MTC Life

MTC life is so great. I mean, it's hard. It's really quite hard, but I love every minute of it. It's so beautiful here, even with (and especially with) the rain. The pond right out back is visible from our room, and the countryside behind it just makes life so great. What makes life hard here is that we never stop working, except for meals. Every other moment is pretty much spent planning for our investigators. We've got two progressing investigators here, played by our teachers, who we'll be teaching the entire time we're in the MTC. The first, played by Sister Loynes, is Michelle. We had a really tough first lesson with her... She's from Greece, and hardly speaks any English. To add to that, she has no concept of religion whatsoever. We've realized that, in having to teach her, we have to plan to teach very little, because we have to go through in such simple detail to help her to understand simple things, like God. It's really quite a blessing, though, as it helps us to see just how simple the gospel truly is.

Our other investigator, Colin, is played by Brother Hotchkiss, and has some of his flatmates meeting with the missionaries. He's a lot easier to teach, as he is able to comprehend a lot more. I don't feel like we did all that well with our first lesson with him, but we've been able to correct a lot of mistakes that we made since.

One thing I've learned especially in the MTC is just how interestingly the spirit works. We watched a fireside on Sunday with Elder Bednar talking about how to tell when it's the Holy Ghost and when it's just us. His advice: "Don't worry about it". I've seen that we can really understand it pretty well as we do know what feels right. I've had to apply that every day here.

I don't think I've forgotten anything... But I did lose my shampoo. You know how I am. I'll get some more today when we run to the store.

Oh, by the by, my flatmates are so great. My companion, Elder Cullimore, I knew from up at school. He lived down the hall from me with my buddy Seth. But we didn't know each other very well before we were made companions. We've become really fast friends, and started working well together. My other flatmates, Elder Anderson and Elder Hammond, are super funny. Elder Anderson is from Riverton, UT, but played basketball for a college down in Florida before coming up here. Elder Hammond is from Nottingham and is quite hilarious. It's cool having a Brit in the room with us who can explain all the "British-isms" we don't understand.

Elder Cullimore (my companion), Elder Green (me), Elder Anderson, and Elder Hammond..."Flatmates"

Also, all the guys in my room are super athletic, so they're putting me to work getting buff.

The rest of our district is so great. We've got Elder Goodson, who I flew in with (and was actually introduced to by Sister (Tori) Thomas up at school), Elder Kopischke from Germany, Elder Weaver from Utah, Elder Tauman from Kiribati, and Sisters Brady (from Maryland) and Nenadovich (from Croatia).

As for 4th of July, I think we're going to try to celebrate it somehow, much to the chagrin of Elder Hammond. If nothing else, I'll wear my red white and blue tie as a subtle thing.

Love you, and I'll write again next week.

--Elder Green

P.S. So, what happened with the plane... Our flight from Dulles to Heathrow was delayed something like two hours, making it so we missed our connecting flight. The people from British Airways were very nice about it, though, and booked another flight for us in time that we would make that one. However, we had somewhere around twenty minutes to make it from the plane, through customs, and to the next plane. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen with two elders and a sister from the states. Fortunately, Sister Gregory was able to get ahead pretty quickly, inform them of the situation, and get us on another flight at noon. The airport gave us vouchers for £5 so that we could get some food while we waited for our flight. The hard part was finding a payphone to call the MTC... We couldn't make international calls from it, and so we had to keep trying again, and again... But, we made it. We met up with another elder from Dublin (Elder Darcy), who was a super nice guy, and then we took off for the MTC.