Tuesday, October 17th

Hello family and friends. I would just like to start of saying that I have really felt the blessings of everyone's prayers in the past week. Also, thank you for the inspired E-mails that you have been sending me. A lot of them have been answers to my prayers. The MTC is amazing. You learn so much and your testimony grows rapidly. I would like to share some of the things I have learned and experienced in the past week, tell some stories and answer some of your questions. The first thing I  would like to share was how the spirit was with me and so strong the whole first day I came into the MTC. The spirit was constantly with me giving me comfort and continually reminding me that this is the place where I need to be and there was no other place more important for me to be at at this time. Something that I knew before but now is a part of my testimony is it is so important to have the spirit with you while through out your day, especially while you teach. I have had many opportunities so far to teach lessons to investigators who are willing to come to the MTC to be taught by missionaries. Every time me and my companion teach, we pray for the spirit to be with us and every time it is. There is no way that we could teach our lessons without the spirit. The spirit inspires us to ask questions and give comments that we would not be able to give otherwise. The spirit will also confirm to the investigator that what we are saying is true, even when they don't have a good idea on what we are talking about. The spirit does wonderful things. I would also like to share my experience I had during sacrament meeting this week. While taking the sacrament, I felt the love of the savior so strong and knew that he was proud of me. This whole week has been amazing.

Missionary work is very hard though. Our day is packed with so much stuff to do. As soon as I started getting comfortable with all the responsibilities I had, the Branch President asked me to be the District Leader. I took the calling and it has been wonderful to be able to be an example to all the elders in my district and pray for each of them individually. The power of prayer works and it is amazing to see it work in our district. I share a room with three other elders. My companion is Elder Davis and it has been cool getting to know him and teaching with him. He is great with people and is an awesome companion.

We teach pretend investigators during class. It is our teacher and they play the role of someone they meet on their mission. It seems so real and they do an awesome job of making it seem real. We also teach real investigators who agree to come to the MTC to be taught. We get two people to teach each week and meet each of them three times each week. We teach them lessons, help them make commitments, and invite them to be baptized. It has been going great so far. I have only taught our investigators once so far but hope to commit them to baptism soon.

Getting up early has been easy. The Sabbath day is the best. They give everyone the topic to prepare for a talk, then during sacrament meeting, they call up four random people to give their talks. Movie night is on Sunday and it is just talks. They have a MTC talk that was given by Elder Bednar that you cannot find anywhere else except at the MTC. It is called, "The Character of Christ."  Great talk.

The MTC cafeteria is just like the Cannon Center. The two new buildings at the MTC were dedicated on Friday and I went to the dedication. Elder Oaks was there and President Eyring dedicated the buildings. On Sunday Sister Dalton spoke to us. I can really feel the unique spirit that is at the MTC and it is so cool to see so many missionaries in one place. Missionaries really do have the power and authority to teach and it is such an honor to represent Jesus Christ and wear his name. Speaking of wearing his name, on Thursday evening while our district was getting ready to go to the gym and while I was in the bathroom, I somehow flushed my name tag down the toilet. That puppy is gone. That got everyone in my district to laugh. I got a new one though. It is kind of the ongoing joke now. 

Other than that incident I have been doing great. I would like to close with my testimony that we have a loving Heavenly Father and he sent his so Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ we can live with Him again. The gospel has been restored to the Earth and the Prophet and Apostles are called by God. The Book Of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His church, and as we read and ponder it's pages, we can increase our faith in Christ. Christ did Atone for our sins, and the spirit testifies of truth and the power of prayer is so strong.

I love you all so much.