Hey Mom!
This week has been crazy stressful but fun. The first day felt like 5 days and when I woke up the next morning, I was like "Are you serious?” I've only been here like 20 hours ha-ha. That's how the first couple of days felt. Soooo long!! I think it's just because you learn so much throughout the day and your body just thinks there is no way you could have learned all that and had experienced that in one day; so it must be like 6 days. Everyone kept telling us to just make it to Sunday because everything will start flying by. They call it "miracle Sunday" and I was like whatever but I'll let it give me some hope ha-ha. And when Sunday came around it went by really fast and ever since then its been easy flying. Still weird to me how that all works!!
So far we've taught our teachers brother Hoopes and brother Lohmeier. They have personas they take on for people they’ve met in their lives or someone they met on their mission and pose to be them throughout the lesson. We taught "Miles" and "Gary" the first lesson and invited them to read the Book of Mormon. It’s way fun to learn how to be a good missionary and what to include in each lesson and how to listen to the spirit. After that we taught this Japanese actor who posed as Junichi Maeda. He was so hard to teach. He had no idea about Christianity and believed in Shinto. So we had to describe in great detail every little thing we said which is super frustrating and takes forever. But even after all of that I still love it here and can’t wait to teach him again and I kind of have more of an idea what I’m doing so that I can answer his questions better and stuff.
I only have 30 minutes on the computer so I’m rushing ha-ha. Anyways yeah I love it here. I’ve had some really awesome experiences like singing in the MTC choir! We sang "Blessings" and that “Come thou fount” song and it was so awesome!!! The choir director is way funny and told us stories about the song. After he told me what the song is really about I think it might be my favorite churchy song. It’s not in the hymnbook though which is retarded. Mormons need to step it up, seriously. It’s way beautiful and invited the spirit so well to the devotional we had last night. A member from the 2nd quorum of the seventy spoke. Brother Synbrosky or something; I don’t remember ha-ha. I was expecting a member of the Quorum of the 12 or something because 10 of them are at the MTC right now along with the First Presidency!! So maybe this Friday the special devotional will actually be "special" and they will pull out the big guns ha-ha :)
As I said, 4 of the 6 in my district are going to Birmingham with me. Leaving the same day and everything. Along with 8 others we've met here just walking around and stuff. So Alabama is calling in the support or something! The food here is way good! Just regular cafeteria food but the oranges and raspberry lemonade are amazing!! I eat that at literally every meal I have...so good. But the food here also makes you fart so badly. At night you can’t even pray until everyone is done farting. Seriously because as soon as someone does, everyone starts laughing and it’s way hard to pray; trust me I’ve tried. I’m not sure why farts are still funny? It’s probably because we're stuck inside all day being spiritual and when something different happens, it hilarious. I don’t know but it just is.
Some of the leaders have cell phones and at lunch they get on them and text and talk and stuff, it is so weird! I feel like I haven’t had one in years and it looks weird that someone actually is using one. Pretty much watching them break rules and sin ha-ha. Oh and with the rules thing I’m really trying to be obedient to all the rules they give me. I heard a good quote here and I’m applying it to my mission. It’s, "obedience brings blessings, exact obedience brings miracles,” I thought that was so awesome and really something I should strive to do! It’s way hard though because all the other missionaries may not have the same idea of obedience that I have; taking it all serious and stuff. But whatever that’s part of being a missionary is just doing YOUR best and hoping your companion and district decides to do that too. I’ve been trying to help them with some stuff and be an example and it’s working so far. We'll see if we actually start going to bed on time now ha-ha.
Anyways my time is about up and thanks for the letters! Keep them coming I get to brag and be all happy when I get one so tell your friends to write me too :) and text Jackie right now and tell her that I can only write on P-day and that’s why she hasn’t heard from me yet and not to worry! A lot of missionaries write home and their friends everyday but as I said I’m trying to be exactly obedient and feel the blessings from it. So tell her a letter is on the way and to look forward to it.
My address is :
Elder Charles Oppenlander
He didn't give his zip code at the MTC. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteGlad you noticed that! It's 84604 --- I updated the blog. He'll be excited to hear to from you, Soni!
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