Rafael Castillo- Week #24

Temple !!!

Hey Family!

Well, this week I am writing my email in Word so I can just copy/paste it after I am done, and then if anything happens I still have it waiting in Word to send again. No, I haven’t gotten your card with the pictures in it, but I am excited to. I have gotten everything else, so just keep using the same address you are using, the other one might be to President’s office or something, I don’t know. Yeah I got the picture in the email and yes you are allowed to do that haha. Also, after last week’s failed email I wrote you a letter home so hopefully that will help fill that email’s void.

Well we just got back from the temple and it was great! I understood so much better. I was sitting there listening, and I remember thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I am actually understanding this right now.” We took a bunch of pictures, but my battery died so I will send some next week, but let’s just say that there is one of Elder Sabey and I on the temple grounds that is just inspired, the beauty of it, I just can’t describe it. It was interesting because it was all of us elders, and then one Elder Walker, who just finished up in the Bahia Blanca mission, and his parents who just picked him up. So his mother was the only woman in the session, and they had to bring workers in to do the prayer part. But anyway, the parents had to have English headsets, and stuff, but the poor mom just couldn’t get things to go her way. Her headset didn’t work the first half of the session until they could find a replacement, then they almost started the session without their son in the room, then he finally came in, and they sat him in the back, when there were clearly enough seats for him up by his parents. The mother looked a little perturbed…but oh well. Everybody’s names are in the temple now. You can tell Grandma Sherry, I am still following her instructions of putting all the Aunts in there. I filled up a whole sheet hahaha, but hey, there are a lot of people I care about.

By the way before I forget, I have written one page in my journal every day since my first day in the MTC, which means I am filling up my journal pretty quickly. I counted the pages ahead and have come to the conclusion that I am going to run out of journal space on January 11th…in other words…I need another journal by January 11th please, or else the generations to come with never know of the miracles that occur January 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, …you get the picture. No, we didn’t get to see the Christmas Devotional, but I wanted to badly, and yeah we heard about Elder Wirthlin, he gave so many great talks! It is sad to see him go. We are STILL waiting around for the Conference Ensigns to make it to the mission. I hear that we usually get them about 2 months behind schedule, so maybe they are coming soon, but I have re-read my notes enough to where now I just want to be able to read the whole talk again. Mom! That sponsoring the three little girls thing sounds SW-EET!!! That is what I am talking about! Christmas Spirit all over the place! Also, it is good to hear that Dad’s building grand opening went well. I kind of want to take a little tour of it too. Also, I love that story from your mission, it makes me laugh. From what I hear, we can’t go out and work on Christmas because the whole country is going to be drunk. We haven’t heard much about calling home on Christmas, other than that I heard from the older elders that we only get 40 minutes on the phone, and I thought we were going to have an hour, but I guess not, so make sure you have some conversation topics you want to hit, and write them down, so we don’t waste time thinking about what we wanted to say. Everything is going well, and I am enjoying the last few weeks I have here in Castillo, I will most likely be moving on to my second area this transfer coming up. Love to everyone!

Sean

P.S. Lacey…what are you doing? It was sweet to get that e-mail from you, you sounded like you were doing well and I started laughing when you said the every flavor beans thing.