Just a causal pic of me and Elder Kamalu lookin fly in front of the Provo Temple. I sat next to Elder Kamalu in my first hour of arriving at the MTC. If you remember that email he was laughing so I started laughing pretty soon we're both cracking up. 

Some weird stuff happens in the residencies of the MTC, like this odd going away ritual.  It involves the passing down of certain toys and candies to the new District Leaders in a weird version of Finding Nemo's "Ring of Fire." It was so strange, but they are going to Scandinavia, so it makes sense. 

This is Bro. Cobb; he's a 6'2” redhead from Minnesota and loves cracking jokes in Tagalog. He's getting us ready for the type of humor that Philippinos love.  Like when Elder Haycock asked him

"How do you say weird in Tagalog?"

"Ikaw"

"Doesn’t Ikaw mean "you"?" 

"Opo(yes)" then once the class actually understood what he had just said we all started cracking up. After 6 hours of class, getting clowned on by the teacher is worth a laughter break. 

Elder Schuab and Haycock got called as greeters for our Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. Elder Unice and I decided to join them. I started jokingly telling people "Oh, so glad to see that our speakers finally showed up!" I said to one guy, Elder Blakslee (sp), "Ahh  good to see you! President Smith told us that you would be our speaker today so you can just go right up and sit on the stand." A couple minutes later I looked over and President Smith is talking to Blasksee on the stand, asking him why he was sitting up there! Hahaha I went over and apologized but he thought it was funny too so we’re all good. 

Next is just my good friend Elder Elms looking very photogenic.

One day every week we are assigned to do service in another building, just like cleaning bathrooms and taking out trash etc. Elder Puefua and I went to the fourth floor where a bunch of people were leaving to someplace, and they had left a ton of boxes of candy and supplies and random stuff outside their rooms. So we got probably 20 pounds of candy in a box and brought it back to our rooms, instead of wasting it in the dumpster, it was all unopened. Anyways I found a fan that I stuck to the underside of Elder Unice's bed. The first morning after using it I was super tired, finally decided to get out of bed, and sat straight up. I smacked my forehead on the fan knocking it down, what a nice way to wake up huh?

If we bring our bags to lunch we're supposed to leave them on a wall of shelves, so as to not clutter the floor walking spaces. I got back to my class afterwards and realized I had grabbed the wrong Perfect Traveler bag! I hurried back to find the right one, luckily it was there. Finally when I made it back to my class building I told Brother Cobb (who was in a room with a group of newer missionaries) the story, or started to at least. He wants us to be an example for the newbeez so he had me SYL it (SYL is speak your language, the more we speak the better we will learn, it really does help). So I tell my story and one of the kids says "did it say ____ Mitton on it?!" hahaha I had grabbed his bag, what are the chances that he was one of the 10 missionaries in the one room in the whole MTC?

Sunday evening's devotional was the Nashville Tribute Band. They play original music talking about the restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith. They finished with a song called The Hardest Thing I Ever Loved To Do. If you want to know what being a missionary is like in a quick song, try to find it. Tbh (To be honest) I don’t know if they're on YouTube but I'm sure it is. It's definitely one to make a missionary miss their family. After the main singer sang it, he invited all of us to sing it with him again. The words were projected on the screen but only half the missionaries were able to finish it, between sniffling their noses and wiping tears from their eyes. Anyone who has or knows missionaries in the field know that they miss you SO much all the time, and can't wait to see you again..:)