Hello
family and friends!
Today marks the one
week mark of me being in the Provo MTC, and holy heck that was a crazy week.
I'll explain the Narnia holes later, but I’ll explain what Spike Ball and
Dorachos are. Spike ball is this crazy game we've played as a district where we
have to bounce a little ball on a portable trampoline to the person across from
you, while making sure to spike it back when it gets to you. I guess it’s big
in Utah but it was definitely new to me when we played it haha.
Wednesday
After being dropped
off at the MTC, I was sent through several rooms to get my books, my name tag,
and key card before being thrown into my Spanish class. The hard thing about
this class though was that it was all in spanish, so all 12 of the people in
the sweaty classroom sorta just stared in utter confusion at our teacher while
she tried to get some spanish out of us(being dropped off made us forget all of
our past spanish classes haha). After that experience, I met my companion Elder
Pixton. He's a pretty cool guy, and it's weird to feel short (he's like 6'5).
Then we spent the rest of the day meeting our Zone (there are so many
characters it's hilarious haha) before crashing into our beds.
Thursday
That day was our first
normal day at the MTC, and with the original shock gone for the most part we
actually started to get to know some of the other elders. For gym time we
played volleyball out by the temple with the zone, and then that night we met
our Branch Presidency. President Doman is probably the coolest Branch President
you could ask for, since he basically looks and talks like a mix of Elder
Holland and an inspirational football coach from the movies. That night I was
also called as the District leader for our district, probably because I
accidentally yawned during his talk to us, and I couldn't hide it either since
I was sitting right next to him in the circle. Oh and Narnia holes are what we
call the random places in the dorms where past missionaries keep stuff, like in
the rafters in the hallway or in the plugs in our rooms, where elder Fleming (who,
random story, lives in the same neighborhood as Grammy and Grandpa in Queen
creek, so small world haha) found a new version of that Mulan song "we are
men" but with missionary lyrics, we got a kick out of that haha.
Friday
Friday morning we had
our first service assignment... to clean the bathrooms. This would have been
boring if we didn't have a bunch of people in the showers singing Phantom
of the Opera and other random songs, so that was pretty funny haha. Hermana
Savage, our teacher (who’s probably the exact opposite of savage) told us that
we would be teaching our first investigator that night, in Spanish! Luckily it
didn't go too bad, except our investigator, Jose, kept rubbing his
"infected" eyes (it was part of his character) during the entire
lesson so that was just a little bit annoying.
Saturday
For some reason, all
of my roomates and companion keep waking up 5 minutes before our alarms, so
waking up is pretty hard. But for the day we had class, ate fried chicken for
dinner, and had another appointment with Jose, which went a little better than
before since we were able to practice our spanish during the day. One of
the elders in our district, Elder Ferguson, had to go to the hospital because
of a stress related reaction, but we fasted for him Sunday and he's now back to
his normal self.
Sunday
Today was crazy, I had
branch council with the other district leaders in the morning, and then we had
Sacrament meeting at 11(They're sort of scary since they randomly pick two
people to give a pre prepared talk in spanish each meeting(we all have to write
one) so we all sweated through the announcements haha). Then we had priesthood
meeting (the topic for Sunday was the atonement), followed by a humid and hot
walk to the temple as a zone. That night we had devotional, which was by
President Allen of the MTC board, which was awesome, followed by a video of
Elder Bednar’s MTC talk "Character of Christ"-go watch it - it’s pretty amazing.
Monday
Today was a normal day
of classes, except me and a few other elders in our district fell asleep during
personal study. We also had an interesting game of volleyball on the boiling
sand where Elder Giddens kept knocking the ball into the water tower and losing
it haha. I also had the fun experience of accidentally saying a spanish prayer
backwards with my companion, let’s just say I'm starting to improve haha.
Tuesday
My companion and I
sang in the MTC choir for the devotional, which was one of the coolest things
ever (the choir director was pretty cool too, he kept telling jokes and random
spiritual stories). Elder Corbridge spoke about knowing our purpose. Today we
also celebrated Christmasversary ( 5 months haha), one of the random holidays
we make up here when we just want an excuse to eat more food.
Overall this has been
one of the most spiritual and fun weeks I've ever had, and even though it was
hard,and still is hard to be away from home, it’s definitely been worth it.
Love,
Barcelona Spain
Mission
Ps- Use DearElder
more, it’s cool to get letters that way (I’ll write back), and for a package
send candy and my whiteboard and markers too, and anything else I left.
