Hey!
Well another week has gone by here at the MTC and I am
loving it. I have had such a good week! Last week on Tuesday night all the
missionaries walked over to the Marriott Center at BYU and attended the MTC Fireside.
Elder Hinckley came and spoke to us and it got me so excited to go out and
teach people because he had so many cool stories and experiences that he shared
with us. I was also able to sing in the MTC Choir which is huge and it was a
really cool experience. I think there are about 1,000 missionaries in the choir
so it's fun to be part of such a big group singing, even if I have no idea what
the director is talking about when he gets all detailed about the notes and
stuff haha.
Tuesday is our P-day which means we have the day to prepare for the next week. We still get up and eat breakfast at 6:30 but then we get to walk up to the Provo Temple and we do personal study outside on the Temple grounds for an hour. It's awesome being up there especially because the MTC is so crowded but up there it is so quiet and not busy at all. Then we walk back to the MTC and have until 4 o'clock to write letters, email, and do laundry. After dinner tonight we will go to the Marriott Center again for choir practice, and our entire district decided to do it together. Then we will have someone come speak to us, they don't tell us who, it's a surprise every week but I'm sure whoever it is will be great. It will probably be focused on the Pioneers in the early days of the Church because tomorrow is Pioneer Day and in Utah that's a BIG deal. It will be fun!
Tuesday is our P-day which means we have the day to prepare for the next week. We still get up and eat breakfast at 6:30 but then we get to walk up to the Provo Temple and we do personal study outside on the Temple grounds for an hour. It's awesome being up there especially because the MTC is so crowded but up there it is so quiet and not busy at all. Then we walk back to the MTC and have until 4 o'clock to write letters, email, and do laundry. After dinner tonight we will go to the Marriott Center again for choir practice, and our entire district decided to do it together. Then we will have someone come speak to us, they don't tell us who, it's a surprise every week but I'm sure whoever it is will be great. It will probably be focused on the Pioneers in the early days of the Church because tomorrow is Pioneer Day and in Utah that's a BIG deal. It will be fun!
Sundays are good here also. We have our regular church
meetings spread out throughout the day. Like Sacrament Meeting, Sunday School
(which we just have with the 13 people in our district), and Priesthood meeting
are all spread out. We are in the classroom studying and watching the Mormon
Messages videos if we're not in one of those meetings. Then on Sunday night we
have a devotional here at the MTC where someone comes and speaks to us and
that's always really good. And then they show different talks and films for
missionaries throughout the whole campus. Last week I watched a talk by Sheri
Dew that she gave at the MTC a little while ago which was really good, but this
week we (as a district) decided to go watch the talk by David A. Bednar that he
gave at the MTC awhile ago. It was all about The Character of Christ and how we
can become more like Him. He went through a lot of the stories in the New
Testament and explained how the natural man's reaction in all of us would
be to turn inward in selfishness, but how Christ always turned outward in love
and service. He said a lot more of course but that was the essence of it. It
was very powerful and he challenged us all to become more familiar with the
true character of Christ and how we can strive to become more like Him. It was
great!
This week has been good during the regular days, too. I am
now used to the schedule and really enjoying it here! It's funny, there was one
day where we as a room decided to get up at 6AM instead of 5:45AM because we
had gym first thing in the morning and didn't need to shower. But guess who
just instinctively woke up at like exactly 5:45AM with no alarm? Yeah, I did.
It was weird. But then I quickly fell back asleep for 15 minutes until all our
alarms went off. I am still so exhausted every day so it was weird to me that
my body decided to wake up then.
Anyways, my District is the BEST! We have so much fun together. Sometimes we need to maybe focus on studying Portuguese a little more than we do (which is sometimes my fault), but hey we need to have fun, too! Every once in awhile when we are all in our classroom silently studying, I come up with a game and within 10 seconds no one is paying attention to what they were studying and we're all laughing and having fun. Some games we've played this week are who can be the first person to throw the dry erase marker from the back wall of the classroom to the very front and have it stay on the little ledge right under the white board. It's a game I often played in high school and dang did we have a lot of fun doing it. It's harder than you'd think. You have to have just the right amount of power, trajectory, and spin on the marker. Elder Barnes from Kansas won that game. Another game was who can catch the most watermelon sourpatch in their mouth at a time. Like rapid tosses. I was in charge of tossing and our current record in 8, set by Elder Phillips from South Carolina. It was awesome! Then later throughout everyone studying I would toss a few of the candies out for people to catch in their mouths. Everyone is pretty good at it actually. Except for a couple of the Sisters haha. But everyone tried. We also sometimes try to incorporate learning Portuguese into our games, which I don't think is quite as fun but still pretty good haha. We did this one game with memorizing the colors and it got pretty competitive. I was in the Final with Elder Colvin (18 year-old from Washington). Unfortunately I lost but something that was interesting about that game is when one of the sisters got kicked out of the game (Sister Trussel, who was actually one of my friends from BYU last year), I started smack talking just a little. She then chucked her Portuguese/English translation book at me, it was all in good fun and boy was it hilarious to the entire district!
Anyways, my District is the BEST! We have so much fun together. Sometimes we need to maybe focus on studying Portuguese a little more than we do (which is sometimes my fault), but hey we need to have fun, too! Every once in awhile when we are all in our classroom silently studying, I come up with a game and within 10 seconds no one is paying attention to what they were studying and we're all laughing and having fun. Some games we've played this week are who can be the first person to throw the dry erase marker from the back wall of the classroom to the very front and have it stay on the little ledge right under the white board. It's a game I often played in high school and dang did we have a lot of fun doing it. It's harder than you'd think. You have to have just the right amount of power, trajectory, and spin on the marker. Elder Barnes from Kansas won that game. Another game was who can catch the most watermelon sourpatch in their mouth at a time. Like rapid tosses. I was in charge of tossing and our current record in 8, set by Elder Phillips from South Carolina. It was awesome! Then later throughout everyone studying I would toss a few of the candies out for people to catch in their mouths. Everyone is pretty good at it actually. Except for a couple of the Sisters haha. But everyone tried. We also sometimes try to incorporate learning Portuguese into our games, which I don't think is quite as fun but still pretty good haha. We did this one game with memorizing the colors and it got pretty competitive. I was in the Final with Elder Colvin (18 year-old from Washington). Unfortunately I lost but something that was interesting about that game is when one of the sisters got kicked out of the game (Sister Trussel, who was actually one of my friends from BYU last year), I started smack talking just a little. She then chucked her Portuguese/English translation book at me, it was all in good fun and boy was it hilarious to the entire district!
Meanwhile, my Portuguese is continuing to improve and even
though it is obviously frustrating at times I continue to feel good about it
and not get discouraged. Especially when I feel like some Elders and Sisters in
my District are pretty much fluent now. I mean I know they're not but it seems
like they know so much more than I do! It's all good though, my teacher just
keeps on stressing that we all learn at different paces. I'm working hard though
and learning a lot every day. It's funny, the person that we would teach
in Portuguese the first week (acting as an investigator) actually ended up
being our second teacher so that was fun. His name is Brother Hickman and we
all really like him.
Anyways, it's been great here this week. It was fun to see
both Elder Latu and Sister Healy from back home arrive here this week.
Elder Latu's classroom is like 3 doors down from mine so that's awesome and
Sister Healy is in my Zone so I see them both a lot which has been good.
I hope everything is going well with everyone and thank you
for the continued support through prayers and love.
Until next week!
Love,
Elder Helvey
.JPG)
Studying!
At the Provo Temple with the District Elders
.JPG)
With Elder Latu (from the Los Altos Ward)
With MTC companion, Elder Shelton
Studying!
Name Badge - it's in Portuguese!
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