The End (of the MTC) Is In Sight

Sam with his companion and some other dude.

"Hey everybody, another week in the books and I only have 5 more days left here in the MTC! I got my flight plans on Friday and I am going to Argentina on Monday! I guess my visa went through, because I heard of other people that were going to Brazil getting reassigned to the Provo, UT mission. So I am pretty happy my visa went through. I am flying out of Salt Lake at 2 pm on Monday and flying to Atlanta! We get up to the airport at 10ish so I will have like 4 hours, so I think I will eat a ton and I will also call you guys. I don't know exactly what time I will call or how it is all going to work. All I know is that I can buy call cards here at the MTC, and I can probably talk for an hour or something, sometime between 10-2. So I will just call dad first so he can set everybody up. I don't know a better way so let me know. Anyways we get into Atlanta at 8 pm, and fly out of there at 10 pm. We get into Buenos Aires at 9 am on Tuesday morning! I think our mission president gives us a tour of the city our first day so that should be awesome! There are 5 of us flying down to Buenos Aires together and 2 of the 5 have to drive from Buenos Aires to Resistencia, ARG. So that flight should be fun, I think I will probably just sleep and study as much as I can! Anyways I'm pretty excited.

Burritos, mashed potatoes and steamed vegatables. Mmmmm!

"This week was pretty good, I am trying to learn as much as I can this last week! Like I have been told at the end of the MTC, you can have a pretty good gospel conversation in Spanish, and other simple conversations, but getting into the real world should be fun! I just want to be fully immersed in the language, I just want to be good at it already haha. Hopefully in a few months I will get the hang of it. 

"We are finally getting new missionaries in today. 4 Elders and 3 Sisters. I have to train, and talk to them tonight so that should be fun. I'm going help out as much as I can, because the group that brought us in, didn't do anything for us so the first 2 days were really confusing for all of us.

Sam with his Branch President.

"Anyways I am going to pack this weekend, and try to fit everything in my bags again so that should be annoying, but I am so excited to leave, and yes get airport food!"

Dreaming of Burritos at the Airport

Time is getting short for Sam and his MTC experience. Here's a little taste of how things are going:

"Hey everybody as you know I have been in the MTC for 4 weeks! I'm kind of a big shot around here now haha just kidding! I have 12 days left in prison I mean the MTC! haha actually it is not that bad, I am really used to this schedule and so it is not too bad! I hope I get to go straight to Argentina because I haven't heard anything about my visa yet, I should be getting my travel plans tomorrow or Friday, so that will be exciting!  I really hope that there is a Taco Bell in the airport because I want to have a grilled stuffed burrito with steak so bad. I am so excited for the airport!

"Anyways this week wasn't too exciting. Not much special happened other than we got 2 "investigators" to commit to baptism... My teaching skills are getting better, and my spanish is getting better everyday very slowly haha! Zane emailed me this morning and said that the spanish you a learning is nothing like the spanish in Argentina so that will be fun to learn a third language! 

"One of the counselors in my Branch Presidency... served in my same mission and I was talking to him, he said that there are seasons but it is mainly really hot and humid! He also said that the food is really good! He said that members will invite you over and just bbq ribs, and sausage and a bunch of meat and he said it awesome! So I am pretty excited about that part! I am so excited to be in Argentina already!

"I am going to stay in as the ZL for the next 2 weeks, they told us they were going to switch us half way through but they decided just to keep us in the whole time! It is not that bad other than trying to get Sundays organized.

"Anyways sorry for such a lame email this week was not too exciting. Thanks for the Dr. Pepper and all the packages everybody, I love all the snacks and letters and pictures they are awesome to have! I love all you and miss you a lot."

Half Way Through the MTC

With one more week down, and half way through the MTC, Sam updates us on his progress:

"This week was good and it was really quick!

Sam is caught by surprise in a moment of reflection.

Yeah the language is getting better and the whole structure of spanish is making sense now! I finally got down NC PIG, Evan and Ray will know what that is! [Editor's note: I have no idea what he's talking about] It is basically the thing that helps you with the structure of any sentence in spanish! But it's still really tough, I don't think I have every studied so hard for anything!

3 weeks down 2 1/2 to go! It is crazy that next week will be my first month of my mission down! Only 23 more to go! Actually they gave me a card the first day that said I will be coming home March 7 2017. I don't know how accurate that actually is! I am so excited to go to the airport in 3 weeks and eat food there, sometimes the meals here are alright. And yes Ray the biscuits and gravy are good, but it is totally messing up my body haha! Last night I woke up at like 11:30 and I felt so crappy, I thought crap I'm gonna throw up. So I got off of the top bunk in the pitch black and almost killed my self and went into the bathroom and threw up so much, It was just coming out (tmi? [Editor's note: Yes]). Anyways I felt great after and I feel totally fine this morning, it was really weird but that is what this food is doing to me! Yesterday they served salmon with hotdogs, not the best combination!

Sam and his companion just relaxing next to their book buckets.

Ray and Boz probably know this but it pretty dang cold today and last wednesday, it snowed a little and so my jacket that I brought is really nice to have!

The first week with actual sacrament meeting was pretty crazy, they randomly called 3 missionaries to give talks in spanish, and I didn't get called up it was awesome, it's kind of scary though! I did have to teach priesthood though, luckily that is all in english!

We had a teacher come teach us a lesson one night and he went to Mendoza Argentina on his mission ( same as Zane) and he had the craziest accent. It sounded so Italian it was awesome, it was so crazy and we were told if you are going to Buenos Aires than you are going top have that Italian accent and so that will be really awesome.I am just so excited to get down there and speak castellano. I think that is how you spell it! They said I will be "Elder Mi(sh)ar" down there so that will be kind of weird.

"I love all you guys and I do know that God loves each of us so much, I was thinking this week how lucky we are to be a part of the only true church in the world! What are the chances that we were born into the church and have the knowledge of the truth! We are so lucky!"

Sam does his best Manu Ginobili impression.

The Second Week

Sam's completed his second week in the MTC. Sounds like he's starting to get into the flow of things...

"The spanish is coming a long though! We taught an hour and half long lesson yesterday in spanish! It is really weird to think of how much more I know right now than what I did know 2 weeks ago! I am getting to the point where I can understand basically what everybody says, but I know that will change when I get to Argentina. We had this girl teacher yesterday and she had a really weird accent when she spoke and it was so hard to understand what she was saying in spanish, so I imagine that is what it will be like in Argentina.

"Yo quero Taco Bell so bad though! There is plenty of food here, but it all taste the same to me now, and I just want some Dr. Pepper! That could be a package someone sends to me!

Some smashed cinnamon rolls for bounty.

...

"As you guys know my p-days are Wednesdays, which means we all go to the Temple, which is so nice because I get to leave the MTC for a few hours! I just want to be in the real world! It is weird to be stuck in here, it honestly feels like prison sometimes. Monday was 4 weeks from my departure date though (May 4) i'm so excited to leave even though I know I have to stay and learn a lot more before I could actually teach people. They just started teaching us this week how you are actually supposed to teach people and it does work out a lot better! Our "investigator" is a huge pain, he just keeps on asking us the stupidest questions, to try to through us off! So yesterday everytime he asked us a stupid questions we just got right back on topic it was so good! My companion and I walked out of there and we were just like "Boom." I know it is a fake investigator but he sure acts well haha!

...

"Nothing really special happened this week except for confernece! Which was actually interesting to me, it 

was like watching tv! No all the talks were so good and Holland's talk gave me the goosies it was so good! 

"I know that this is the true church, with out any doubt in my mind I know that we will all be together forever if we do what is right! There is nothing more important than to be together with your family, I think that was the theme of conference!"

The First Week

Sam's first week in the MTC is coming to a close, and we received his first real email today! Following are some excerpts:

"This week was pretty insane, a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be. We had to teach I think 5 lessons already to an "investigator."  All of these lessons are in spanish so on Friday when my companion and I had to teach our first lesson we were pretty dang nervous! I was thinking how am I going to teach a lesson in pure Spanish after being here for 2 days, I was freaking out! I don't know why I was scared if it was just a fake investigator. So we made a script up of what we would say and it wasn't too bad other than the fact that we were reading a script (we looked so stupid). We haven't gotten to the point where we can now teach an investigator with no script just an english outline for about 20 minutes in pretty broken spanish. Not too bad though!"

"Yesterday we had our first "major investigator'' where were supposed to teach for 45 minutes. We had a lesson together about how God loves each of his children, and when we got in there he was asking us all of these hard questions like "if Joseph Smith was on 14 years old how did he translate a book?" or "tell me one place in the Bible that says families can be together forever." My companion and I were just looking at each other and were like uhhh crap! So we scratched our whole lesson and just went off of the spirit. It ended up being 55 minutes of pretty good spanglish. He looked at me and was like "show me a scripture that says that we will have a life after this" and I was like okay... um so I had him read Moses 1:39. He read it after being all heated he was like ok very interesting.  It felt pretty good haha! Anyways that is basically how our lessons go!"

"...so the spanish is coming along very slowly but surely. Yes for those of you who asked I can say my testimony and pray in spanish and I can have a somewhat decent gospel conversation. It's crazy how much spanish I have learned in one week, way more than high school. The thing I am just working on now is trying to memorize vocab and get better at conjugations. It is pretty tough though. I am hoping and praying every day that I can learn this language and it is insane how much the spirit has helped me out with the language."

"My schedule each day basically goes like this: wake up at 6:20 (which is a killer), go to class for an hour and study, go to breakfast (which always sucks), go play b-ball for an hour then sit in class for the next 12 hours of the day and learn spanish. It is really a lot of working for only 8 hours of sleep every night. Hopefully at some point I get used to it!"

"Oh yeah I forgot to tell you my companion and I were made "Zone leaders" which is kind of lame in the MTC. Our zone is only one district and so it is not that big of a deal which is pretty nice! I get to carry an awesome flip phone haha! Our district is pretty cool and we have a lot of fun!"

"That is about it from this week, hopefully it goes by quick, because I just want to go to Argentina already even though I know I am not ready!"