Week 2 - MTC

So we are another week into the MTC and things are still going pretty good.

This week we got to go back to the cafeteria to have more warm food which is nice to have a bit of variety in my meals. Hopefully they will still cater some of the food because it’s always nice to have something that is close to fast food.  The food can be strange here at times but I'm getting enough, for the most part, which is nice. I'm eating really whatever there is. For breakfast I tend to have donuts because I don't like the eggs that they normally serve but that's alright with me. More snacks would be nice, but you can probably just send those when I get out in the field because I only have a couple more days here.

Meeting my mission president was a really cool experience. I think that he will be a great mission president. He and his wife were really nice and seem like good people.  Last week when all of the mission presidents came for training we had Brother and Sister Turvey who were going to Leads, England working with us.  They wanted to steal me and I told them they could if they could work it out but I have a feeling that that wont happen :) … but it would be cool to go to England.  (We got the nicest letter from them telling us how impressed they were with Ben and how they wished they could take him with them.)

My weekends and the weekdays feel the exact same here at the MTC so to mix it up a little we sit in the middle of the hallways with our boots on and drink root beer and eat chips and salsa. I saw Alex (roommate from Utah State) briefly in the hallway and we talked a little and that's the only time I have been able to find him. I feel like this week was pretty similar to last week. We just spend a lot of time in our classroom studying or learning lessons to teach to our investigators. 

Alex and Ben

Last weeks Teaching Resource Centers or TRC went pretty good. We committed one of them to baptism and the other one is thinking about it. I’m pretty sure both of them were just members faking being investigators but it was still cool. This week for the TRC we got new investigators and I'm pretty sure that we have one who is a real investigator because she just acts differently than the other TRC and that was pretty cool. She has already committed to baptism and we just had the opportunity to answer all of the questions that she had for us. Our other investigator is pretty open to the messages that we are sharing with him so we will see how that goes. Yesterday we got a little rain and that was nice because it wasn't so hot so we decided to take a walk with our district. The devotionals we had this past week were really good on Tuesday we had Elder Arnold of the 7 and he had a really good talk and then one of the MTC directors came on Sunday and talked about how to judge whether you are a successful missionary or not.

We moved back into the gym for exercises time but that's alright because we are playing some volleyball and I think that I'm getting pretty good at it, but soccer would still be more fun - however we do not have full size goals to play on.

We had a missionary from Trinidad who was supposed to come on Wednesday but he decided not to come or something which is a problem because we are having a cultural event where he was going to hold the Trinidad flag but now its going to be me and my companion holding the flag instead - so that should be interesting. (We are not sure what this is all about)

We asked a few questions and here are his answers:

On downloading pictures:  I should be able to do it on random computers. My problem with the pictures here is they have all of the computers set up so you can’t download things to them to prevent people from doing stupid things to the computers - but that leaves me unable to upload pictures - but I promise that I am taking some. (He was able to send us pictures from someone in his district)

My companion is Elder Carnley and he’s from Leads, Utah. He is a cowboy. He played a lot of different sports during high school and broke his back right after high school so he waited a year before coming out to the mission. There are four of us in a bedroom and we have 10 missionaries in the district. Some of the other missionaries that I really like are Elder Hall and Elder Christmas, and most of the sisters missionaries.

I was able to go to the temple last week but this week it is closed for cleaning.

The thing I like the most is when we get to exercise because it takes my mind off of all of the studying we normally do. The thing I like the least is when my companion isn't fully prepared to teach lessons so I end up having to talk for a lot longer than I should have too.

I am for sure leaving on the 5th of July and we will be flying straight to Tri-Cities and should get there right around noon. We are leaving the MTC that day at 5:50 so I'll probably get to call you pretty early in the morning.

Love,

Elder Sugden