Elder Edholm--week #2

Here is Elder Edholm's letter:

So this week things really picked up for me. I'm starting to like my companion a lot more and

 we're really starting to work well together and have effective studies. We read the Spanish 

Book of Mormon every night and we speak the language every chance we get. The Spanish

 is going great by the way although I'm definitely not fluent yet.

So we've been teaching "investigators" in Spanish ever since like the third day. And my first 

discussion with our first investigator I swear was the most horrible thing I have ever done. 

It was just the worst, but things only got better from there. I have two new investigators now. 

I was teaching one a couple days ago and he's pretending to be guy who thinks that churches

 are businesses and that missionaries are spies. But the lesson didn't go well because I later 

figured out that it was because we were arguing too much. He knows a lot about the Bible 

and has a lot of strong Biblical belilefs. So the next day when we taught him we decided 

we weren't going to argue at all. I know that it was the spirit teaching that lesson because

 it was possibly the best lesson I've taught yet. There was no arguing and everything got

 through to him.

But the most important thing I've learned this week goes along with a story. So yesterday
my companion was feeling pretty discouraged because he doesn't think he's learning
Spanish fast enough. He didn't know any Spanish before he came out here, but he's just
been working his tail off. He knows so many words because he's just always studying
them. I told him he needed to use them more, not just study them. Discouragements
come with challenges and that is just part of life. Discouraging things yell at you to
quit, but as I learned from D. Todd Christoffersen this week "Quitting won't make it better."
It's how you react to discouragement that defines you. Discouraging things can be
helpful because they give you an opportunity to fix what's wrong with whatever
you're doing.

Well, 'till next week

President and Sister Romney, the MTC president and wife with Palmer