MTC

i have been having an extremely hard week. my Spanish has kinda plateaued over the last week or 2 and i feel like i cant learn more, its just not going anywhere, plus the fact that me and my comp are clashing more and more, and that we leave the CCM for the field THIS Tuesday at the crack of dawn....im just freaking out. its been a really hard week. and to top it off, im getting a cold. ya. a freaking COLD in the tropics. i cant breath my throat hurts like mad and my asthma is wiggin out on me. not good. also the fact that if i wasn't able to write now, my next p day is a week from this Monday. so....that's a long time. so sorry about that.

so first things first, with physical mail if you so desire to send some, if you want to, send mail to

Elder Brady Richard MacArthur

Dominican Republic Santo Domingo West Mission

POB 30150

SLC, UT, 84130

USA

and packages to

Elder Brady Richard MacArthur

Dominican Republic Santo Domingo West Mission

C/ Hatuey #73

Urb. Los Cacicazgos

Santo Domingo

Dominican Republic

Phone 1-809-482-7545

in my call packet it said that if you send a package to the mission home with a private courier then you will need the phone number for some reason. so there it is!

ok, now an assignment. read in preach my gospel, page 214, the bottom letter. it really shows that the members are honestly more important than the missionaries! so talk to Rob Koliker and get involved with the ward missionaries and the real missionaries!! read it!!!

so be excited for when i get home and we go to bear lake!! on of my best friends EVER is now here in the mtc with me, his name is Elder Cromwell. his cabin is like....a mile away from us. its just north or just south of the KOA in garden city. his cabin is right on the beach, and they have CRAZY (master cratft boats, snowmobiles, jet skis, etc :) ) toys. so. we are going to play with them alot! hahah both of us are super stoked to go up together!!! its crazy how much we are alike and how well we get along. sadly, he lives in Idaho falls, but we will see see each other once a month or so. we have made a plan :) haha

but like i said, this has been a hard week. they teachers have been on our case like crazy about Spanish and its making me crazy. we have learned all but one of the grammar principals, but actually using them at the right time correctly (that is, if you even remember to use it and not try and directly translate) is nigh impossible right now....and the fact i know pretty much no vocab and cannot understand any natives at all. sigh. that but not feeling super good and a bunch of other little things have just pushed me over the edge this week. i cant WAIT to get out into the field. because right now i don't feel like im a missionary. i feel like im just in school where i have to be glued to another kid and wear a tie...so i cant wait. then, even if i get over the edge, ill still feel like its for a good reason. its not about me. at all. but here in the MTC when you are not in the field around the people, its alot harder to forget yourself and gain a pure charity of the people all around you that you are here to serve. im STOKED but so so so SO utterly terrified. this time next week i will have been in the field for a few days! crazy!

its beeeen crrrazy stormy lookin today! i wish i could show you how crazy the storms are! well, im outta time! but i love you and write a few times this week because i honestly have no idea when the next time i can write will be!! love you!

-Elder MacArthur

PS....want your mind blown?! look into Facsimile #2 in Abraham, the circle one. that little picture contains EVERY SINGLE THING about the church. mind blowing. things we don't even know yet. ahhhhhhh!!!

¡HOLA!

how are you all? aye aye aye i feel like i wrote you guys yesterday. once again, its blowing my mind how fast time is moving here! AH! man alive. i cant believe it. i think we leave here on August 3rd and it is crazy! we have like...no time left here in the CCM! ah!

ok, so once again nothing too exciting this week! all the natives from the DR and Latin America came last Thursday, and wow. i really cant understand any of them! aye aye aye. but wanna hear something hilarious!? we have a ginger Latin! that's right. a Latin, who is white and red hair, speaks pretty much zero English. suuuper trippy! but i try and talk to them but man alive its so hard!

it has been raining like MAD the last few days here! a few times it really baffled me that it was possible for it to rain that hard! it was crazy! and while its raining super hard, its still a million degrees outside, so its super humid. and to add to that, half the week our air conditioning was out!! so we were stuck in a crazy humid building for hours and hours and it was miserable! at least outside its fresh air, not humid gross stale air! ah! it was so humid inside that the floors were slick and the windows and mirrors were fogged or dripping! so so so hot!

So the last few times we have taught i can tell my Spanish is getting better. its still super not good but definitely improving. i still just have no clue what in the crap they are saying back to me haha. i am freaking out though. i am not ready to go out into the field!! but me and another elder in my district like to talk alot! and now we are trying to tell our stories in Spanish so that we dont feel like we are wasting time and its super hard, but its helping me alot! i know it will come but its so hard! but im pretty sure i ALMOST know as much as Brigham now :) hahaha.

anywho, im doing good! i have been working hard trying to make my companionship work out better, and studying better and learning more words! my biggerst problem with spanish now is i kinda know the grammer now, and can use it a little, but i just do NOT know any words! just straight memorizing vocabulary is brutal! so so hard! but i am staying positive and know that all things will come in time as long as i am trying my hardest! i have a goal to be fluent by christmas so i can talk to you in spanish!! hahaha. good fun!

but ya life is psycho but boring here!! hahah just lots of class and espanol! ill try and write an actual letter today, since im out of time on the computer! bye bye!

-Elder MacArthur

still in the MTC!

HI!

Man, its UNREAL how fast time is moving here. it seems like i wrote you all just like a day or 2 ago. aye aye aye time is moving way to fast yet my spanish isnt much farther than it was last week! o_O. Its still hot, dont even worry about that. that definitely has not changed!

So my week was nothing really special. just ALOT of class and study and Spanish! but when we went to the university on Monday, wow! we only talked to 2 people in and hour and a half! we were walked and saw a guy sitting alone and we went and talked to him. he was interested,but not really all that stoked about it. gave him a folleto and he said he would read it. the entire time though there was another guy listening behind, and once we left he came and talked to us. he has lived here for 8 months and is studying at the university, is originally from Spain! so he definitely talked with a lisp haha but i could kinda understand him. his name was David, was 17, fluent in Spanish, french, and nearly English. but we talked to him about the restoration and Joseph Smith for the rest of the time! he had already been reading the book of Mormon but he had alot of questions that we tried to answer. it was awesome! he is SUPER golden, but he could not understand alot of what we said, and we had no idea how to say in Spanish, so we told him to call the missionaries and they knew good Spanish and could answer all his questions in his native Spanish. we also gave him directions to the institute on campus. he really REALLY wants to learn more and to go to church! it was an awesome experience!

today and last night we had the Latins arrive! so they all speak Spanish and are all intermixed with all of us so we will have to speak ALOT more Spanish, and will make it harder to go back to English when we are all together since the Latins wont understand! its going to be so hard but will help alot!

OH! on tuesday we all got to get on a bus and head to the store! it was by far the most exciting thing we have done here! haha its kinda like a super walmart, but crazy and kinda organized weird. but i got some crazy good soda and oreos! mmm! and apparently there is pretty much only one store in all of the DR that has MTN DEW, dr pepper, or root beer! PANDA TRISTE!! not good.

other than time passing by super fast, nothing really is new! it rains alot (which just makes it MORE miserable hot haha, but the storms are awesome!) and thats about it! If i think of anything else new and exciting ill write you tonight, if not, bye bye for now!

-Elder MacArthur

Naranja!

¡Hola! Ok, so i realize that my letter last week was horribly jumbled and i forgot things and it just probably made no sense. So, i made a list of things to tell you so this letter should be much better! so first off, i forgot dad wanted me to send a travel log....so, on Thursday 2 weeks ago we left Provo at like 330 am, left slc at 6 am to Dallas, left Dallas at 1045 to Miami, left Miami to santo Domingo at 515, landed at around 8. and man alive it was the longest day ever! but luckily i had a window seat every leg of the flight! the flight to the DR was amazing, the Bahamas were outside my window the entire flight! SO beautiful! i took some awesome pictures to make you jealous with...but alas, the president of the CCM wont let us bring our cameras in the lab to back up photos on drives or email them until right before you leave, and i don't want to send my card till all my pictures are backed up. so, ill send them in a few weeks! sorry!

So from last week to this week i still feel like i have not really learned any more Spanish, as if i have plateaued a little, but when we taught yesterday i defiantly did better and knew more than i thought i did (granted, i was still just saying super super basic sentences! most of them memorized because i still don't know to much so its hard to make my own haha) but its coming a lot! I'm starting to understand more and more of what my teachers say which is nice!

Ok, so i don't remember if i talked to you guys about the university really. so every Monday, our district and one other district goes the the university which is about a 5 min walk away from the CCM, and then we just go and wander of and hour and a half and talk to people, share a message about the church, testify about it, and hand out pamphlets and such. its not so much to get investigators for the missionaries, we just do it to practice speaking with natives. the first lady we talked to on Monday was sorta interested, and i could understand about 25% of what she was saying and i was STOKED about it! haha. the next few i really had no clue what they said to me. the last guy we talked to was awesome. he was interested, i could understand most of what he was saying, and we gave him an El Libro De Mormon and he seemed pretty excited about it! so ya, the university is crazy. its so hot. SO hot. walking around in ties with backpacks on in the blaring sunshine,90 degrees and 100% humidity....aye! but, it gets a little stormy looking for a little almost everyday since its hurricane season. we have had a couple cool storms! the lightning is so crazy! and every single time it thunders it sets car alarms off its so loud and vibrates everything. so so cool.

the power goes out ALOT here! a few times a day. it just went out, luckily the computers are on a backup battery until the generators kick in. too bad in the field we wont have generators...

glad to hear you guys had a good 4th of July! i almost forgot about it! i really wanted to sing happy birthday to America at dinner, but totally forgot....panda triste. anywho the 3rd of July, however, was an awful day! i dunno why, everything was going wrong, everyone was driving me crazy and i thought i was going to have a melt down. scratch that, i WAS having a melt down. i don't really know why. just one of those days i guess. i almost just wanted to leave it was such a bad day! but back to the 4th. Sundays are waaay better than p days here in the CCM. p day we go to the temple for like 4566 hours, barely get back in time to eat dinner, have like 15 min to write letters, go do a service project for an hour and a half in the university (where we have to wear JEANS! :( ) then have an hour to ourselves then we have gym, then class and meetings. Sunday we watch devotional and apostle dvds and movies (like testaments and such). and we have longs breaks in between everything. and who, on the 4th we got to watch the June 2009 MTC devotional with Elder Bednar. i have already seen it, but i could watch it over and over and over again. even though its meant for missionaries, it EASILY applied to everyone. its about the spirit and how you can know if its the spirit prompting you or if its just you. AH! so good. if you can find it, you HAVE to watch it! again, June 2009 MTC devotional with elder bednar.

so my companion is starting to bug me. all he wants to do is waste time and hang out with one of the other companionships in our district. it doesn't matter what i need or want to do. it he wants to sit and play ninja, and i need to use the bathroom or go study in the lab, NOPE! he is going to continue to play ninja. its ridiculous. I have talked to him about it and he just is like "ah you need to stop being a sissy and have some fun occasionally! don't be gay!" and such. its making me really mad. when i first got assigned to him i was not happy, he just looks like a person who's parents are loaded and drove around a supe'd up Subaru wrx or audi that was all blacked out. and alas, he was! and is like the skater dude type. we get along still, but every day we just clash more and more. he never studies Spanish. i always have to teach pretty much the entire time because he knows nothing because he never even tries. every night he whines that he cant understand the teachers and gets nothing out of the lesson, but while they are talking he is just doodling or staring off into nothing, putting NO effort into actually trying to listen. then the teacher will ask us to do something, i will start doing it, she will ask the class if we all understand, he will say yes. then he will sit and do absolutely nothing for 5 min while we are all whatever it is she wants us to do, and turn to be and go "ok so what exactly are we doing? i didn't understand". AHHH it drives me crazy. i feel like i will never learn Spanish with a companion who doesn't seem to give a crap about learning it yet whines constantly about not understanding. sorry for that little rant, its just REALLY bothering me.

everyone, i still need to know your opinions. Is Cain Bigfoot?! let me know what you think. i think he is!

but yes, i like this MTC alot better, but man i am ready to get out! we stay in the same hallway pretty much all day except for gym time. it is so beautiful here! but at the same time, its not haha. you can see the ocean from the temple, lots of palm trees and lizards. but, everything is super run down and old, and the is trash everywhere. absolutely everywhere!

so i don't really know what else to say. life is all the same. love you all!

oh, some of my favorite Spanish words so far....

naranja - orange (like the fruit)

Palabra - word

habalabamos -we talked

arrepentimiento - its just long and fun to say! means repentance

anywho, love you all and hope you have a good week! write me more! (cough raquel and brigham cough cough april danny cough heather cough) haha

bye! and ill have like 5 min to write tonight, so if you have any questions you need to ask email them to me before like 6 your time.

bye!

-Elder Brady MacArthur

Week 1 Dominican Republic MTC

HI! ok, so, crazy! i know that i sent you a quick email when i got here, but ill kinda start over. So, we got here and it was raining crazy hard! took like 45 min bus ride to the CCM, and oh man. it was so hot and so humid! the temple is BEAUTIFUL! its not as big as i thought it was at first impression but it is still bigger than i thought it was going to be! so, my new companion is names Elder Logan, and he is pretty cool! WAY better than my old companion hahaha. we get along really well. we aren't super close yet, but after 6 weeks we will be hahaha.

classes here are super hard! it is about 99% in Spanish! they only time that they will speak in English is if none of us had any idea what was going on. but they will have to repeat things so many times! crazy. but i am learning SO much faster! i can still say almost nothing, but its more that i thought! so on Monday, we went to the University, which was like a 10 min walk away. I learned just how hot it really is here! i was SO wet because it is so hot and humid! aye! but we went there for like an hour and a half and talked to people on the campus. we all just split up, and went and talked. it was insane! we went up to one girl and starting talking, and she would respond and kinda laugh at us! not like making fun of us laughing, but like...kindly laughing haha. because we had NO idea what she was saying to us, and we spoke really slow and crappy Spanish! haha. but think of a Latino person you know, and how quickly they speak. now multiply it by 4 and then you have a Dominican speaker. it is SO fast! aye aye aye! so ya. that was so insane. i couldn't even understand their names when we asked! i don't understand how anyone can move their mouths that fast!! oh my. so that was a pretty awesome day.

The people here are SO nice! no matter what they are doing or how mean they look. they all are totally willing to just stop and listen to you and talk to you! so that is super amazing! i could speak alot more than i thought i could which was awesome. i am loving it here! this CCM is SO much better! there are like 30 or so people here and so we all are getting to know everyone, the food is so good. i don't even have words for how good it is! and the bananas...so freakin good. and pineapple. yet to have a mango here, but im stoked to try one!! the only weird thing is they switch lunch and dinner, so lunch is like the big amazing meal of the day, and dinner is things that we would eat for lunch.

i do feel like i will never be cold again though! its SO hot! we have gym outside and...words cant describe how hot and humid it is. its just not possible.

ok so i have no idea about dear elders. we dont have a box number, so just send them to the Dominican Republic mtc and it should get to me. we only get them once a week thought so you can also just email me and ill be just fine. so for now, just tell everyone to email me. then i can just print them off and read them and not use my computer time. that would be wonderful.

heather, you know how you got chads address for me? do the same thing for Selja Felin. and any other people you think i may need to write. and tell jocelyn just to email me and everyone else to email me. its will be way easier while i am in the MTC

anywho, went to the temple this morning and it is SO beautiful! aye it was amazing. loved it so much. i wish you guys could see how beautiful everything is here! from one end of the CCM (where we are no longer allowed to go because the hermanas rooms are on that side) there is a window that looks out over the temple (its like 20 feet away) and then the ocean! look at the temple on Google maps and you will see how close we are the the sea! i love it so much! out in "babaylon" though, so outside the temple grounds....aye! its so crazy! cars do what ever they want! and they blare their horns all the time for apparently no reason! there is trash all over the streets and side walks, everything is run down, little street vendors everywhere, and its just so different. man alive. i feel like im leaving alot of things out....i really need to make a list of things to say before i write you all....but jeez, you all need to write me more! haha.

so i think i have lost like 2 pounds here. not alot, but when we get out in the field i KNOW that i will loose alot of weight! and no, not water weight. i drink like 456 gallons of water a day and have to pee like every 30 min. so thats good news!

ok, so one quick story. yesterday was easily the most frustrating day of my entire life. every block of classes we had, they gave us like 5 min to prepare a lesson dependent on an investigators needs and then we had to teach it. en espanol. it was horrible. i really almost just broke into tears i was so frustrated. we do NOT know enough to do that. and we taught for like an hour each time. we had to start over 3 times because we weren't going over certain points effectively enough but it was pretty much impossible for me! i just straight up don't know enough vocab! i could kinda get the gist across, but could do no details at all. i pretty much could say like super basic primary things. aye aye aye. it was the longest day ever! ok well i am pretty much out of time! sorry guys that this was so short. ill do better next week and have stuff outlined out that i need to say! haha. because i know that i am missing stuff!

oh! my new district is way awesome. there are 6 people per district. we all get along way well.

Spanish is super hard. i feel really behind from the rest of the class again.but i know it will come! its coming alot faster since we have been here! and personally i feel ok, im just not as skilled as others at learning a language!

a few assignments. send me the package, read D&C 18, verse 10 and...18? i think.

also, Mosiah 12:5 :) haha. do it.

love you all! write me more!

-Elder MacArthur