have been trying to speak in only spanish this week and for now on. We taught for the last time in English on Wednesday. We teach in spanish in the TRC every week for now on. I am really excited. Spanish is going good though. I am doing lots of contacts, and the more I use it, the better I get it. My comp is still understanding why he is here. He has a really hard time concentrating, but I am just amazed how much I have grown from here. I have gained soo much patience here with my comp. I know it will help me. I weigh about 127. I have leveled off pretty much. Nothing too exciting has happened. I have lots of food. I'm already going to get fat. Heather sent me lots of great goodies. I have enought cookies to last me the whole entire rest of my mission. Jk but they will last me the rest of my time here. The only thing I do need is...more camo duct tape. I dont' know if they sell it there in Texas, but i would love some more. I could also use another pair of pants. If you could send me that dark pair of tommy hillfiger pants, that would be great. Other than that, things are going great. The oldest district in our zone right now leaves on monday. The next oldest leave a week from monday, and they we will be the oldest district for 3 weeks. That will be exciting. The new district that came in two wednesdays ago is doing good. We talked to a guy who works in the MTC who went to Nicaragua and said that he had electicity in every one of his areas. So who knows. In terms of spanish, We have learned preterite tence, Imperfect, present, future, conditional, present subjunctive. We only have like two more tences to learn. The biggest problem I have now is knowing when to use it all. But everything has been good. We have had some really good speakers. I have learned so much while I've been here and it has really strengthened my testimony. I do know why I'm here and I love being here. I love that fact that I get so much time to study. I started reading from the beginning, again, the Book of Mormon, and i'm already 100 pages in. Yo tengo un testimonio de esta iglesia. Yo sé que tenemos un profeta quien guía y dirije la iglesi. Yo testestifio que el Evangelio de Jesucristo puede bendecir nuestras vidas. Yo sé que José Smith fue un profeta moderno. Él vio a Dios y a Jesucristo. A traves de Jesucristo, podemos arrepentirse y recibir forgiveness de de nuestros pecados. Yo sé qorque estoy aquí. Voy a predicar el Evangelio de Jesucristo a sus hijos del mundo. Muchas gracias por todos sus apollo y amor. Me esrcriban, por favor!!! The church is true!

Elder Ashby