Snail mail week 3

16 July 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

     By the time you get this we will have already talked on Tuesday.  The MTC has been a great experience!

     Last night  Jenny Oaks Baker came to the MTC and gave a 1 hour concert for our evening devotional.  She played Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms (not really sure of the name—mom will know it though)(susan--that’s the name and it’s my favorite JOB song!!) and a lot of really pretty hymns.  I can honestly say I enjoyed it more than 99% of the people in the MTC.  It was so good.

     We had our final interviews, meetings, sacrament meeting and district meeting for our branch today. I’ve enjoyed our Branch, we have a great branch presidency and wives. As you are all aware, my companion Elder Bresee, went home Thursday morning.  It was a sad/stressful experience, but he’s where he needs to be right now.  I’m glad that I had those two weeks to get to know him and learn from him.

     One thing I forgot to mention in an earlier letter:  those preparing to go on missions, watch the District Episodes on the church missionary website.  I didn’t do that, and its my biggest regret.  The teaching that the elders and sisters do in those episodes is exactly how they train us to teach here.

     Lessons are nearly over and I’m just so grateful for the teachers here.  The sister teachers are amazing!  I haven’t gone into a lot of detail about my district.  Elders Forbes, Hullinger, Hunt, and I are headed to Birmingham and the other five are headed to Jacksonville Florida. Dad, Elder Forbes’ father served in Boise I think the same time you did.  He asked his father if he knew a Madsen, and he said he knew a  Jeff Madsen from Pleasant Grove.  Would that have been you?  Also, Elder Forbes’ mom grew up in Price.  Maiden name Targerson(sp?).

     I’m in a threesome with Elder Hunt and Elder Hullinger, which has been good. There are some obvious disadvantages to 3 people in 1 companionship, but we are doing really well, and gave some great TRC lessons the last few days.  The three of us are really close with Elder Nielson and Elder Derr, so we sometimes call ourselves the “fivesome”.

     The food is so good. Granted, it is cafeteria food, but there are always so many options. There are usually 3 different entrees, plus a salad entrée, a wrap line and soup at lunch and dinner. For breakfast they have cereal, cream of wheat, oatmeal and two breakfast entrees, and on Wednesdays and Sundays they have an ice cream bar. Some elders like to complain about it, but they’re gonna miss it in a few days.

     Friday was In-Field orientation, where they gave us a series of seminars and breakout activities on things we don’t learn in classes, which is basically everything besides teaching lessons. It was the most informative part of the MTC. Future missionaries need to remember to take lots of notes on it, because there is so much information in such a little time.

     We had a departure devotional with the Mission Presidency before the Jenny Oaks Baker concert last night, where we got a lot of good advice from them and their wives. Evidently the 2 biggest reasons missionaries go home is 1) they don’t stay with their companions and 2) they get involved with the opposite gender.

     Besides six hours of class and TRC’s, we also get teaching opportunities in zone teaching, which takes the place of Language Study for English speaking missionaries. The English districts in our zone and zone 29 (we are 30). Zones and branches are the same thing in the MTC, and our stakes are called districts, so its confusing because we have 2 different types of districts. Our other english speaking branch that I talked about left last week, so we are the only English speaking district in our branch. It’s funny because I’m the only English Speaker in leadership meetings. English districts measure time in the MTC in days, but the 12 week districts say they measure time in English districts.  I feel bad for them sometimes, they get so restless.  We haven’t gotten any new districts, the branch is really small but they are getting two additional English districts on Wednesday.

Love Elder Madsen