Week One: Settling In

Brendan's MTC district.  He is in the back row on the far right--wearing his only suit and one of only three shirts.  Hopefully the airport finds his suitcase soon...

          August 26, 2013

Preparation Day (P-Day) has arrived!! I just got back from the temple which was really refreshing and helped me ground myself. The past few days have been pretty insane what with getting adjusted to the new schedule, learning a brand new vocabulary at breakneck pace and teaching our first investigator (for those of you counting at home, that's 2 days after I got here). It's got my head spinning quite a bit. 

Brendan's bulletin board back in his residence hall.

The fireside was really good yesterday but it wasn't the mission president who spoke. We had a guy from the church offices come who oversees missionary work and advertising, etc.. He was really good! There were a lot of good laughs intermixed with serious calls to action which is always what you want for a crowd of 19-21 year olds. After that, we watched a taped fireside that Elder Bednar gave last Christmas called "Character of Christ". That was the most beautiful talk I have ever hear--I kid you not. It was almost an hour long but I was just fixed the whole time on what he was saying. It was so powerful. It was mainly talking about a quote by Elder Maxwell. It said "There would have been no atoning sacrifice without the character of Christ." Elder Bednar went on to talk about the character of Christ was that he turned outward with love, compassion and service, when all of us would have turned inward in selfishness. He said that by following the example of Christ's character, we can become converted to the gospel. He emphasized the difference between having a testimony and being truly converted. A testimony is having a knowledge or belief in things. Being converted is when you live your life according to what you believe in a stay true to those beliefs.

The food at the MTC is a-ok. It doesn't have the TLC that Mom's cooking has, but it suffices. The ice cream is great and the chocolate milk has been treating me well too:) 

Anyway, about my district. We've got 7 elders and 4 sisters. 6 of the elders and 2 of the sisters are going to Taiwan Taizhong with me. The other two sisters are going to visitors centers in California Mandarin speaking and one of the elders is going to Edmonton, Canada mandarin speaking. My companion is Elder C. He's from Florida and he went to Air Force Academy for a year before coming here. He wants to go into aeronautical engineering when he comes home and become a pilot. He's a pretty funny guy. He has really dry humor and has a lot of funny things he says, my favorite of which being "done-zo" because my pole vaulting coach used to say that all the time. He really wants to learn the language though and I think we're going to get along fine. We share our residence with Elder W. and Elder R. Elder W. is 20 so he's the oldest of the bunch and he's our District Leader. He's really outspoken and funny and he's really easy to get along with. He can be kind of goofy at times though. Elder R. is more straight-cut and he's kind of gullible which I'm sad to say we take advantage of at times. Luckily he's a good sport about it and we all joke with one another so it ends up being ok. The other three elders in our district room next door to us. Their names are Elder B., Elder D., and Elder R.  Elder B. is really laid-back. He likes to ride motorcycles and I guess he used to street race back in Oaklahoma where he's from. He got in a really bad wreck a few months before he came out when he was going 70 on the highway and a truck came up from behind him going 135 and rear-ended him on his bike. He says he shouldn't have lived and that's what spurred him to go on a mission. Elder D. is the musical theater type. He and Elder R. actually went to the same school in Bountiful so that's a fun fact. We have really similar interests but he's really eccentric and I'm not really at all so it's kind of an odd relationship we have. Elder R. is the one I know least about. I need to talk to him more. I just know that he's pretty quiet. He's nice though. And then the sisters. There's Sister T. and Sister W. and they're a companionship and then there's Sister F. and Sister G. and they're a companionship. Sister T. and Sister W. are going to the visitors centers. Sister T. is really quiet but she's really nice and she knows Chinese pretty well so she's a big help in class. Sister W. is more outspoken and she's also really nice. Sister F. is a med student at BYU-I. She wants to be a pediatrician in the future. Sister G. went to the Y and that's about all I know. The whole sister-elder rules are pretty weird for me and a couple of the other elders. It was really funny the other day because we were playing kickball as a zone and Elder W. was about to give Sister W. a high 5 on her way back from scoring a run and they both remembered you aren't allowed to do that at the same moment and pulled back their hands and it was really awkward. Anyway, fun times. I'll send some pictures later today. My camera's back at the residence. Talk to you in a bit!

Love,

Elder Smith 

The Young Women in our home ward already sent a care package, including these sweet stickers.  Some of Brendan's district put them to good use.

Brendan's companion was sent this package of jelly beans, so they have developed a tradition of trying a new one each night and guessing what flavor it is.

Brendan's companion paying close attention in class.  :)

Walking up to the Provo Temple.