10/25/2018 first REAL email, titled 8 Days a Week (you can tell he was raised by a Beatles fan)

It's finally here, and about time too. We were pretty annoyed when we learned that we would have wait a week and a day for our first P-Day. Having your first week of a completely new and different experience be this long before a break made it feel like a marathon. With three weeks in the MTC, we only get 2 P-Days. Big sad. 

Anyways, entering the MTC was a quick but eventful process. They let you take a couple of pictures with family which you have probably seen. I haven't though. Paul, Hayley, Austin were fun to be with the night and morning before the MTC. Many Good Burger quotes. Anyways, the MTC intake has us zigzagging from the dropoff parking lot all around the building, to your residence hall, to another building, all in like 10 minutes. 

After the intake when we ended in the last building, we met our district. 3 other missionaries in my district are going to Arkansas. The other 11 are going elsewhere, either Mesa Arizona or Chesepeake Bay area I think. One sister never showed up, so that's why we have 15 missionaries in our district rather than 16. 

My companion is Elder Miller. He's from a small town in Arizona. He's a lot taller than me, and we don't have very much in common, but he's pretty funny. He was also assigned to be the district leader, which are pretty much the glorified mailmen of the MTC. Btw you said that you like the Dear Elder system because we can get them any day rather than P Day. I can still get normal letters any day of the week. It just takes longer to get here. Also, I am older than pretty much everyone. I'm the second oldest person in my district (one sister is older) and the oldest of my roommates (the other two roommates, Elders Sellesin and Brown, are in a different district, but are in my zone). I'm older than our zone leaders. Pretty much every elder just graduated from HS this past year. 

So, our days are busy. We wake at 6:30, get ready and breakfast, then have class at 8:30, which goes until 11:30 usually. The clashes are informative, but super long. My teachers are Brother Rex and Sister Gee. Brother Rex looks like a blonde Idubbbz (a YouTube personality). The teachers are cool. 

Then we have lunch. After lunch we have either study time (hour for personal and hour for companion study) or exercise time. Then we have the other. For exercise I like going to the MTC field and play spike ball with the some of the other missionaries in the district. It's great to get out of campus and be in an open field. It's right across from the chapel Katie and Christian had their Utah reception at I think. Close to the Provo temple, right?

Then we have dinner, and then another class from 7 to 9:15. 

This week we started TRC, which are lessons that we teach to people with our companion. The people either act as investigators (renamed "interested people" in the revised edition of Preach My Gospel) or actually are investigators. They don't tell us. We have had lessons with Zoe and Tyler. Zoe is from Taiwan and Tyler is half Samoan. I'm pretty sure Zoe is pretending to be an investigator. But Tyler might be a legit non-member. The lessons have gone really well. 

On Tuesday we had our devotional, which we heard from Elder Soares from the Twelve and his wife. They're really cool. 

Pictures: 

1: the girl in the yellow shirt (Sister Dicataldo) was in a few of my Civil Engineering classes, and we were in a group together for a few class projects. She's going Fiji I think. Anyways, it was cool seeing her. We have to be with our companion in every photo (however this was my first or second day at the MTC and didn't know that rule, so my companion was still sitting down at our table. The guy next to me just ran in to act as my companion). I've seen a couple of other people who I had seen around BYU or had classes with.

2. There's a cat that walks around the MTC campus. Nobody knows who owns him, but it just walks around and I got to pet him. Precious cat. 

3. Bad job cutting this pizza, Provo MTC. Tsk tsk. 

4. Highest density of water dispensing units intended for oral consumption I have ever seen. I feel if we activate all of them, the Legend of Zelda puzzle jingle will sound and secret entrance will open.