Middle Week

Guten Tag meine Familie and Fruenden!

How is everyone doing? I am doing great here at the MTC. We are almost at half way here at the MTC. It’s crazy how fast time flies. Things have been going well here. I learn more everyday, and Elder Sanderson and I get better at teaching in German everyday. By the time we leave I might be able to avoid saying anything too embarrassing. First thing first though. Today is a BEAUTIFUL DAY!!! None of you should even be checking your email right now. Go outside and get some rays from that gorgeous sun! The sky is so beautiful! Seriously. Everyone who is reading this, stop, go outside and do something outside right now! Especially my friends down there at BYU, you know who you are. Get outside and enjoy it!!!

Well back to life here at the MTC, things have been going well. My companion and I tried to have our first NUR DEUTSCH TAG (only German day) last Friday. We definitely failed at speaking only German, but it was good to try, and it really pushed our limits. Hopefully we will have more of those. Saturday we had our zone activity that we do every week, where we practice street contacting. This was the first one for our new elders, but I think it was a good experience for them. It was crazy to see how far we have come in just 4 weeks. I can't even believe we were ever like that.

Sunday was Fast Sunday, and mission conference. Needless to say I was praying all day that I wouldn't fall asleep. Sleep has probably been the biggest problem for me. Because we are zone leaders my companion and I go around and talk to all of the missionaries in our zone, this doesn't leave much time for us to get ready for bed, and then we also have to make sure everyone else is in bed, and we have to turn the lights off, etc. It just makes bed time really rushed. And we have had some issues with the elders on the floor right above us. They seem to make a lot of noise late at night, long after quiet time, and it makes it hard for us to sleep. My companion and I went up to talk to them last Friday night, and they said they would be quiet, but we ended up going up their again on Saturday night. I don't know what they were doing, but it was loud and we couldn't sleep. We try our best to be nice and ask them nicely, but my companion gets grumpy if he doesn't get his sleep, and he isn't the kind of guy you want to make upset. I think we solved the problem though because they haven't been as loud the past few nights. Anyways back to Sunday, mission conference was cool. The mission presidency talked to us, and it was neat to get to hear from them. After that we had a testimony meeting in sacrament, and I bore my testimony in German. It’s pretty cool how easy it comes now, sometimes I don't even feel like I'm speaking German, I feel like I'm just talking. That only works when I bear my testimony though, the rest of the time German is a struggle. The fireside Sunday night was SWEET. Pres. Daines, the president of the Provo Temple came, and he told us some sweet stories and stuff about the temple, and showed us some cool scriptures proving they had the temple ordinances in the New and Old Testament. Then we watched “The Testaments”. Overall it was a pretty great day, definitely a spiritual recharger. 

 Good news! The TRC, which is where we go once a week to practice teaching in German, has been completely changed, at least for us. They used to have volunteers come, and they would pretend to be investigators and we would teach them. But some of these volunteers were not very good actors. To tell the truth, some of them were down right terrible. There was this really old man who would come every week, bless his heart, but he was the worst investigator. You would start teaching him a lesson and all of the sudden he would just ask you a random question, about the Trinity or baptism by immersion, and then ask you where to find the answer in the bible. Then he wouldn't even wait for us to answer, he would "help us out" and tell us where to find the answer. So it was pretty much him just having a conversation with himself. I think I normally got in 10 words in like a 20 minute lesson. Hahaha one time he asked us where the golden plates were right now, and my companion pointed to his scriptures with the gold pages and said "they are right there" it was pretty funny. Well I'm enjoying my time and I love the MTC. Thanks for the support and I love you all

Love

Elder Terry