I hope they call me in a . . . oh wait, they did!

Hey family!!

How is everyone doing?! Well....I just wrote out a giant letter because the internet wasn't working all day today and they thought it wasn't going to work until monday...so I seriously just hand wrote like 5 pages to you guys and then just found out the internet is working again. So I'm not really sure if I should just type everything out again or what. Maybe I will so it'll be easier for you to mabye put it on the blog.

So where to start...I'm alive! The plane over here got a little bumpy..and by a little bumpy I mean a lot, right when were were going over the mountains to decend into Salt Lake, too. The guy next to me got out his barf bag and the little brochure that explained the flight evacuation plan haha. It made me giggle inside, even though I was mildly getting uncomfortable. But really I had nothing to worry about because if I die it's a pretty good shot at the celestial kingdom right? haha.

The MTC is the bomb. It's like it's own little city/temple. The Spirit here is awesome. My companion is Elder Sheen from Twin Falls Idaho, the only person I can kind of compare him to is Andy Williams/ maybe a bit of my roommate Devin Garvis but that doesn't really help you guys since you've never met him. He took four years of French and then got called Spanish speaking, isn't that crazy?! He's a hard worker though and is coming along with the language better then most others who have no experience with Spanish. My other roommates are Elder Sargent from Arizona and Elder Summers from Alaska. They are both way fun to hang out with and we get along really well. Class is especially fun with them and our teachers, once I was laughing so hard I was crying which I dont' think has every happened to me before. haha. Elder Sargent kind of reminds me of a mix of Ben Thomas/Kyle Harris, it's super hard to take him seriously but I love it. He also has way good taste in music which was kind of fun to talk about (Like Jonsi and Yeasayer and Sufjan Stevens and just stuff like that--Madeline will know them). It was way fun to talk to him about that for a bit.

What else, let's see. The language is coming along well, I know how to pray, bear my testimony, and kind of contact and set up an appointment in Spanish. It was definitely nice being a little bit ahead of people because I can focus on church vocab and verbs instead of general stuff like "ser" and "estar" which mean to be; a lot of people get confused with those. so when we were practicing bearing our testimonies I got up infront of the class and wanted to say something like "I know that because of Jesus Christ we can be cleaned of our sins" except instead of saying "pecados" which means sins in Spanish, I said "pescados" which means fish. So esentially I said "I know that because of Jesus Christ we can be cleaned of our fish"...haha. That was slightly embarrassing but it was funny and I'm trying to use different verbs and stuff so what the heck.

My schedule the first couple of days was pretty crazy, we had a lot of meetings/devotionals with the MTC Presidency, our Branch Presidency, our Zone Leaders and teachers. It was basically just a lot of getting to know the layout and schedule of the MTC. Now our schedule is pretty solid until our last week. P-days are Wednesday, and besides sundays every day consists of about an hour of Personal Study, an hour of Companion Study, and an hour of Language Study. Plus somedays we have MDT Time (Missionary Decided Time) where usually we try to learn more spanish haha. On P-days we go to the temple in the morning and then after lunch have time to do laundry and write letters. Sundays are a bit different, we have a Priesthood Meeting for about an hour in the morning where a companionship stands up and describes a Priesthood Ordinance, then a few stand up and repeat the baptismial prayer and then a couple members of the Branch Presidency stand up and give a short talk. I got asked to recite the baptismial prayer after Elder Sargent went and I almost did it perfectly but it was definitely nerve racking. Our Branch Presidency is somewhat stern but loving at the same time. Our teachers are awesome, I really love them. We have one from Chille who has taught at the MTC longer than anyone else teaching here and one who went to Mexico on his mission. They are both really fun and teach well. As a district we've been learning things faster than usual which is exciting.

I'm trying to rememeber what else I wrote you guys...too bad I already mailed it or else I would tear it open and try to type everything . . . Oh! The two most exciting things this week probably were: I learned how to roll my Rs last night!!! It was fantastic!! I do it the best when it's an "orr" combo so I kept saying things like "tengo uno borrito" (I have a burrito) just so I could roll them and sound super mexican. I was so stoked. The second most exciting thing was that I learned how to open a banana FROM THE BOTTOM. Right!? All you do is squeeze it and the bottom splits open. My life was changed forever.

Well, my time is almost out, I wish I had know that the internet was going to be working because I would have brought my list of things to talk about with my camera and cord and tried to send you pictures. We got some really good ones with my companion and roommates by the temple, mabye I'll try to send those next week. Keep up the letters, I love them! I can check them every day so that definitely helps.

Zack