Elder Alec Dover, Week 3

Bonjour!!

 

Comment-allez vous? je suis tres fatigue.. So half of the zone left this week! It feels incredibly weird. Nobody is left here in the zone except for those that came the same day as I did. Its weird being zone leader. Its a weird feeling knowing that EVERYONE is watching me at all times. But it is so fun at other times. I loved serving as District leader beforehand because it really helped me to know how I can properly serve my missionaries. I love being able to use the prayer roll at the temple. It is such a blessing especially as I am looking out for everyone in the District and now the 31 missionaries in my Zone. I've seen the blessings that have been given to the people I put in last week. HUGE changes. So what did I do today? Put some more in of course :P

 

This week has been kinda wild. I had been upset because i wanted to speed up the amount of french I am taking in and the teachers don't have too much time to do 1on1 everyday. So elder erickson and i decided to ask one day how we can improve studying and learn faster. This brother that helped us, named Frere Wilcox-best guy ever- anyways he told us a great plan for language study and i've been doing it and goodness has it helped me a ton. For 20 minutes I work on memorizing a scripture and what its meaning is, the next 20 minutes i go to a computer lab and listen to some conference talks en francais, then the next 20 minutes i spend doing grammar exercises in a workbook. Then at night i'm reading le livre de mormon and marking words with red that i don't know and writing the translation in english and what tense the verbs are in. Its really helped me a ton. I love it. I also bought the little BOM scripture reader that little kids use.. SO GREAT!! I love that book. Its so fun to read in french and work on my accent. I feel like that really helps me a ton - my ablility to imitate most anything. I've gotten pretty good at imitating Brits apparently (when i was shootin for kiwis), then there's the master of disguise voices i can do, and not to forget Gollum/Smeagol ;) nobody believes i can do it and i'm just waiting for an amazing moment to let it go. We are always quoting movies and I really feel like because we are so good at mimicing things that we will have no problems with the french accent. I can do it for a couple of things but i don't hear it enough to get a good grasp of how to mimic. Depressing. Anyways the language is going great. I would type some french but then i'd have to switch to a french keyboard and that gets annoying because i always forget that the letters m, z, q, and a are messed up in and put different places.

 

I cannot wait to go to france. We leave May 13th! Shoot that is so soon. But incredibly exciting. I've been blessed in so many ways that I probably haven't even realized. Love it all. This sunday Elder erickson and i went to listen to a talk given by elder bednar on christmas a while ago. its called the charater of christ. BEAUTIFUL TALK. just beautiful. He talked about how we need to be more like Christ. We need to be the one that would show love when Christ would but when the natural man inside each of us would turn around and run away. he gave many examples from the scriptures and personal examples he'd witnessed. it was so good. combining his talk with elder scott who visited the mtc last tuesday night, i've felt a great need to do that. elder scott talked about prayer and the blessings we receive from it. he left us with an incredible apostalic blessing. he said to those learing languages, that we would be masters of the languages if we put in our work and trusted the lord, there were other things but thats all i remember without my notes.. crazzzyyy. i'm curious who is going to talk to us tonight... that'll be so fun. It feels like ive been here for 3-4 months when i've only been gone for 3 weeks. its the weirdest thing ever to me. I know these next weeks will fly for sure. For sure. i'm ready for it all though. bring it on.

Love,

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Elder Dover and his companion

Elder Dover's MTC district