Saturday, October 9, 2010

Hey family,

  Everything has been going pretty great so far in the MTC, it is not nearly as bad as everyone made it out to be. However I know that living away from home for a long period of time has definitely helped me not be too home sick. My companion is Elder Parsons from Idaho and he is an awesome guy, we get along super well and both have pretty calm personalities. We got lucky with our roommates too, Elder Ricker and Hildebrandt from Idaho and Utah are really fun guys and easy going. Our district is pretty big, we have 13 elders and we are crammed into a room the size of half of my old bedroom, seriously, it's crazy tight in there!! Our teachers are great too but it is kind of weird because we only get taught like 2, maybe 3 hours a day and the rest of the time we have to find studying for ouselves and companions to do. There is a massive shortage of teachers, especially Protuguese tachers, since they weren't expecting to have to house all of these elders who should be in Brazil. Our district is hoping so badly that our visas come thru quickly because we are all really anxious to get down to Brazil. The language is defintiley different from Spanish but it is so much cooler than spanish! Anyways, it's been a really good experience here so far and it's been good to grasp the Spirit of the MTC. Before I came here I thought about all the things in my life that I wanted to change over these next 2 years and I quickly learned this is not the attitude to have. Instead I know that if I just focus on serving others and learning the gospel principles and the Portuguese language, that in return I know the Lord will make me a better person. Also as much as I don't really want to admit it, gettting up at 5 in the morning for seminary for 4 years in high school has definitely made it a lot easier to wake up early here, there are a lot of elders here who really struggle with getting up. I finally got your packages and DearElder letters today and it was so great to have mail! Those cinnamon rolls will definitely be a lot better than anything they could possibly serve here for breakfast (lunch and dinner aren't too bad usually). I've seen pretty much everyone here in the MTC that I already knew was here, the only one you would really know would be Austin Taylor but I've seen a ton of friends from school. Sooo quick story, the Elders in our district are pretty obsessed with always talking about our visas, especially my rommate Elder Ricker. He always jokes that each day is his last day here in Provo and that his visa is coming tomorrow. So I decided to write a note from the "MTC Travel Coordinator" saying that they had received the visas for the 4 Elders in our room. I slipped the note under our door and when our district all went back to our rooms later that night, Elder Ricker opened our door and walked in to find the note. He read it and started running down the hall yelling how he got his visa, this caused everyone in our district to run out of their rooms and huddle around the note. Their reactions were priceless! I was in the background laughing so hard and after a couple of minutes my companion and I finally told Elder Ricker and the rest of the Elders that I wrote the note as a joke and they all thought it was hysterical. And it was. haha other elders saw this and decided to do the same joke on their roommates too. The MTC is great and we do all that we can to focus the entire day so that we can become better instruments in the Lord's hand but we realize that we still have to have some fun every now and then or else we will all go crazy!! Well, it was cool that I got to talk to you the other day on the phone and thank you for sending in those immunization records, I really appreciate it. I love you all and hope all is well back home!! Can't wait to hear from you next week!! Tell the babies I love them and miss them so much! and you too, Mom, Dad, Annie, Tiersha, Tahnee, Josh and Tyler!

 

Chao!

Michael (the golden child)

ps. it is starting to get REALLY cold here...it ain't no Hawaii out here!!

and sorry if there are a ton of typing errors, I only have so many minutes to write so I gotta go fast! But I'm doing great!!