2 More Weeks

Yeah so two more weeks till Taiwan! My district gets our flight plans on Friday and then it's the final stretch. So I'm super excited and I now see why the past district said it's easy to lose focus the last 2 weeks. Sometimes you just start thinking about leaving and you forget your purpose here at the MTC. So to combat this, last week I started making some rather serious goals to kinda hold myself accountable at the end of each day. And it has really worked. I really wish I took our teachers seriously when they talked about setting goals when I first arrived here.

But again nothing really changed here at the MTC except that I lost more of my friends when the Cantonese district left on Tuesday. These were some of the best friends I have ever made and I only knew them for 5 weeks here at the MTC. But yeah I'll attach some pics with those studs at the end of this email. So yeah I'll miss them but the new Canto district is coming in today. And since me and Elder Hyde were called as the zone leaders for the remainder of our time here, we'll get to welcome them to the MTC and show them around later this evening.

Last night the whole MTC had quite the special speaker. President Russel M. Nelson and his wife came and had two excellent talks prepared. Sister Nelson talked about the influence we have as missionaries and that we need to be special spirits. President Nelson's talk mainly centered around his two main goals for us on our mission: to have the doctrine of Jesus Christ written upon the fleshy tables of our hearts and to become an epistle of Christ. He then went on to describe what each of these meant. He then went on to discuss our calling in a more eternal perspective. He said that we need to pray to be led to those of God's children who's ancestors are prepared to receive the covenants and ordinances of Christ's church. This is a concept that the sealer, Brother Daines (former Provo temple president), that we work with in the temple each week always tries to explain. And I love to think of missionary work like this. How when we bring a soul into the fold, we also bring the opportunity for their ancestors and posterity to receive the gospel, ordinances, and covenants of the church.

So yeah, MTC's still great and the spirits still strong.

艾長老

This is some of our zone on Halloween. The costumes were very short lived.

These are my British friends that left for Hong Kong at 2 AM Monday morning.

So this is Elder Evans on the left. He is from Manchester England and is really into parkour. He even holds the Guinness world record for most front flips on a trampoline in a minute. And then you have Elder Knight in the middle. He's from Birmingham, England, and is the funniest and most blunt guy ever.

This is Sister Percival in the middle and Sister Clyde on the left. Sister Percival is from Wales and is like the most sassy person ever.

So this is Elder Bertolli. He has probably the most amazing story ever that I can't really even begin to tell. But shortly after he was born, his parents left him on the street in front of an orphinage in Beijing. He spent his first several years there until he was adopted by a nonmember, single american women. He took the missionary discussions and was baptized at the age of 15 and now he's on his mission in Hong Kong. But yeah like I said that doesn't even touch on all the trials he faced after he came to the US. He's amazing. Every night he does 100 push ups, and since he doesn't have much arm below the elbow he uses the scriptures to fill the gap. Its an amazing sight.