Our Tutor

What a wonderful week in the Provo MTC!

Here's a picture of Charlie Ankemann, our tutor for the past several months.  He's an absolutely terrific tutor, very patient but very determined about making us speak "Spanish" Spanish.  He's also a zealous proponent of the classic Spanish epic novel, Don Quixote, and refers to it frequently while teaching us.
We're standing in building 18M, in front of the adminsitrative offices for senior language training.  We've spent many many hours in the 4-story building in multiple classrooms reptitiously doing the best we can. 

 

 Here's a shot of Brother Keepman one of the instructors for Senior Missionaries.  Great people skills, majoring in Finance at BYU (and single, about which we teased him constantly because there are so many beautiful and charming single sisters teaching us also.  He was a good sport.

On the last evening the Tuellers came to speak with a small group of us.  They served two missions together, one in Jakarta as mission president years ago.  When they were called they were told that they would direct a mission with about 200 native missionaries, none of whom were endowed because there was no temple nearby.  There were no stakes either, so none of the members or missionaries had received a Patriarchal Blessing.  They saw many changes and miracles during their time there.  Their second mission was to Spain, Madrid!  We learned a lot from them, and it comforted me to hear from them that it took about a year before they felt they were truly able to converse freely in the language.  Of course we're hoping for a miracle.  We don't want to wait a year before we feel we're being effective.  Also it makes us glad we're serving for 23 months and not just 18.