Sunday, July 8, 2012

Letter #1 from the MTC - June 25th (mom's birthday)

Hello family, 
 
I am excited to finally write from the MTC. This place is amazing so far, I don't really know where to begin. My companion's name is Elder (Starszy) Tingey from a little town just outside of Boise, Idaho. He is a neat guy and really focused on learning and working hard. We were made Zone leaders the second day here and will be for the next three weeks, which adds a lot of pressure to an already busy schedule. I am confident that we will do a great job though, we have a really good companionship. We are in a room with 4 elders; me, Tingey, Weir, and Cieslak. Weir is hilarious, everything he says makes us laugh. Cieslak is also a really neat guy, he has a lot of great insights and we are a pretty tight knit group. Our district is made up of 10 elders and 1 solo sister. The companionships are; Neuner & Wilson, Weir & Cieslak, Baranowski & Harris, Vernon & Garfield, Tingey & I, and our solo sister, Siostr Packard. I've been told that this is a very large district and we are all going to the Poland Warsaw mission. In my opinion we have one of the tightest and most dedicated districts in the MTC, and we have only been here less than a week. 
 
Gym time has become one of my favorite activities (shockingly), we have done a lot of soccer (we lost to the Czechs once or twice, but we are getting better), and some sand volleyball which has actually become my favorite sport. We got to watch The Other Side of Heaven on Saturday with the whole MTC which was really cool. The Sunday services were some of the most spiritually uplifting meetings I have ever been in. We watched an old BYU talk given by Elder Bednar titled Character of Christ. If you can find that one online, I highly suggest that you watch it. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have 2 other elders in our district that were left over from the last group because one of them had pneumonia, but they are expected to leave us this week. Their names are Russeller and Deshazer (the one with pneumonia), and they were each called to go to Leeds, England Polish speaking. They are great guys and have been helping us with the language and learning the ropes around here. 
 
The food is not terrible, but it is pretty average cafeteria stuff. Meal times have been crazy and will be for the rest of this week because they have closed off half of the cafeteria for the new mission president training that is happening at the MTC now. They said 1/3 of the mission presidents in the world are being replaced by this group (that is like 110 men and their wives). Plus there are general authorities in there with them. There is supposed to be an apostle speaking to us tomorrow, so I hope that we can get seats int he main room and watch it in person. 
 
Our Polish teachers name is Siostr Stay, she is an RM from Poland, and we are teaching an investigator named Maciej in very broken Polish. The language is super difficult, and we haven't had our teacher since Thursday because she went on a weekend vacation, she should be back today, hopefully. We teach Maciej again tomorrow and haven't learned any new Polish so I hope that she teaches really well. I've been told that the spirit speaks broken Polish so I just have to do my best and let him teach. 
 
I have gotten a few pictures but don't think I can upload them. I will mail a card home when I get a few more pictures. This place is crazy, we are learning at such a rapid pace and there is practically no down time, which is good I guess.
 
How is everyone doing good at home? How are the funeral arangements going? How's Erik doing? Tell everyone I love them, and that this place is awesome and I am having a great time.
 
I don't think I need anything at home, I have bought a couple of things (notebooks and Polish books) here and they have everything I would need. Sorry, I am out of time. Love you all again.

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