First letter, Provo MTC

why hello there papa and mama! ok, so oh my goodness. you have no idea how much madness the MTC really is. for realz. ok, so the first day was kinda psycho. got all of our supplies, like name tags language books and all that good stuff. went and put our bags in our rooms and then went straight to class to meet our teachers, our district, and for just some general orientation. it was a long and busy day. Thursday was even more hectic, learning about how everything works and the flow of the MTC and such. started to take some classes and learned how to pray in Spanish! ahhh! i swear half my district has taken a few years of Spanish and i feel hopelessly lame when they are talking about all sorts of crazy things....but i am picking it up a lot faster than i ever thought i could. i can say a basic cookie cutter prayer without notes and can bear my testimony with my notes kinda ok.

but man, when any teacher or native starts to talk in Spanish, even stuff we have learned, it just goes WAY over my head! aye aye aye! but that will come! its unreal, we do something called speak your language or as we say HEI and pretty much once you learn somethings en espanol, you do your best to replace that in general conversation. so if i know how to say where is the bathroom then i just say donde esta bano. its hard but it works pretty well! helps me remember a lot of things which is good! so ya, onto Friday, by far the busiest day yet. hours and hours of class and a workshop about how to begin teaching, a large group meeting with all the newbies about study journals and our purpose and such. today is our P day and it had been so good.

learned a ton of Spanish this morning about verbs and how to put sentences together and form questions. learning a lot, but like i said, it is so hard here. much much harder than i could possibly have expected! oh, and from now on until i leave Provo my P day is on Friday, but for newbies we have crazy weird schedules until Sunday, Sunday on we go on the same schedule as the rest of our zone which will be so nice! much more MDT (missionary directed time, basically use your discretion with personal and companionship study and language study) and it will just be a much more refined and not such a broken up schedule. sorry if this is kinda jumbled we only have 30 min on the computer and I am just writing things as they come to me haha. OH! so fun story. i got my packet and such the first day and one of my papers with my address on it said that my estimated departure date was august 3rd....uhhh what?! half my district is going to Argentina and the rest are going to the DR with me doing the phased training. and all of the misionaros going to the DR said that they were leaving on the 24 of June, this month. so i was kinda freakin out about that. went to travel services and it was just sorta a mistake, i do indeed have a flight on the 24 with the others but she said the computers are kinda lame sometimes so even though it said the 3rd of august it really was June 24th. so that is good.

my companion (mi companero) is Elder Joseph Beutler, and he is awesome. he is super tall and skinny, and he is also a swimmer! he lived in st george and he is amazing at swimming. like, NEVER has lost the 200 or 500 free in high school. set state records for them both. mucho faster than Dane and Evan and such. crazy. he has a full ride to COLUMBIA in NY for swimming! aye. so ya. and the rest of the guys in my distrito are really super so that is good!

but ya i am glad to be here ( wouldn't go so far as to say 'enjoying' it here, but it is good experience and i am learning tons! cant wait to get to the DR! and TELL PEOPLE to write me! i have only gotten one letter, from dear elder, from Victoria. i want more!! hahaha. so, ya. cool beans. i will talk to you later! love you guys so much! ill send pics when i can, but probably not for awhile.

-Elder Brady MacArthur

ps. i now know why people gain so much weight here....so SO much food, lots and lots of sitting (although i go up like 983790234 flights of stairs a day O_o )