Mitchell, Ryan PT

Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to begin with this email; so much has happened! We're just going to see where this takes us... Tuesday I woke up as usual, except there was only me and one other Elder left, and since he was sick, I was alone. I grinded through packing because I procrastinate, and by the time I was done, it was time for me to go. At 9:30 a.m., I grabbed my bags to go to the travel office where I finally met the rest of my Peru Lima West homies. One of them, Elder Monson, I was really close to, and he introduced me to Elder Newton, who is super sick; so for the next 24 hours, I designated them as my comps. Traveling consisted of: walking to the bus, driving to the FrontRunner, taking the FrontRunner to Salt Lake, running into Jerry Butler (my sister-in-law's dad), and taking a smaller train to the airport. At the SLC airport, we ran into South America-serving missionaries who were just coming home. It was wild to see what the other side looked like. Then I...

We're now in our last week of the MTC, which is crazy to think about. By my next email, I'll be in a country I've never been to before and probably confused out of my mind. Here's the rundown of what happened in my last full MTC week: Saturday In the morning, we planned to play volleyball, but once we got there, some people wanted to play spikeball instead, so they did that the entire time. But Hermana Faalaleiga still really wanted to play volleyball, so she gave me and some others time to practice. It was really funny because she's from Samoa, and apparently, they play volleyball a lot there because she was very passionate. Also, Elder Holden and I thought we had another Helping Others appointment, so we left class early to go to it. Turns out I had actually scheduled it for the week after by accident, but even though we didn't end up teaching, Elder Holden and I thought it would be funny to still tell everyone that we taught a fire lesson in Spanish. We'r...

¿Cómo están? This week has been pretty chill, just an average week in MTC life. The days crawl by, but the week has flown. I can't believe it's P-day already, but at the same time, I'm glad it's here. Anyway, not a lot happened, but here's the rundown... Friday 7/5 Last P-day, we went to the temple as usual and did sealings. It was my first time ever doing it, so it was actually really cool. There were a lot of missionaries doing it at once, though, and the day before we didn’t get much sleep, so it was super hard to stay awake. Still, it was a good time. The rest of the day was pretty chill—just writing emails, playing some spikeball and sand volleyball, then heading back to class. Saturday In the morning, we always have service, and all I did was vacuum one of the buildings. Then I just twiddled my thumbs until we were done. The service we do always feels like giving a haircut to a bald man because it gets deep cleaned by the workers every night, and they just mak...

¡¿Qué Pasa?! This week was pretty typical as far as weeks go in the MTC. Last Friday is when we started full immersion of Spanish in our classes so neither the teachers nor we can speak any English. I was terrified of that at first, but everyone, including me, was surprised at how much we can understand even if it's mostly just guessing. We also have really good teachers that make sure none of us get lost. It's honestly been really nice though because since the classes are so long, it just forces you to think in the language even if you can only think of a few phrases. Anyways, on to the week... Friday 6/28 Friday was my b-day p-day, and all we really did was play spikeball and take a nap after going to the temple, and honestly, that's all I needed. But my comp also had to take care of visa stuff that interfered during our spikeball time, which normally I wouldn't argue too much about, but spikeball was literally the one thing I asked to do for my birthday. He ended up ...