First P-Day

Hello everyone. Let me first tell you that I only have thirty minutes to email each p-day, which for me is monday. Not every missionaries p-day here is monday, so it was lucky that mine was. You shouldn't email me until I am in the field. I dont have time to read long emails and write one too so you should use dear elder. It is so so so much better. I get the letter the day you send it and then I dont have to waste my email time.  I am glad you're thinking of me though and emailing me. I have written everyone I just need to find the time to send it. We are not technically supposed to write letters on anything other than p-day, but I miss you all so much that i have "broken" that rule a little bit. I trust that you are all doing well and loving life.

You're probably wondering about my ankle. It hurts. I am trying to stretch it daily and get it better but with all the movement that goes on daily I havent been able to reduce the swelling or much of the pain. I just try to ignore it and I hope that it will go away eventually. I dont complain about it to my companion Elder Marshall. He is great by the way. I can see in my district that the companionships are calls from the lord and not our leaders. We work well together. In my district everyone is going to Kennewick other than my companion and one other sister. They are going to Toronto Canada. For some reason there werent many missionaries called to the Toronto Mission so they needed to put the odd ones out with other districts. The structure of the MTC is districts and zones, just like the mission field. There are 4 elder companionships and 2 sister companionships in my district (12 people total). There are three districts in my zone. When we go to sacrament meeting and other sunday meetings we meet with our whole zone but other than that we usually just stick together in districts. I eat learn sleep and do everything with my district.

So far in my MTC experience what I have gathered is that Role Playing is a huge part of the experience. I have role played so much in the past 5 days and I already feel so much more prepared to be in the field. I see the progress I have made and it makes me wonder why the lessons were ever taught any differently. Memorization of the lessons would make it easier to teach but so much less efficient. We are being taught to teach by the spirit and to tailor each lesson to the investigators needs. I have something called a TRC on tuesday which is a simulated teaching experience with someone from outside the MTC who comes in to be taught by a set of missionaries. We are given a little background on these people and an appointment to meet them. I havent done any TRC's yet but I imagine it will be a lot like the mission field in some ways and I am excited to learn from the experience.

My days are filled with a ton of personal study time in which I study the lessons in PMG as well as the scriptures. Also there is classroom time. 6 hours of that each day. The classroom time is taught by a returned missionary and sometimes it is us role playing with him and other times he is teaching us how to teach or other things. Classroom instruction and personal study cover the bulk of each day. Meals for our district are usually at 710, 1140, and 440. Its an extremely early dinner but so far I havent really had any problems with starvation in between dinner and breakfast the next morning. The food is great but I'll eat anything. They have plenty of variety and like I said, its all good.

The first few days dragged on so so so so slowly. They are long days and each minute is planned. Also, I miss home. Sometimes I feel like the only elder here who gets down because he misses his family. I know the other elders are hiding it just as I am but its hard to be away from family and kristen. I miss you guys a lot and I might have to break my leg on purpose so I can come home :). It does get easier every day to deal with the home sickness. Sometimes it hits me really hard during personal study and I cant focus but What I have learned is that I need to have faith that Heavenly Father will provide a way for me to press forward. I can't believe its only been five days. They say the first sunday is hump day and time will begin to move at normal speed again.