Wednesday:
Mass chaos. Having to deal with the stress of saying goodbye to your family for two years, getting put into a trio companionship, being in a district with only 5 elders including myself and no sisters, and trying to figure out what's going on? You literally have no time to think about anything. Luckily my host was someone that I knew from 6th grade, Myles Dewaal, he was fantastic showing me around the MTC and helping me get situated.
My companions are Elder Trockle, who is from Palo Alto, California. He's a super nice kid, very strong spirit. Loves to be goofy and mess around but knows when it's time to focus and keep studying. He loves sports, working out, stuff like that. Fantastic guy. My other companion is Elder Slade, he's got a strong spirit. He's a computer programmer and I'm not sure what else other than that. He doesn't like being outside or sports, or running, or literally anything active....hmmmm
Things here at the MTC are very different. I like it here, and the spirit is off the charts but it's going to take some getting used to. Apparently you're only allowed to write letters on P day and you can't listen to any music anywhere while you're at the MTC. IT'S KILLING ME. The food is horrible, I'm just thankful that there's unlimited cereal. Everything is very heavy and always cold, it just doesn't really sit well. Oh and it makes you so gassy it's unbelievable haha.
Thursday:
You literally sit in a classroom for 90% of the time here at the MTC and for a majority of the time we don't have a teacher. I'm not so sure I 100% agree with the "teach yourself" method but I guess I'll get by. Mwen kreyole sa byen, mwen renmen kreyole la anpil. (My creole is good, I like the language a lot) I can already bear my testimony and pray in creole.
We had a zone meeting, they put us with the french district because we're the only 5 haitian creole speaking elders in the entire MTC. Oh and i'm the only one going to Boston. There's 2 going to New York (Elder Ashby and Elder Casper) and my companions are going to Ft. Lauderdale, FL and Tampa Bay, FL.
Oh, also they are having us learn to read French while we're in the MTC. So i'm not exactly sure how that's going to work, I thought they were similar but they're literally so different. We learn to read french because most haitians read in french and there's not a correct translation of the King James bible in creole. So they gave us all of our study materials in both languages. All I can say is that I'm gonna need some help from the big man up stairs on this one.
Friday:
We have the earliest breakfast, lunch and dinner block out of everyone here. So we actually have to wake up and shower at 5:45am and be to breakfast by 6:30. We eat lunch at 11 and dinner at 4. It's way too early to eat and I'm never hungry until later!
We finally had gym time, you have no idea how great it felt to run around in basketball shorts for a good hour. We ran a mile, did some weights and played ball. So fantastic!
We had to teach a real Haitian investigator here after only 2 days of class. In complete Haitian creole. Like for reals. It was very difficult, his name is Tony. He's from haiti, he's catholic and he's married. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have kids... He likes to play soccer and he works in the health care industry. That's just about all that I actually understood. I felt so bad, we probably ruined his chance of ever getting into the church, but he agreed to meet with us again on Friday
Saturday:
9 hours in the classroom, not much else.
We taught Tony again, our second lesson was SO MUCH BETTER than the first one. We could actually get our point across, the only problem is is that we still can't really communicate conversationally so we basically gave him a lecture not an actual lesson, as in we didn't actually communicate with him or ask him questions. Some how he agreed to meet with us again later tonight (monday) so we'll see. We've got a lesson about the restoration planned out for him. We're starting to think that he's just an actor, but they tell you to treat it like it's real for obvious reasons.
As of right now we have 2 teachers that are both named Brother Nelson. So to differentiate them we call one wo Nelson (wo means tall) and ti Nelson (ti means short)
Sunday
By far my favorite day here at the MTC so far. You don't quite get to relax, but it's a wonderful break from all day classes. Basically you attend sacrament at 7:30am and then you have a bit of down time until priesthood, which was incredible (tet shaje (mind blown) as we creole speakers like to say around here. After that we had some planning time to plan for our lesson for Tony, and then we had a Sunday night devotional. Now, I was having a harder day sunday until the devotional and onward. Literally changed my outlook on everything. There was an area 70 that came to talk to us and it was awesome, and then we watched a recording of a talk by Elder Bednar. I seriously want you all to go watch this talk, it's called "The Character of Christ" by David A Bednar. It changed my outlook on missionary work completely. Mom, if you're still having a hard time with me being gone... go watch that talk and i'm totally sure that you'll be just fine. I'm honestly so excited!!
Things are going so well here, I'm so happy. I heard two different rumors that the score of the BYU game was 13-20 Utah and the other rumor was 13-20 BYU. So if someone could fill me in on what actually happened I'd greatly appreciate it....
The guys in my district are awesome, Elder Ashby is from St George UT, he is basically like Josh King 2.0 Same mannerisms and everything! We get along fantastically. And the other elder is Elder Casper from holliday UT. He's a U fan (we're the few and the proud), loves sports, loves cars, playing basketball, stuff like that. Elder casper, elder ashby and I are usually hanging out when it's not strictly companionship time. We love goofing of, but we're working hard here too! Our whole district is in one room with 3 bunkbeds. They're actually not that uncomfortable, it's just that the AC doesn't work in our room so we toast every night!
Monday
We woke up and got to go to the Provo temple, that was awesome! Then we had some study time, and we got to do our laundry, clean the room, and now we're emailing. P day ends at 5pm and we have more classes tonight including our lesson with tony.
I hope everything is going well wherever you are!
M renmen ou e n'a we.
I love you and see you later.
Elde Halling (I know I left off the R, it's elde in haitian creole pronounced ehl-dir)
PS: Mom, I'd love it more than anything if you sent me some microwave popcorn and candy.. :)
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