Week 2

Hello everyone!

I am on week two and it feels more
like I've been here for a few months now. Mama I'll apologize in advance. I
forgot to have the letter you sent by me while I started typing this e-mail.
I'll try my best to answer the questions I remember but I can't guarantee
I'll get them all.

To start
off, DearElder.com letters are working. I've gotten one pretty regularly
since I talked about it last week. I really enjoy getting the
messages throughout the week from my family and friends. Thank you to
everyone who has sent me a message thus far and thank you for everyone else in
advance. And to all you others... *cough* ANYWAYS! I'm going to try my best to
answer all of the messages (DearElder.com or regular mail) with letters. My
companion has like 80 stamps that he's very willing to share and around 40
envelopes but I don't like to mooch so Mama could you please send me some?

Things seem
to be going really quickly now. The language is hard, but it's coming. My
companions are awesome and we have a lot of fun together. My district is
awesome and we're really good at supporting eachother. This week we actually
had a change in the branch presidency so just as I started getting used to the
reports and routines of the first branch president we got another. Luckily the
new one is the old one's councillor. Mama, you wanted to know if we hear from
any general authorities during devotionals. The answer was no until last night.
We had Elder Holland come and speak to us and it was phenomenal. He's such a
powerful speaker. He told us we as missionaries need to take better advantage
of our best converting tool, The Book of Mormon but first we need to become
converted to it ourselves. It was a great talk and we had an awesome discussion
about it afterwards as a district. He also talked a lot about how we should not
let a mission be a mission but have it become part of our lives and that we
ourselves need to become true converts of the message we carry. He talked about
how we need to live our missions now in a way that we won't regret in the
future. That reminded me of a quote I read on a navy seals picture which said,
"There's two types of pain in the world: The temporary pain of discipline
and the permanant pain of regret". I think this is a powerful statement I
want to learn to apply in my life.

Next thing,
now that we've gotten all spiritual, let me ruin it with the funniest
thing to happen to me this week. I was getting the mail as usual (which I have
to do twice a day) and I walked behind a certain elder because I had to get to
my district's mailbox which was right on the other side of him. I squatted down
to put the combination in on the locker and he turned to walk away. I don't
know if he didn't see me or what happened (P.S. I have never seen this elder
before in my life) Well he turned to leave and he let the winds loose on my
face. My companions were both standing there shocked for a little bit
wondering, "Did that honestly just happen?" I didn't see it but apparently
this elder made a surprised face himself as if he had no idea that it was going
to make noise (according to Elder Fillmore there's no way he didn't know it was
coming because of the way he "lifted his leg" to let the process of
pressure relief occur). And I, instantly held my breath as I attempted to put
the combination in to the lock on the box as quickly as possible so I could get
out of there. Haha we all started laughing really hard and the elder apologized
and shook all our hands and left beet red in the face and embarrased.

I don't
know how much else there is to report really. It's the same routine every day,
not much new happens and I think that's part of the reason why the stay here
seems to be going by so quickly. It's a good experience but I'm also far more
excited about getting out to the field. The other Elders and Sisters that were
here before us are leaving this next week and then it'll just be our district
and one other for the next few weeks until new russian speaking missionaries
come in.

I really
miss all of you and I miss doing a lot of stuff. I have just recently gotten
the motivation to really start working out again. I was just learning to do
handstand pushups before, the most I got was 5. Hahaha I'll get better eventually.
I beat the push up record which was 105 or something. I don't care to be up on
the board at all though. If someone beats 115 then I'll just try again. Haha
then pullups I'm still working on. It's weird because they have a pullup bar
outside our room but not at the gym. So most of the time when I'm at the room
I'm either tired or hustling to get somewhere else. Most I've done here so far
though is 32. Record is 35. Maybe I'll beat it, maybe I won't. I've been
sneaking away into the stairwells where people can't see me to do flips because
I miss it so much. I'm definitely going through guitar withdrawals. We had a
stress management lesson here and although I honestly don't feel stressed, I
realized that pretty much all of my stress relief methods are against the
rules. Flipping, Guitar, Rugby, and their gym sucks and they don't give us
enough time to work out for me to really kill myself in there. So... I'll just
have to deal with it some way when the time comes that I get really stressed. I
honestly don't think that'll happen here at the MTC though. The spirit here is
awesome.

I think I
answered all of the questions but one. But I'm saving that one for the end
because it seems like everyone is so interested about it (at least my family).
Oh yeah, Mama please continue to send the letters in German. They can't print
umlauts but it's good to have some kind of German in my life still. In fact if
you'd tell Omi and Opa about DearElder.com that'd be great too. I feel like I'm
going to lose all my muscles and all my German while I'm on my mission. So I'll
do whatever I can to keep those. And just in case you didn't get the tiny slip
of paper I slipped into my handwritten letter after I sealed it, my approximate
departure date is the 17th of April. My 10 week program turned into an 8 1/2
week program. Although they claim it was always 8 1/2 but they call it 9.

Now, for
the moment you've all been waiting for... The true story behind the shoulder
sling. The true part was that I was herded everywhere and that I got to the
class before anyone else then we went around and introduce

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ELDER/SISTER HAS EXPIRED. HE/SHE WILL BE ALLOWED TO E-MAIL FOR 30 MINUTES ON
THE 7TH OF MARCH ***