Week 1 - Provo West MTC

Dad summary: Week 1 is in the books! Clearly, this is harder on Blake's parents than on him. Here is a summary of his letters and emails this week. For those who want to contact him, using dearelder.com appears to be the best right now as long as he stays in the Provo West MTC. He said in his most recent letter that he may be transferred to the Mexico City MTC in two weeks. Any email sent through dearelder.com by noon Utah time, he will get that same evening. Use his unit number, 839, in the space where that is asked for. I know he would love to hear from you!

Week 1 - Provo West MTC

Hola Familia! My first two days have been amazing. Me and my companion, Elder McGraw, is awesome and we get along very well. Really, our entire district gets along very well. I have already witnessed the gift of tongues. A couple of Elders in our district were stressing about making a perfect lesson for our investigator. We have to teach una mujer named Alma and she doesn't speak English. They were looking up so many different words. I was prompted to share with them that we didn't need to do that. We would have no idea what what we were saying. I suggest that the four of us have a prayer and testimony meeting completely in spanish and it was a little difficult at first but it went very well. We also read the first vision in spanish and english. It helped a lot, and I can tell the four of us have started seaking a lot better since then.

Me and my companion have organized several group prayers and I think it helps a lot to pray as a district. Back to the spanish - I just think it is so important that we focus on the words we know, and studying the Gospel. I think that as we follow and learn about Christ, the faster we will speak spanish and be blessed. As we do that, in spanish, I thin kwe will catch on to teaching and the language a lot easier. Rather than trying to develop the perfect message, we need to focus on the Spirit and our Savior in spanish AND in English, and as we do, we will grow.

As I said, the MTC is great. A few of the other Elders are a little stressed but I am absolutely loving it.

There are these huge inflatable domes that have sports fields in them. I'll send pictures on P-day. We get an hour everyday to play basketball/life weights/run, but if you want to shower before class, you have to leave early.

Ayer fue muy dificil pero nosotros volvemos al apartamentos anoche y nosotros decimos much sobre familia. Nosotros tambien comemeos cinnamon rolls!

The MTC is pretty great. Dear Elders are awesome and I love getting them! 

 

Wednesday was an interesting day, being brand new. I missed orientation and literally just went straight to class without any material or anything. We were given orange dots on your name tags so they could see who was new, but we got to take them off that night. Thursday was day two of orientation, and that's when I realized the days were SO LONG. We work 16 hours a day, except on Tuesdays, we get up an extra hour early to do service at 6 am. 

Friday- I am super lucky I already knew a little bit about spanish because on Friday we had to teach our first spanish investigator who didn't know english. We taught her friday, saturday, monday, tuesday, and wednesday was our last day. We get a new investigator on monday. Friday I kinda fell into how things worked. The days ARE SUPER LONG, but the weeks go by fast. It made me SO happy to see all the new elders arrive yesterday because I didn't feel so new anymore. 

Sunday was great, we didn't have any real 'work' to do, but we were super busy with churchy activities all day. It was a nice difference from breakfast, class, lunch, teach investigator, class, dinner, class. Although a lot of the time class turns into personal study time. 

Today I'm super excited because it's our first PDAY. We are planning to go to the Main Campus book store because its bigger than the one here, and then we are going to go to the temple, which will be AWESOME. but then we have class again after dinner.

Our district gets along super well. Especially the elders who stay in our apartment. We were talking about girls and stuff past bedtime last night. I think thats two rules broken XD. Don't tell anyone.

We got called to the main campus travel office but we didn't realize and we went to the West Campus travel office and they didn't really know any info... All the Panama people had to show their passports to make sure they were correct and legal. The hermanas found out from Emily that IF our FBI background checks clear in the next 2 weeks we WILL get transferred to the Mexico MTC. So fingers crossed. Don't get me wrong, I love my district, they're awesome, I love the food, I just feel like it would be a much neater experience to be able to go to Mexico. I haven't used all my emailing time so I'm hoping that Ill be able to find some time to come and post a few pictures on here because I forgot my camera cord.

We had an awesome devotional about loving the people we teach.  And how important it is listening to the hymns. Watching the sign language missionaries try to sing in sign language, I realized what I really am. I am a missionary. I never really thought about it. I am the person who everybody is praying for when they pray for the missionaries. It is a super humbling feeling.

Until next Thursday, 

Elder Bradburn