Week 3 at the MTC

October 5, 2011

The firesides are pretty great.  We've had a seventy, and emeritus seventy, the head of the mission dept. and Chad Lewis.  Ironically enough, Chad Lewis was easily the best speaker.  But the investigators are somewhere in between actors and real people.  They are our teachers but they are acting as their friends would act.  One of our teachers said that he would take the lessons that the mtc people would teach him and then call his friend after and relay the messages and she is now getting baptized.  One of our new investigators is Arif Garcia, a doctor somewhere in Utah from India.  He is a lot harder to teach than our other investigator because he is very skeptical.  We got him to pray after a while but he won't end his prayer in the name of Jesus Christ.  I think with Rob we are getting pretty close but the problem is after he gets a testimony we've gotta teach him the law of chastity and he is living with his girlfriend and has a son.  Pretty excited for that lesson.  But things are still going pretty well, other than the fact that I'm always on the brink of falling asleep.
 

Megan and Ryan sent me a whole loaf of banana bread last weekend, unfortunately we can't pick up packages on the weekend so it sat till Monday.  It was still good Monday but it was stale within two days.  I got a package from Mrs. Updike today with a dozen raspberry cinammon rolls.  We've got a lot of food.

But anyway Elder Burkey says he's got an icmb or whatever that site is called.  He's probably the guy I get along with the best which is weird because he's an actor and I normally try to avoid actors.

I'm going to send you an email to forward to Tanner and Houston about what to expect. 

Thanks

Love you,
Elder Pearce

Houston and Tanner,

First off, happy birthday to both of you. My present will be advice because that's about all I can send.

1.  The more language you know beforehand the better off you will be, especially grammar, which they don't really teach here.  Week three is almost done and they haven't even taught us how to conjugate yet.

2.  I'm not too worried about you guys in terms of language so I would almost recommend spending more time studying the gospel for yourself.  We get hours of personal study every day but that is kind of misleading, because your personal study is studying for your investigator. (p.s. you will teach an investigator in the language on day two).  You get almost no time to read for yourself.

3.  Prepare somehow someway your gut for abuse.  MTC food does work for that.  I don't think I've ever heard so many people farting so regularly in my life. which brings me to my next point...

4.  Air freshener is very nice to have.

5.  sleep is also a precious commodity here, so I would try living missionary hours if you haven't yet.

but I'm almost out of time, if I think of anything else I'll let you know next week.

from,

Elder Pearce