Saturday, August 20, 2011

First Letter!!And there was much rejoicing

See ya Soon!
MTC drop off Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Kumusta po kayong ng pamilya ko at ng mga kaibigan ko??  That's Tagalog for "How's it going my family and friends?" I have so much to tell you all and so little time to say it all. 

After I left you guys I was taken to my residence hall and we dropped off all my suitcases.  Our room is on the 4th floor so we had to carry a ton of stuff all the way up there.  After that I was taken to my language class with the rest of my district.  I was the 2nd to last one there.  When I walked in my guro (teacher) Brother Day had Tagalog just FLYING out of his mouth.  I think he asked me my name like 10 times before I figured out what he was saying and answered him.  He speaks only Tagalog to us and he speaks it VERY fast.  It's pretty intense. 

After that we went to a welcome meeting witht the MTC Presidency who were all very kind and shared their love with us.  We sang "Armies of Helaman" but instead of "and we will be the Lord's missionaries" we sang "and we are now the Lord's missionaries"  ASTIG! (cool :) Mom, at this point I was paired with Elder Day from Springville who you told me about from MissionaryMoms.com.  He's really cool and REALLY tall.  He dunks on us during gym time haha.

Ang mga kasama ko ng Elder Cloward at Elder Calinog. (My companions are Elder Cloward and Elder Calinog.)  Elder Cloward is from Orem, Utah and went to Timpanogos High School.  He has 4 younger brothers and a 7 year-old adopted sister.  Elder Calinog is from Reno, Nevada and his parents are Filipino.  He was converted to the church a little over a year ago and is our Senior Companion.  His conversion story is awesome and he has a strong spirit about him.  Our district leader is Elder Tapusoa from New Zealand.  He has an awesome accent!  I've seen a bunch of friends from home and BYU here who are preparing to leave. 

I got to see Elder Stirling a couple times and it made me glad to see him again.  He has a few weeks left and is the a District Leader for the last half of their time here.

The other Elders in our zone are awesome.  It's hard to remember that they've only been here a few weeks longer than us.  They seem like they're WAY older than us.  They're all way fun and comfortable with each other and are amazing at speaking the language.

The first night I had a really hard time getting to sleep and woke up like 5 times in the night.  The last couple of nights have been great though since we work so hard.

The language is really starting to come along for me.  I know that I've been receiving a lot of help with that.  Friday we started teaching a "Filipino Investigator" in Tagalog only.  Yesterday it was terrible cuz we were so nervous and felt like we didn't know anything but today it was great.  We taught her about Joseph Smith and she's going to pray about it tonight and we'll hopefully teach her about Ang Aklat ni Mormon and the Plan of Salvation on Monday.

Well time's up.  Mahal kita evryone!  Hope things are well with you.  STUFF MY MAILBOX! :)

2 comments:

  1. Feel Free to leave us a comment or question for Elder Powell!

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  2. He doesn't seem so sure in that first picture! :) I'm sure he's a natural.

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