Elder Jonah Morgan's Mission Blog: The MTC

August 16, 2016

The MTC is so awesome!!!!!!!!!!!! It's like EFY on steroids and I am having so much fun and learning so much! They keep us super busy here with lots of classtime and role play experiences. It's really easy to talk to people here and I make a new friend like every 20 minutes. My companion's name is Elder Ketring and he is an awesome guy, we get along pretty easily. He is from Washugal (or something like that), Washington and he likes to ski and cycle. He has 3 other siblings and I have fun working with him. The first couple days were a little bit confusing because they had 1st week missionaries telling the newest missionaries how everything works and they weren't very good at it so we just had to figure everything out by doing it but it wasn't so bad, I've got everything down now.

My companion's name is Elder Ketring

We do so much role play, first our MTC teacher would pretend to be an investigator that they had when they were missionaries and we would have to teach them and just yesterday we started doing TRC (Teacher Resource Center).TRC is when you are assigned people that are recent converts acting as themselves before baptism or actual investigators. It was so awesome being able to teach them. The first man we taught was Austin and that lesson went pretty sucky actually because the spirit just wasn't really there and I just didn't think it went very well but our second lesson with Parker went amazing and the spirit was so strong.

Pretty much all we talk about in lcass is our purpose as missionaries, teaching with the spirit and teaching people, not lessons. Its a lot different teaching people here rather than mission prep but we are doing pretty good for the most part. I was also able to join the MTC choir on Sunday and that was so cool, it literally has 1000+ members and they choir director is awesome! We'll be singing with the National Tribute Band this Tuesday. We have devotionals every Sunday and Tuesday nights and we hear from a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles on the Tuesdays and I heard Elder Holland is speaking to us this Tuesday!!

My district is awesome too, we have 8 elders and 4 sisters and they are all great and so fun. Our teacher is Sister Thompson and she is just a few years older than us and is a really great teacher. I've learned so much. The food is great here too, you can get as much as you want and it's all pretty good except I keep hearing not to drink the orange juice because apparently you'll get some unfortunate bowel movements. Oh and on Sunday we get to watch some church films and we watched "The Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar and dang it was honestly life changing and I would highly recommend it and spoiler alert, you get to hear Elder Bednar pretend to be the cookie monster.

Mt District Brethren

In the classroom

There is also a black market here for ties and watches haha! Pasley ties are pretty good but floral ties are gold so I'm glad I brought mine. This is probably going to break your fragile little hearts but I've had zero homesickness and its been really easy to adjust to everything. So far I would say the main thing I have learned is how to keep the spirit with me all the time, especially when teaching. The only thing that takes a little work is being with someone for 24 hours of the day 7 days a week and getting along with them the whole time but even that is pretty easy. it just seems like everyday here is better than the last so it has been easy to stay happy. Sorry all my thoughts were so scattered, hope it makes sense.