3.5 weeks down...This is going by way too fast!

Hola amigos y familia! Les extraño mucho! 

I don't have much time; I never have much time. Thank you for those who have written me! It is so fun getting letters from the outside world.

First, a few things to respond to my mother's email: Mama, letters are better. I really don't have much time to read emails, just FYI. I've written you a letter and explained how/why DearElder is better (for now), so you can be expecting that soon :)

Hey Brudder! That's so cool you're going to Flagstaff for another Con! Send me pictures?

Wow! Three teeth and walking!! Sounds like I have the best nephew ever! What a cutie! Feel free to send me a picture or two of my darling nieces and nephews. Also, where is that family picture you promised to send me, mama?

Halloween was pretty much ignored here. I think there was pumpkin pie for dessert in the cafeteria and a few of the cafeteria workers had on some face makeup, but not much. It was still fairly exciting for me though, as I received letters and TWO packages! :) Thank you again for the cookies and candy, and thank you Susan for the chocolate covered fruit. You will be receiving a letter shortly. Hermana Carlson and I switched nametags for our "costumes", seeing as we couldn't dress up. Our teacher totally called us by the wrong names. Awesome. Also, our companionship all wore purple/black/gray to be in the spirit of Halloween. That's about as exciting as it gets.

Apparently Thanksgiving is a lot more exciting. No class, turkey dinner, and we'll probably have a devotional with an Apostle - woo hoo! Almost as good as taking a cruise to Italy! ...not. For those of you who don't know, my mother is taking advantage of me being gone for the Holidays and doing such. Lucky girl ;)

Well, the Spanish is going fairly well I guess. Some days I feel like I really have it, and other days I feel like I haven’t learned anything. The other day we practiced teaching the first lesson to the Elders in our district and afterwards they were almost confused (in a good way, like how my Spanish could be so much better than they thought). I guess my Spanish is a lot better during lessons than during class. I guess I get nervous speaking in front of the district and teachers. I try though. We're going to try to go without English (ever) starting here pretty soon. It will be rough, but I’m sure it will be a huge blessing. Hmm, nothing too exciting happened this week.

Oh! I saw Gloria the bookstore this morning (finally) and Janine (no idea how to spell that) Green at the temple! Fun stuff :) I think I saw her last week too, but I wasn't sure so I didn't say hi. And yes, I would love it if you printed off the family newsletter to send to me, mom. I am curious about how my wonderful cousins are doing.

This week we heard from Elder and Sister Clarke (of the Seventy) and Stephen Allen (Something to do with the Missionary Department I believe). For Relief Society we had Sister Stevens of the Primary General Presidency. They were all great. Especially Elder Clarke. He talked about how missionary work should transform you, and what we need to do to have a successful mission. We also are able to watch movies (talks) Sunday evenings, and this week we watched one by Elder Bednar. We also watched another talk by him in class the other day, so it's been a Bednar week J . He's great though, really. I love his talks on Missionary Work. One of his talks was on the Character of Christ, and the other was on Becoming a Missionary (instead of just going on a mission). It was very inspiring. Now I just want to be the best missionary ever! But it's a little bit hard in the MTC. We are pushing ourselves more though. Even when we are not scheduled to teach, we set up "lessons" with other fellow missionaries to meet our weekly goals of investigators and lessons (and to practice, of course). Our biggest problem in teaching is time. We always end up teaching for over a half hour, and apparently the ideal lesson is only 20 min. We're working on making our lessons shorter, but it's really hard. Especially when the main reason our lessons are so long is because we spend half the time trying to figure out how to say what we want to say in Spanish. We're doing all right though J

Hermana Liu is 1/8 Chinese! So that's exciting J She's from Roy, but I don't think we know any of the same people.

Oh! I wanted to include some fun quotes in this letter. So, here's the deal. We are all learning Spanish...and sometimes we mess up...and it ends up being really funny. So here are some things that we (from my district) have said, in lessons, class, meals, etc., translated into English for your convenience:

-"Alma made Wednesdays."

-"They have pink cheese-es!"

- "Heaven is for pretty people."

- Joseph Smith went to a field of grandmas."

- "Ah! I have ham in my eyes!"

- "Give me your monkey."

- "I promise, if you pray, I will receive an answer."

- "We talked to the panther..."

- "How are you?" "Congratulations!"

- "In Argentina, there are children who have man!"

- "Satan had a flu on the world."

Well, I'm completely out of time. Hope some of those made you smile. I know the gospel is true. I love my Savior. Pray, please pray, and you WILL feel the love of your Father in Heaven. He loves you so much.

I love you all!

Con amor,

Hermana Escalante

PS - My mom will send any comments to me, so feel free to comment! J