Music and Lyrics

Thanksgiving here was pretty great. We had a morning devotional with Elder Holland and his entire family, grand kids and all. A few missionaries bore their testimonies and Elder Holland's grand kids sang a song or two. He has one granddaughter who's 18, which made us think of a new rule. Here at the MTC, it should be illegal to bring daughters, granddaughters, sisters, etc between the ages of 18 and 24. ;) No, we don't mind much. Elder Holland talked about how we're a family here in the MTC and we shouldn't be homesick. Afterward, we watched a movie about a Protestant minister who was converted by 'a book with no name.' It was awesome. Some Italian guy was in it. After that we participated in a humanitarian project which produced over 30,000 school bags for children all over the world. We were pro at our part of the project, which was sketching and cutting out the fabric for the bags. We did a good 500 in just our zone. On Sunday, President Studdert pulled E...

The Biggest news of the week? Elder Palmer is now the District leader! Wahoo! We all switched up so the old senior companions are now junior and Elder Lundgren is no longer District Leader. We also have a new district of ten Elders in our zone, going to Mexico and Peru. Four of them leave in a couple of weeks for the MTC down there. Guess what else? I have seen four people I know this week. You all may have heard of Russell Parkin, I hosted him when he came in. I also saw Elle Brey, a girl I went to EFY with like 3 years ago. You probably have no idea who that is. Eddy Gubler is finally here(He was in my ward at BYU) and....MAT THOMPSON! I saw him in the cafeteria yesterday and I found out he just got here this week and he's off to Roseville, CA. Exciting, right? I assume Kody is back from Korea, right? Anyway, that was the most exciting part of the week right there. Our District has an awesome goal this week of trying to talk with 150 people in spanish. This means we walk around...

This week has been a riot. Just moments ago as we walked back from the temple, we saw the aftermath of a car accident at the intersection of ninth east and the MTC. An old lady got Tboned and the back end of her car is messed up. Of course it was the one day I didn't have my camera with me. She's ok, though. We got a new district this week with 6 sisters and 4 elders. One of the Elders, ironically, is named Elder Anderson and is from Cache Valley (Providence to be exact). One of the others lives just a couple blocks east of our house in Salt Lake and he went to Skyline. Elder Jones is his name. Elder Palmer and I are starting to teach about 4-5 new investigators this week and we meet with the first one tomorrow. We also had a second Lesson with Tomas who is really interested in the Plan of salvation. We haven't met with Caroline in a couple of weeks, but we're meeting with her soon. Our District is playing a very fun game to help us learn the language, called ...

Dale and I are still working out the logistics of the blog, so this week the blog is just a blurb. Enjoy! Ron L. This week we've been teaching like crazy and doing our best to learn espanol. Elder Palmer and I are still struggling, but our district is trying a game called "Loco Nativo" in which we have to guess who's the crazy native everyday. Elder Beatty came up with it. We've also had two apostles in a row come speak to us for devotionals every Tuesday. There was also one the night before we got here. That's NEVER happened before. We're spoiled. I'm calling it right now: Pres Monson this week.

Dear Readers, Thanks for everything you're sending! We missionaries love mail and run to get it after lunch and after dinner every day(Except Sunday, of course). Seeing as it's Preparation day, we went to the temple this morning. Elder Owens and I did initiatory while the rest of our district did sealings. It was Elder Palmer's first time, other than his cousin's wedding a couple of months ago. I would love to tell you more about Preparation Day, but I want to share my feelings on Sundays here at the MTC. First off, we love the Devotionals we have every Sunday. Last week Elder Richard G. Scott came and gave us an address and last night we had the Director of missionary services. Our district is in charge of taking down chairs after these events, so we get strong real fast. (2200 missionaries=2200 chairs. 1 chair=5 lbs. 2200 chairs...lots of lbs). The thing that excites us most about sunday in our branch, however, is "Battleship Speaking." Every week...