MTC Week 4 Email

 

Our District with our teacher (he is wearing the sunglasses)

 

Family and Friends,

Saturdays are definitely one of the better days of the week!  We start off with a service project at 6:15, which today involved cleaning toilets, such fun!  Then we head off to the temple, which is always a good experience.  And then of course the whole emailing family and friends is pretty nice too!  The week went well, not too eventful, but it passed by quite quickly!  Sunday the director of 17 Miracles gave the devotional, which was nice to see some of the inside scoop on the movie and stories that didn't make it into the movie.  On Tuesday we had the opportunity to hear Elder Ellis speak, the former Stake President in northern Houston.  His 8 children all gave testimonies, as well as his wife, and his youngest daughter that is on a mission right now wrote a small testimony for us that he read as well.  It was a neat experience to hear different perspectives on missions, one that stuck out was that the mission is like a Bullet Train, it moves really quickly, and if you get off early you never get to your final destination and enjoy the experience.  The train moves with or without you, so might as well be on it and enjoy the ride.  This week we also gained a new investigator, by the name of Vanessa.  She was an atheist on Monday.  Now she's not.  It was a very good week as far as progressing Spanish, I was able to tell a story from what I thought was a very basic vocabulary, and by the end the investigator was in tears, so I have no doubt that the Holy Ghost and the Gift of Tongues were present in abundance.  

 

Pioneer Day we actually didn't do anything to celebrate, although we did here fireworks all night long. Yesterday was one of the Elders in our district's birthday, he got 7 packages!!  We had a cake and sang and although he said it wasn't the same as being with family, it was definitely a good day.  

Answers for the Fam:

I do not get much of a chance to play piano, they keep us pretty busy with the language and gospel learning. I've worn all my ties about the same amount, but probably the orange one from the cruise has been worn the most.  Speaking of ties, you can go ahead and just send all of them up, or at least a couple more in differing colors.  I have not seen a library.  We can eat wherever we want, and on P-days we can even go up to main campus and eat up there if we want, but I prefer the food here.  I have had the fry sauce at Burger Supreme, it is quite good, but I think it is their fries that makes the sauce so good, not the other way around.  My favorite class is with Hermano Avila, he's 22 and just got off his mission a year and a half ago, served in Miami.  My favorite thing about the MTC, that is a hard one.  I would have to say the people, friendships always make everything better and easier to deal with.  I have memorized a couple of scriptures in Spanish, my favorite and the most prominent of which being the First Vision.  

I'm glad Hayley had a great week at camp, her YCL emailed me and told me just how much she loved having Hayley and how much fun she was!  Hope everybody is doing well.

Love you all,

Elder Michael Mangum

 

 

 

 

 

**  Pictures aren't exactly my strong suit.  This was a neat one though.