Letter #1 9/21/12 Doing Great in the MTC!!

I love you too mom :) My first few days have been pretty great!! I sent a letter explaining a lot of it, but I'll write here again because that could take a couple days :) My companionS (yes plural, I have 2) are Elder Wagner and Elder Snell. They're both pretty cool guys, and they can tolerate my humor so we get along. Wagner is from mesa Arizona, and Snell is from Yuma Arizona. Our days consist of classroom where we learn a little bit how to teach and what to teach, we do little exercises, but mostly we role play with our teacher. So we have 4 "investigators" (I didn't put this one in your letter) our teacher Sister de Boer is Hannah, who we struggle to connect with but last time we taught her we found a way in through school and got her to read the BOM. Our teacher Brother Cowan is Mark, who is a little depressed because his wife left him. He's been pretty downhearted, but his son Chris joined the church and so we're having pretty good success with him. That's for our classroom studies. We also have Zone teaching, but my time role playing a missionary in Zone teaching is over. Zone teaching is with our whole zone, which is probably like 50 people. I teacher an "investigator" named Jacob who is an Atheist. I've had a surprising amount of success with him, and I don't think it was because he was being nice. Our last teaching sort of thing is TRC (I think that's teaching resource center) where we teach Daniel (pronounced Danielle since it's spanish) Limon ( same rules) who is a major catholic living in Texas. We've heard from other companionships that often they cant even get through the door with him until their 3rd visit. We happened to get in on our first :D We havent taught him anything yet, he isn't quite open to religion, but we're going to try next time. We got Mark to commit to baptism, so I think things are going pretty well. Its crazy that it's only been 8 days though. On one hand it feels like forever since I said goodbye, but on the otherhand it seems so short!! I've been getting up at 6:30AM everyday, today was the first time I didn't because its P-Day (thursdays are P-Days for me so i'll only have one more while i'm here) but I Should have. Instead i woke up around 7:10. Lights out is at 10:30PM, but because it's the first week we've been staying up talking, getting to know each other. Food is tolerable, Parker would like it because it's all you can eat, but I'm still paranoid about getting chubby so I only get one plate. I've seen basically everyone I could! I Saw most of my friends within the first 24 hours, namely Elder Robinson and Elder Lichtenberg, but I also saw ALL my Spring roommates as well so it's been fun to catch up with them!! It's a crazy place. There've been inspiring moments, spiritual moments, but also depressing, disheartening, and stupid moments. It's all part of the schedule I guess. Mess up here while Salvation isnt on the line I suppose. But that's been the gist!! I have LOVED all the packages and letters!! You are all so awesome!!! My whole district is pretty jealous because I've been like 5/7 for packes per day, while they've all received maybe 1 or 2. So i've enjoyed that :) by the way this letter is generally to everyone, so if anyone else has similar questions you can show them this. But I love you mom, I really appreciate what both you and Dad have done for me. I forgot to mention it, but take a look at D&C 68, the first 10 scriptures talk about the blessings of missionaries, but I think that it applies to missionary families too. I hope you take comfort in that :) Also, i was looking for a signoff phrase, like "stay classy San Diego" and I think I like Hurrah for Israel, like said in "The Other Side of Heaven". So thats my sign off phrase to everyone, because it means something different in every situation :) Hurrah For Israel!!

OH!! also, my leave date is scheduled between october first and the third. So I'll officially be in North Carolina for Conference weekend. Pretty neat, right? It's neat ;) just thought I'd tell you. and I've got about 3 minutes left, so I'll read the other letters, but hopefully you've received my pictures!! and get my letters in the mail!! I look forward to more letters and packages this week :) annnd, if it isnt too hard, Jones is like the best thing in here. Really. So if you have the opportunity, that was the best thing about the package :) I loved everything in the package, but the Jones was especially good. Have a great week Mom!! Take care of Parker and Kaiti. Dad too :) strangely he really really likes attention from you. So throw him a bone and give him some attention to him to :) ) LOVE YOU!!!!