Wednesday October 5, 2016

Hey Mom, 

So that last Dear Elder earned me the name Elder Buggy. So thanks for that haha. And thanks for that Taiwan flag. All the elders greatly appreciate it and wanted me to let you know they love it. Our dorm is in the top floor of the residence hall at the end of the main path and the flag is hung in the window. So when the sun goes down and we turn on our light in the dorm, there's just Taiwanese flag visible to all of the MTC (or at least all the important parts. But anyways this last week has been great. I've been able to adjust my study habits to incorporate the spirit better and as a result my lessons with the investigators (we have two now) have became significantly more fluent. And there was general conference too, so that was absolutely amazing. I did go to a couple choir practices but never got around to turning in the application for the general conference choir. While it would've been an amazing experience, I was most definitely not qualified to be apart of that group. And anyways the practices cut in to a lot of sleep and study time. But it was great to see all the members of my zone in there and Sister Burton and Sister Clyde represented our district well. All the talks were greatly inspiring as well, and you already know I loved Elder Bednar's talk. He's the best. Hopefully the rumors about him stopping by the MTC soon are true. But yeah conference was great. Sunday was just wonderful. The morning session was amazing and the afternoon session was great too. It was nice to hear the new apostles speak. After the afternoon session, they said that we'd have a "special treat" at the devotional that night. And we did. The prelude music was the clips of the choir performing at conference and the special guest was BYU's acapella group Vocal Point. Vocal point was alright but they used a piano for like all their songs, so it wasn't even really acapella. But their last song, Nearer My God to Thee, was absolutely spectacular. If you can I'd like look it up on Youtube. It's amazing. And after that performance one of the sisters who had caught the virus going around (we call it the Siwang, or death in Chinese) had asked Elder Johnson to give her a blessing and me to anoint the oil. That was a very spiritual experience. After that we went and saw the new Meet the Mormons, and that was just really fun for all of us, especially the part with the Japanese family. Last night we had the great opportunity to hear from President Burton. So of course our Sister Burton got to have a formal dinner with her grandma when she came along with the MTC presidency and all the mission presidents here. She even got to take Sister Clyde and Sister Kwan. So while our sisters were eating filet minon, us elders were stuck with the cafeteria meat loaf. But since Sister Clyde is a vegetarian, she brought her steak and left it up to us elders to split it between us. So myself, Elder Donalson, and Elder Hyde each took small pieces to just get a taste of it and left Elder Johnson with the rest. Poor guy has already lost 20 pounds here, which is quite the degrading experience for a bodybuilder like himself. But anyways, the MTC is still great and the spirits still strong.

-Elder Erickson

The Taiwan flag we got him. He will try for a better picture.