Wednesday: So after you dropped me off I went into the room and got in line to get my name tag and saw Sis. Nyman. I was glad I saw her because I knew it would make you happy that she got to put on my tag and tell you I was okay haha. After that they gave me this big packet of stuff like another name tag and room key and other things and then we went into this room and they gave me a giant bag of books. Seriously it was more books than I had my entire first year of college. After that we got on a bus and went down to the west campus which is Raintree (where class is, lunch, the gym, computers, etc.) and Wyview (where we live and laundry) and it's like a 5-10 minute bus ride to main campus. After we took my stuff to our apartment we went to the class. The building I'm in is 30Y idk if Ali remembers where she lives or not. There's 3 rooms and it's two elders to a room and I lucked out because our room is the only one with 2 desks. So then we went to the classroom and just kinda sat there. My companion Elder Hyde (Salt Lake City) was there and I introduced myself but he didn't really say a whole lot so I knew I was in for a treat... but I'll get to that later. When the rest of my district (Elder Garnett, Oregon, Elder Merling, Georgia, Elder White, Manti, and Elder Allred, Logan) we talked for a bit and then started class. Our teacher the first day was Hermano Salisbury. He served in the SLC Spanish speaking mission but he's super good at Spanish and great teacher. But he isn't really our teacher, he just subs in sometimes because our real teacher has some scheduling conflicts. But he pretty much just started talking entirely in Spanish and I was picking up the general idea of what he was saying and everyone else was kinda lost. I felt kinda bad because I've had the most experience with Spanish by far so i started kinda letting everyone else answer but I'd answer if I knew it and nobody else answered. It was funny because my companion was just trying to write down literally everything, like every single new word and every single phrase which is pretty much impossible and a terrible way to learn but he figured it out pretty quickly. On the first day we learned how to introduce ourselves and pray, which was good because obviously they don't teach you church stuff in high school haha. But ya we had class and then after we had this meeting with all the new West Campus missionaries and the MTC presidency. I really like them. We sang Army of Helaman with the changed lyrics and that was super cool, then we went to the church by the Football stadium and did this big group role play thing which was interesting. It's interesting to see the varying degrees of preparedness and knowledge of the gospel that missionaries have. Some people know literally everything and some people just know the very basics. After that I think we ate dinner but I can't really remember. The food here is good. I think I've gained a bit of weight but I've also played volleyball everyday so I guess it kinda balances out and I'll need a bit of extra weight in Mexico lol. After that we went back to our rooms and just got to know each other a bit better. Luckily my district is really fun and I'm good friends with all of them.
Thursday: The next day we woke up at 6:30 which was surprisingly not hard even though I was exhausted and hardly slept the night before. But we went to class and learned more stuff and found out we were teaching our first "investigator" the next day and so we prepared for that which was rough but I'll talk about that later. Our investigator is just one of our teachers but we aren't supposed to know that yet I guess. So our REAL teachers name is Hermano Carr and he served in the Dominican Republic. He's awesome.Super fun and a great teacher. He does a good job of teaching everyone in the room according to their skill level so even though one person is ahead and one is falling behind he teaches so that we can all learn something new and get better. The Spanish is coming along so well. I remember pretty much everything from High School and I've learned so much more. It truly is amazing. There's this thing here called SYL, Speak Your Language (or Habla su Idioma) which basically means you commit to try every sentence you say in Spanish before you can say it in English and it really helps learn Spanish and practice what we learn in class. Every missionary and employee on west campus speaks/is learning Spanish so it's kinda like semi-immersion. It's fun. Tomorrow our district is committing to do a day 100% in Spanish so that will be interesting. I like being able to teach my district and help them improve their Spanish, it's really fun. It made me realize I really want to teach here when I come back. So that night we met our branch presidency which is sorta like our mission president while we are in the MTC. President Doman is so awesome and so loving and is pretty much like our second dad. He's truly inspired and I'm so glad we are in his branch. The first counselor is Brother Monson, Thomas S. Monson's Nephew. That guy is amazing. He practically has a quad in his head. He's amazing. He talks about "Tom" a lot too which is funny haha. And then the 2nd Counselor is Brother Durfey. I don't know too much about him as a person but as a leader he is awesome. So I love our Branch Presidency. President Doman played receiver for BYU in days of Steve Young and his brother used to coach the team so you and dad might have heard of him actually. One of the presidency interviewed each one of us and I got to be interviewed by President Doman which was cool. It was crazy because it was like he already knew me so well, even better than I know myself. He seemed to know like what I was worried about and had been praying about and just answered all the questions I had. He told me that he could tell I was a natural leader and that I would make a great District Leader or Zone Leader but that my leadership position was help strengthen my companion and to help him and be an example to him. (His companion is a convert of just 3 years)
Friday: Friday was our first "real" day at the MTC where we started doing what we would be doing for the rest of the time at the MTC. Basically our schedule is...
Wake Up
Eat
Class
Class
Gym
Eat
Class
Eat
Class
Bed
Repeat
So it gets a bit tedious but I kinda like the structure. We taught our first lesson and it went okay. We pretty much just prayed then bore our testimonies and taught him a little bit then asked him to pray and left. But I guess the other companionship's like the guy wouldn't even let them pray and the investigator definitely wasn't going to pray so I don't know what we did differently but I guess it worked. The investigator is so funny though because it's like teaching a baby. Like I asked him to read a scripture and he just stares at the page and then after a minute looked up at us and said it was a pretty scripture and I was just like okay seriously I don't know how to tell you to read it out loud! it's fun. His 'name' is 'Enrique' and we teach him until Friday and then he starts teaching us.
Saturday: Nothing crazy happened Saturday... just a normal day. Oh ya I have been getting your dear elders and I love getting those throughout the week so send lots of those! I want to hear about everything... during our lesson with Enrique we had the idea to open by singing a hymn with him and so we asked if he would and he said yes and then we gave him a hymn book and realized we had no idea how to show him how to read the music and how the tune goes. I mean hes a member so he knows how but he acts completely like a real investigator. So I had to like use my hand to cover up the other verses and say like "aqui y aqui y aqui" and he got that and said he didn't know the tune so we just kinda started humming it and then he started laughing and told us just to sing the first verse and he would join on the second. So he kinda gave us a but of help but I was trying so hard not to laugh.
Sunday: Okay so Sunday was like the best Sunday of my entire life. The spirit is just completely unrestrained here its amazing. It was fast Sunday so we just had fast and testimony meeting and then mission conference, which is basically just a meeting that every missionary watches where the MTC presidency speaks. Elder Hyde and I are sacrament coordinators and we blessed the sacrament in Spanish. Elder Hyde hadn't even blessed it in English before so that was cool to do. our ward is just our zone so its like 3 districts, 2 of Elders and 1 of Sisters. They all leave next Monday and we don't have any new missionaries coming in so our zone/branch will just be our district of 6 elders. I wrote down a few things from mission conference that I wanted to remember and send to you guys (I'm using my journal a lot more than I thought, thanks grama!).
"The privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success".
I already love the work so much. I can't wait to get to Mexico.
The second is Hebrews 12:1-2 and I wont write it out to save time but go read it. I considered telling you to change my plaque scripture to that but don't.
Sunday night was devotional and the guy who is over the social media missionary department talked to us and that was pretty cool. That night we watched the "Character of Christ" talk Elder Bednar gave at the MTC a few years ago. It was amazing. Watch it sometime. After we went back to our house and Brother Monson came and visited and he stayed till like 10:30 almost just talking with us. I love him. He knows so much an is so loving and fun and just an amazing guy. If I had half the faith he did I would be so happy haha.
Monday: nothing really happened Monday... We taught our investigator again and finally got him to understand what faith was and challenged him to read Moroni 10:35 and pray about it and start reading the Book of Mormon. He has kept all of our commitments so far and i think tonight we will ask if he will get baptized and see how he responds.
Tuesday: Tuesday was just an average day. 3 of the elders in my district were in SLC at the consulate almost all day so it was just me and elder Hyde and Elder White. Idk when I'm going to the consulate but I;ll let you know ASAP. We went to choir which was awesome and we sang did you think to pray. The choir director said "I'm glad we are singing this tonight especially since President Monson is a prayer." and the entire choir like goes crazy thinking president Monson was going to be there and speak... but it wasn't. It was Elder Schwitzer. But it was still really good. Okay I think I'm out of time and I feel like I have more to tell you so I will try and write during the week. Love you! DearElder me lots!
-Elder Skalla
These Elders are all going to Tampico
No comments:
Post a Comment