Chips and Salsa are always accepted

     Hey Thanks for the packages! The bread was a big hit in my district! ..With that jam, it lasted about five minutes when I offered it to the District! Everyone said thanks! (But I never got one from Jeannie.  Hopefully it gets here eventually.)   I did get the Sparkling cider.  We had a fun chips and salsa night with the contents of that package as well as some stuff that everyone else had.  It was really more of a cookies and sweets night than a chips and salsa night, but that's okay.  Chips and salsa sounds slightly more healthy so we go with that. 

     Those pictures I sent are of other people in my district. I can try and tell you what each one is if you like

 

       First, the picture of the shorter kid with black hair in front of a whiteboard is E. Jones teaching E. Swensen how to say "individual" in Spanish.  He couldn't for the life of him say it. we've been making fun of him for a couple of weeks about it.

 

     The picture of the redhead with a package is E Wheeler.  He was getting mad the first week because everyone but him got a package... then, the second week too. Finally,  the third week he finally got one.  It was quite the occasion.

 

     Any random pictures of me with other people was me finding old friends here.

 

     The picture of me with my feet up on a desk with a few people in it was the view from my desk...

 

     The picture of the two desks was A) my group's table (suprisingly the organized one) and B) the other half of my districts table, the unorganized one.

 

     I don't remember what else I took pictures of but the MTC isn't that exciting. I think I was just playing with the camera and the view from here looks supprisingly like the view from home. Go figure right?  I really appreciate all the stuff! Could you send an ugly tie? Also more food?  Bread is always most appreciated, but I know that's harder to make.  Home made salsa would be good! How long will it stay fresh without refrigeration?  If possible, that with some dipping chips would be great! Or just whatever. You know I'm not too picky about such things :)  

     If you would, wish Aaron the Best of Luck for me.  I don't get much time in the day to write letters so let him know the MTC is fun! However, if he ever uses the Vosotros or Tu form of a word, people will pop out of the woodworks and rebuke him.  Also, that greenies are the funniest people to mess with.  Wednesday provides me with more entertainment than I can even put into words.  By the way, could you look up a quote (or phrase?) It's called the Fellowship of the Unashamed by Henry B Eyring.  I've got one here but its a rough copy I made in my journal.  Could you see if you could find a hard copy and send it to me? I would appreciate it.  I'll send home my camera card someday with all my pictures.  They want an arm and a leg to print pictures here and the machine is pretty bad.  I only wanted 1 copy of most of those photos I sent home, but it gave me 2-4 of each.  A little annoying but... whatever.  I'm not going to use it again.  Well, I love you all.  Tell the family I love them.  Wish Aaron my best and let him know that the way things are going I'll see him in a couple weeks.  No word on my visa yet, but the MTC likes to get my hopes up.  I got a room checkout list the other day.  I would think that would imply that they had my visa but... I went and asked them and they still haven't received any word yet.

 

Well I Love you all.  I miss you.  I'll write again next week sometime. 

What Happened?? No Visa

Things are going better.  Tuesday was a rough day for me, but all is more or less well now.  I had never even considered the thought that I might have visa problems.  As far a goodies go, this is a different request, but could you send some home made bread and some of your good honey butter in a squeeze bottle?  Thanks for all the stuff you have sent me so far.  And thanks for the lemon bars! They certainly cheered me up!

All is well.  I see Devin almost everyday, but usually only in passing or at lunch.  He lives one floor above me so its easy to find him.  I'm finding all sorts of people I knew from USU up here as well as several people from high school.  We don't do too many pranks.  We saw our teacher coming into the building one day so we turned off all the lights and put our heads in our scriptures for when he came in, but that's about it.  Nothing too entertaining.  We are getting a new teacher tonight for our night classes and we plan to do all sorts of things to mess with him.  We are only his second class that he has ever taught.   We plan to see what  fun we can have with that.  We also mess with the greenies every Monday.  Give them titles like "carne fresca!" and turn around our nametags and put on our dork dots and ask the poor kids where we go to get them engraved.  They never seem to know how to answer.  The only other thing we have done is to get a cup, one hard to grip with your mouth, then we fill it up with cranberry juice or something and we get the greenies to put their hands into fists and put their pointer fingers on the edge of the table. We then stick the cup on top of the fingers.  Now they are trapped and we are free to walk away.

Elder Blair is my comp now.  He actually is a lot like Joseph Mellville and its kinda trippy sometimes.  Then Elder Herpel in my district is like Aaron sometimes.  Thats really trippy, but Herpel is a lot quieter than Aaron is.  

Everything else is good.  I am still stuck here, but I'm sure it's for a reason.  I was told in IDENTICAL words from a great many people that the Lord has a plan and I stayed for a reason.  It could be coincidence, but for that many people to tell me the same thing word for word makes me suspicious that maybe the Lord is trying to tell me something.  SO I'm here.  I'll try my best to let you know before I ship out.  I'm sending home my suitcase with a bunch of random stuff in it.  The random papers you can throw away.  There will be a little notebook in it, some pictures, and all the mail I've received to date.  Could you store it in the green box in the storage room behind the door? It's all stuff I think I would like to have after my mission.  Thanks!

I love you all and I miss you.  Don't forget to send pictures of the car!!!!  Tell all the family thanks for their support and tell them I miss them.  I'll write home next week or earlier if I get my visa.  Love to everyone.

Still at the MTC

Thanks for all the packages! I have received them all! But... uh... my MTC address is 233 not 322,  so it took an extra day to get that last package.  I really appreciate everything! I have not yet sent off the suitcase, I keep adding stuff into it.  I figured its easier to stash stuff inside than to send a package.  And I'm sending back a gift for Mom and Dad.  I think you'll like it.  It will help with scripture study.  I love hearing from the family! It's always the highlight of my day to hear how things are going back home.  Oh and did you say you had all those addressesIi requested? Is there any chance I could get you to send those down to me?   In the suitcase there should be a box full of stuff that I would like you to keep for me.  I'll leave a note on it for you. 

Pictures? from a camera? Oh, is that the small electronic thing you sent me? I've been using it for a paper weight.  It works good!  No I'm just kidding.  I'm actually going to send home my 2 gig SD card for you. It has all the pictures and video I've taken here.  It will be in that suitcase and ;lease don't forget, care packages are always welcome! :)   

News! We had an apostle speak at our devotional on Tuesday. That was cool.  I've never seen anyone yell at 2800 missionaries and rebuke them and then have all of them come away feeling good about themselves.  It was kind of a cool experience.  Wel,l that's about it for this week.  We have two new teachers this week;  our last two got reassigned.  Then, we had a half dosen other teachers come and only spend about one class period with my district before we got a new ones.  I keep scaring them off, I guess.   We have been going through teacher abandonment issues.  No, not really, but that's what we tell the branch presidency.  That's about it for this week!

Tell everyone I love them!  I'm always thinking of them.  I hope you get the computer situation figured out.  Geez... I'm gone for a month and all the computers break down... well at least I know I'm missed... just playing.  (That sounded a lot funnier out loud before I put it into the letter. Oh well.)  Tell Matt to purge the router. If it got the virus (not sure how it would, but I think it's possible), no matter how many times the computers got wiped, they would just get it again when they connected.  Oh, and tell Matt the drivers for my system are in that white tote box under my desk... somewhere.  I love you. Wish everyone the best of luck with all that they do and I'm keeping you in my prayers.