Letter and Pictures!

Oh man I miss you guys a lot. I know Olivia's whiny all the time but she's still cute. Okay so this week has been super crazy for me we've been doing so much stuff. We do all these practice lessons with 'Investigators' and we learn how to teach simply and clearly and how to make commitments and how to plan study time and all sorts of things. On Saturday I had an interview with one of the MTC presidency and he asked me what I had learned and I told him that I'd learned a lot of patience and humility because of learning to deal with people (my companions mostly) who don't think the same way I do and who frustrate me because of the way they behave. I talked about the goals I made to develop certain Christ like attributes specifically LOVE for my companions and for everyone. I read Dad's e-mail and he was right in that between last week and this week I've grown a lot in learning especially how to love people who are different than you and who annoy/bother you because of those differences. Elder #1 and I have been both doing really well in explaining our feelings to each other and allowing that to strengthen our relationship and allow us to work better together, but Elder #2 struggles in every aspect of missionary work including, I'm sad to say, his testimony. He refuses to acknowledge weaknesses or change at all which is frustrating. He is definitely one of those kids that is on a mission because his mom made him.

Anyways after talking to President Durkin, of the MTC Presidency, at the end of the interview he expressed that what I said was exactly all of the things that he thought that I needed to learn when he first spoke to me and my companions the first day here. He said that the way in which I have grown was exactly what he wanted me to do and had been praying about. He said that what I had said amazed him and strengthened his testimony and was exactly the part of his calling here that he loved so much, seeing missionaries develop. He said I made it into his journal that night.

Anyways, we got here two weeks ago on a Thursday, so usually we would be leaving the MTC tomorrow on a Thursday as well, but all of the Mission Presidents and MTC Presidents are in Portugal for a big meeting this week until Friday, so our stay at the MTC is being extended a few days, we're leaving now on Saturday. The funny thing is that tomorrow we're not leaving, but a whole new bunch of missionaries are arriving, so this place is going to be a jungle for the next bit.

We have district classrooms that we spend most of the day in having lessons and studying for teaching appointments, and before this the biggest district was 8 Missionaries. My district was called 'Abinadi' (which by the way all the British people pronounce weird) and we had 7 but now were combining with another district and were gonna have 13. It'll be okay though most of the missionaries are really well behaved.

The roads here are so small and there are tons of traffic circles and they drive on the left so to answer Sam's question yes it is so confusing and disorienting. Also there are no straight roads. Like none. They're all super windy I have no idea where were going all the time.

Last Thursday and tomorrow we'll be doing this again, we took the train into Manchester to go finding. That basically means that we just go around and talk to people on the street about the gospel. Even on the train there and back we talked to tons of people. Anyways one of the guys we talked to in Manchester was a music prof at Manchester University on his lunch break and he was devout Christian. He tried to convince us that maybe the reason we ran into him was because God out people in our place to prove to us that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and that our religion was based on lies. He also said in his own words ''Lot's of stuff you read on the internet really cant be reliable because who knows what sources they came from, but I read some stuff about how Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and that stuff was totally true''. My testimony in Joseph Smith was actually strengthened because of the ignorance of that man. Hopefully tomorrow well find some people who are more open to hearing our message.

Anyways I'm doing a lot better this week and today is P-day again so I'm probably gonna have a nap and then play some basketball, or in some order like that.

Also we went to the temple this morning. It was great.