The first week of the MTC is over. My companion is Elder Grange. He is from the Logan Utah area. He is going to be serving in the Renosa Mexico mission. The other two elders in our room are Elder Umpiereze and Elder Berryhill. They are both called the the Monterrey West mission with me. Elder Umpiereze is quite a character and keeps us laughing during personal time before bed. We are on the west campus since we are going to Spanish speaking missions. So this whole campus speaks Spanish and gives us a chance to immerse ourselves in the language more. The cafeteria may not be as good as the main campus but that is the only thing the other campus has on us.
The first day was interesting. We arrived at main campus and walk through getting all the stuff we would need to start learning the language. Then we all hopped onto a bus and we shipped over to the west campus. After we dropped our suitcases off in our rooms we went to our classroom. Our teacher only speaks Spanish to us as to help us learn the language. The first day was a bit confusing since I wasn't completely sure of everything he was saying. But it wasn't a bad first day. We also got to meet our zone leaders; Elder Kirk and Elder Ferrin. They are fun zone leaders and we had a get to know you session with our district and the other district in our zone. The first day seemed a little long but now it seems like it happened so long ago. The rest of our district is Elder Wening, Elder Voss, Elder Ruddy, Elder Bradshaw, Elder Stirling, Elder Lavrey, Hermana Leonard and Hermana Tune
Day two we jumped onto the daily schedule and started with class with Hermono Raspenson. This is when our teacher learned that we were going to be teaching a lesson to our first "investigator" on Friday in Spanish. It was a bit surprising to find out that we would be teaching on only our second full day at the MTC. We had our study cycle that day to somewhat prepare what we would be teaching our investigator; Fatima. Thursday wasn't that bad. We have a daily gym time so that we can get a work out and do something rather than sit in classrooms all day. We have been more recently playing volleyball with our zone leaders.
Day three we had class in the morning and then our lesson with Fatima at 4:20. We had some more time to prepare after lunch and it really helped when we got into the lesson. I think the lesson went well but it was defiantly not the best of lessons. Its hard to teach a lesson when there is a bit of a language barrier and your not really used to speaking in the language. We were still able to teach about gods love and about the book of Mormon. Friday we were also able to meet our branch presidency. One of the presidency members served in the Dallas Texas mission and knew where Melissa was. The branch presidency held inter views and told us who our district leader was; ours is Elder Voss. He will be our district leader for our first three weeks here and then we will get a new district leader. And once our zone leaders leave this upcoming Monday we will also be getting new zone leaders.
Saturday we had another lesson with Fatima. This lesson went a whole lot better and I felt that we were able to understand her a whole lot better. We had class and basically just a usual day. Nothing special really happened.
Sunday was great. We had our district meeting in the morning and the presidency finished up getting to know us individually. Then we had our priesthood meeting followed by sacrament. I found out that Sister Jenson from our stake in Allen is in our zone. Our sacrament meeting was nice and in sacrament they randomly call up people to give on spot talks just that they have to be in Spanish. The ones that got called had been here for a bit longer than us. After sacrament and lunch we had time to take a Sunday walk and study. Being able to just walk around the campus was nice. After we had dinner we went to the Sunday night devotional. The speaker on Sunday was Richard I. Heaton. He spoke on discovering christ and the role god plays in our lives.He shared a great mormon message with us called "The Hope of God's Light". I invite you to watch it if you haven't and think of when the young man in the video discovers god for the first time. I also invite you to share the same challenge with the Priests quorum. Brother Heaton's talk was great and really brought the spirit.
Monday we had another lesson with Fatima and we focused on 3 Nephi chapter 11. We had invited her to read it on Saturday and decided to discuss it with her. Think this lesson went well and we got closer to her really accepting the gospel. We then had some more Spanish time and another study cycle later that day. Tuesday was pretty similar in the fact that we had another lesson and studied more. Yesterday we also went to the Tuesday Night devotional and got to hear Elder Evans of the seventy speak on repentance. It was another great devotional with lots to learn from.
Well today is our first p-day. We were able to go to the Provo temple this morning and attend an endowment session. It was a good time and we were also able to spend time on main campus. I hope you guys are doing well
-Elder Boren
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