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Be Still my Soul

Dear Readers,

The first week of being in the MTC has been wonderful. However, one of our teachers very accurately described it as 'drinking from a firehose on full blast.' Lots has happened this week and hopefully I'll be able to remember it all and most in order. We've been very busy and I can't remember many details.

After walking into the MTC, I shortly met up with my new Companion, Elder Palmer. He's from Blanding, Utah and loves being a rancher. All of his stories are exciting tales about roping steer and shooting prarie dogs. He's the oldest of 6 kids in his family. After meeting him, we met the rest of our district in our classroom that supposedly we will be spending almost all of the next 9 weeks in. Of the ten Elders in our district, 8 of us are going to Chile, Concepcion South. Elder Brown and Elder Francis, the other two, are heading off to the MTC in Guatemala in 3 weeks. We have bonded so well already. We continued in our classroom with Hermano(Brother) Severinsen, who coincidentally is Karen Severinsen's cousin. Small world, eh? Our other teacher is Hermano Hernandez, a Native Mexican who is learning English here at BYU.

We have an awesome Branch President, President Studdert. He seems to know everyone. When our district introduced ourselves to him, he knew exactly who the stake president was for each of our hometowns. He has worked with Several Presidents and often shares time with the Quorom of the twelve apostles. He is an inspiring individual.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday were filled with class time and lots of MDT (Missionary Directed Time) for our studies. The Acronyms are hard to keep up with, especially when they come in Spanish a lot of the time. Our District (Elders Allen, Corliss, Beatty, Ahart, Lundgren, Owens, Brown, Francis, Palmer and Myself) seems to be catching onto the Spanish Language pretty fast. We have a goal this week to bare our testimony in spanish to someone before every meal. Elder Lundgren is our district leader and has been a great example to us.

Sunday is just like any other day in the MTC, other than the Priesthood and Sacrament meetings(And Ice Cream!), so there's nothing very different from the first couple of days. Today, Monday, is our Preparation day, during which we visit the temple in the morning. It was very powerful this morning when all of us missionaries were standing together in one room. The Power of the Priesthood was not only tangible, but overwhelming. It was amazing.

There's not a whole lot of time to spend on the computer, so I'll write more in letters. Buenas Suerte con sus vidas! Veo en dos anos!

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