MTC Week 1- Kind of Like EFY

Hey Everyone,

So I think I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on now.

The smallest level of the social structure here is called a district. My district has eight other missionaries, five elders and three sisters, that arrived the same day as me. We are all speaking Spanish, and we have classes together every day in the same classroom. I share a dorm room with the five elders, one of whom is my companion, Elder Barrett.

The next level up is called a zone. Everyone on our floor of the residence hall is part of the same zone, and were all speaking Spanish. No one else is going to San Diego though. The guys who have been here longer have a bunch of nightly rituals involving sacred 'relics' that were passed down from the missionaries who were here before them. It's understood that they're just joking around, and it's all fairly harmless, but it still has kind of a sacreligious overtone. These things must evolve pretty quickly with the short turnover time, so that will be interesting to observe. All the people in a zone are also in a branch, and we have some old people who are the branch presidents. We have a church meeting every Sunday where people are randomly called on to give talks (in Spanish of course).

Classes are usually twice a day, right after breakfast and right after dinner, and last about three hours. We have mainly been learning Spanish and doing role play discussions. Our teacher only talks to us in Spanish, and she also only shows up half the time. Sometimes she sends in a sub, but sometimes there just is no teacher. When there isn't a teacher, sometimes we just teach eachother about stuff. A couple of elders who were salesmen taught us about sales strategies and how to apply them to our discussions with investigators. Elder Barrett taught us about behavioral economics. I offered to teach about group theory, specifically permutation groups and their application to Rubiks Cubes, but no one was interested. Some of the sisters who had taken a lot of Spanish classes taught us more Spanish.

Other than classes, there are some workshops throughout the day. Those are in different places at different times and taught by different people every day, but they're usually about goal setting. Sometimes there are devotionals also. Then the rest of the day we are doing personal or companion study, or preparing lessons for the role play discussions.

So that's the MTC. In spite of everything, there is a strong atmosphere of the spirit here. It's kind of like EFY, but more boring, but still really neat.

I always knew what I would be getting myself into when I left on a mission, but this week I've finally begun process the full significance of it. I'm leaving everything behind for two years. When I get back, that will have been nearly 10% of my life. I don't know what will happen to me or the things I'm leaving while I'm gone. I don't know if I'll be able to pick up where I left off, or if things will never be the same again.

What I can say is that I feel confident that this is what God wants me to be doing. So I guess that's of some comfort.

I'm glad the decision to do this was made by past me who didn't take into consideration how present me would feel about it. In a sense, it's out of my hands now and I'm just along for the ride. I have no idea what to expect really, but I guess that's ok. I'm looking forward to finding out what's ahead.

Your Friend,
Elder Wadsworth