Hi family!
Thank you for the emails, and the letter from Haley. It was good to finally hear from you Drew. :) I'm glad you're enjoying high school, and only got a Hershey's kiss on New Years.
First things first, I leave the MTC at 5 am on Tuesday. I don't know exactly when I'll get to call you but it will probably be between like 6:30 and 7:30. I'm assuming I should call dad's phone? That's what I'm planning on unless I get a letter from you before then. Haley, I'll be sure to leave time to call you too. What is this burner phone thing you're talking about? I actually just bought a calling card from the bookstore here, and it has like 3 hours worth of minutes on it for only 5 bucks, so I think I should be good with that. I'm going to start packing tonight or tomorrow, and I'll be sending stuff home. I don't really know what I can send home yet, but I'm gonna have to figure it out because overage costs on luggage are like $100. Not worth it. I'll probably send the package home on Monday. I have all the thank you cards for people from my farewell that I finally wrote. I'll send them in the package, and will you guys distribute them? Most of them are people in the ward so you can just take em to church or whatever. Also, I'm starting to make a list of things I need you to send me, once I get to Texas. One of those things is an SD reader. It's the only way we can send pictures. I don't even know where to look for one, or I'd say I'd find one once I get to Texas. Can I just get it at Wal-Mart or something? I'll send a list with my package probably when I know for sure what I need. Also, will someone send me Melissa's emails? Please. :)
Haley, CONGRATULATIONS ON MAKING LDV!! Why didn't you tell me that in your letter? It better have been because you wrote it before your audition... I'm sorry about Albus. I will miss him, but I know you won't. :) I thoroughly enjoyed your story about the car dying. Only you could make that story about how awesome it was to ride in a cop car. I would have been so stressed and freaked out! Haha
In MTC news, since my district is one of the weird ones that gets an extra week here, that meant that our teachers schedules got messed up and we didn't get to keep the same ones the whole time. We all loved Brother McClain and were really sad when he had to leave. I thought Brother Gruninger was cool too, but a couple of the elders really didn't like him so it's probably good that we got new teachers... So for this last week we have Brother Curtis and Brother Staley. They're both really cool! It's Brother Staley's first week here and so we've all been super impressed with how well he teaches. Brother Curtis is definitely the favorite though. He's super quirky. He's always wearing a cardigan and skinny slacks... (They can't wear jeans to teach so they're skinny church pants...) with square hipster glasses and he's a poli sci major. He's super smart! We were talking about the plan of salvation yesterday and we got into some deep doctrine! We started talking about the temple and some of the symbolism of the endowment session, so now our whole district is super excited to go to the temple today and understand it a little better. And then he teaches our class tonight, so I'm sure there will be lots of questions to continue our discussion from last time. The hardest part about getting new teachers, is that our investigators change. It was nice to get to know our others investigators so well because that made it easier to teach them. Now we only get a week with these new teachers/investigators which means we only teach them each twice. We've already finished teaching one of them, so that's pretty weird. Sister Thornton and I have been talking a lot about how hard teaching is! I've been teaching for the past two years at school, but this is so much harder! I can give tests to gauge where students are in school, but there's no spiritual gospel test that I can give to investigators. We just have to ask the right questions and pray really hard for the spirit to direct us. Did you know that we're supposed to extend the baptismal invitation after the first lesson? Was that what they told you to do, dad? I thought it was so weird to jump in so fast, but we talked to Brother Staley yesterday and he explained how much you can learn from their response to that question. We've (my companionship and I) been pretty nervous about inviting some of our investigators, including Greg which is Brother Staley's, because we didn't feel like we had explained the actual concept of baptism well enough, or that they didn't understand enough of the gospel to really be able to make that decision. Brother Staley told us that doesn't matter. They need to know in basic, simple terms what baptism is, but just because they reject it the first time we ask, doesn't mean that it's a no forever. We can learn why they aren't ready to be baptized or don't want to be, and can then address those concerns. It totally makes sense! But, it's still scary. Hilary, Kaydee, Lyndsey, and any other future missionaries: just do it! haha Also, if you are going on an English speaking mission, you will be in the MTC for 12-13 days. At one point someone said it was only 6, but you do get almost 2 weeks here instead of just one. Lyndsey, Spanish is 6 weeks. :)
Okay, I think I'm officially over my time limit. I love you all! Thank you for all the letters and packages. I will talk to you on Tuesday!
Love,
Mal
Thank you for the emails, and the letter from Haley. It was good to finally hear from you Drew. :) I'm glad you're enjoying high school, and only got a Hershey's kiss on New Years.
First things first, I leave the MTC at 5 am on Tuesday. I don't know exactly when I'll get to call you but it will probably be between like 6:30 and 7:30. I'm assuming I should call dad's phone? That's what I'm planning on unless I get a letter from you before then. Haley, I'll be sure to leave time to call you too. What is this burner phone thing you're talking about? I actually just bought a calling card from the bookstore here, and it has like 3 hours worth of minutes on it for only 5 bucks, so I think I should be good with that. I'm going to start packing tonight or tomorrow, and I'll be sending stuff home. I don't really know what I can send home yet, but I'm gonna have to figure it out because overage costs on luggage are like $100. Not worth it. I'll probably send the package home on Monday. I have all the thank you cards for people from my farewell that I finally wrote. I'll send them in the package, and will you guys distribute them? Most of them are people in the ward so you can just take em to church or whatever. Also, I'm starting to make a list of things I need you to send me, once I get to Texas. One of those things is an SD reader. It's the only way we can send pictures. I don't even know where to look for one, or I'd say I'd find one once I get to Texas. Can I just get it at Wal-Mart or something? I'll send a list with my package probably when I know for sure what I need. Also, will someone send me Melissa's emails? Please. :)
Haley, CONGRATULATIONS ON MAKING LDV!! Why didn't you tell me that in your letter? It better have been because you wrote it before your audition... I'm sorry about Albus. I will miss him, but I know you won't. :) I thoroughly enjoyed your story about the car dying. Only you could make that story about how awesome it was to ride in a cop car. I would have been so stressed and freaked out! Haha
In MTC news, since my district is one of the weird ones that gets an extra week here, that meant that our teachers schedules got messed up and we didn't get to keep the same ones the whole time. We all loved Brother McClain and were really sad when he had to leave. I thought Brother Gruninger was cool too, but a couple of the elders really didn't like him so it's probably good that we got new teachers... So for this last week we have Brother Curtis and Brother Staley. They're both really cool! It's Brother Staley's first week here and so we've all been super impressed with how well he teaches. Brother Curtis is definitely the favorite though. He's super quirky. He's always wearing a cardigan and skinny slacks... (They can't wear jeans to teach so they're skinny church pants...) with square hipster glasses and he's a poli sci major. He's super smart! We were talking about the plan of salvation yesterday and we got into some deep doctrine! We started talking about the temple and some of the symbolism of the endowment session, so now our whole district is super excited to go to the temple today and understand it a little better. And then he teaches our class tonight, so I'm sure there will be lots of questions to continue our discussion from last time. The hardest part about getting new teachers, is that our investigators change. It was nice to get to know our others investigators so well because that made it easier to teach them. Now we only get a week with these new teachers/investigators which means we only teach them each twice. We've already finished teaching one of them, so that's pretty weird. Sister Thornton and I have been talking a lot about how hard teaching is! I've been teaching for the past two years at school, but this is so much harder! I can give tests to gauge where students are in school, but there's no spiritual gospel test that I can give to investigators. We just have to ask the right questions and pray really hard for the spirit to direct us. Did you know that we're supposed to extend the baptismal invitation after the first lesson? Was that what they told you to do, dad? I thought it was so weird to jump in so fast, but we talked to Brother Staley yesterday and he explained how much you can learn from their response to that question. We've (my companionship and I) been pretty nervous about inviting some of our investigators, including Greg which is Brother Staley's, because we didn't feel like we had explained the actual concept of baptism well enough, or that they didn't understand enough of the gospel to really be able to make that decision. Brother Staley told us that doesn't matter. They need to know in basic, simple terms what baptism is, but just because they reject it the first time we ask, doesn't mean that it's a no forever. We can learn why they aren't ready to be baptized or don't want to be, and can then address those concerns. It totally makes sense! But, it's still scary. Hilary, Kaydee, Lyndsey, and any other future missionaries: just do it! haha Also, if you are going on an English speaking mission, you will be in the MTC for 12-13 days. At one point someone said it was only 6, but you do get almost 2 weeks here instead of just one. Lyndsey, Spanish is 6 weeks. :)
Okay, I think I'm officially over my time limit. I love you all! Thank you for all the letters and packages. I will talk to you on Tuesday!
Love,
Mal
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