Xray

¿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 make up random placebo tasks for us to complete to make us feel better about ourselves. It's easy, but it doesn't feel like actual service. Also, Elder Holden and I had a "helping others" appointment, which just means we had to give a lesson to one of the people who work here while they pretend to be an investigator. The catch was that this one was all in Spanish. I was feeling alright about it because it’d be our second time meeting with this person, so we had a lot of Spanish sentences written out. Well, plot twist—we get on the Zoom call, and it turns out to be a completely different person, an old lady instead. It kind of threw us off. But with a lot of broken Spanish and basic questions to get her to talk, we made it through the lesson. We always have an evaluation after each lesson, and she rated us better than we thought, so we’ll take it.

Sunday

I was exhausted all of Sunday because I had to go to meetings and make assignments for zone leader stuff. It's easy, but since it was fast Sunday, I was running a little slower than usual. Fast and testimony meeting was really good. We had some new districts come in this week, so it was fun to hear from them. I shared my experience in Costa Rica from about a year ago when we prayed for the rain to stop so we could finish pouring cement without it getting ruined. It was a really cool experience. It was a pretty typical Sunday, though—we made sure to be first in line for dinner because there were a lot of ravenous missionaries eager for food.

Monday

To be honest, I remember nothing about this day. Just a lot of Spanish classes as usual. The language is coming along well enough that I feel confident I won’t completely drown in Peru (as long as everyone talks super, super slow).

Tuesday

The highlight of Tuesday was the devotional, as usual, but this time it was a little different because our district was assigned to help with it. We had six people usher, one of the Hermanas and Elder Holden offered the opening and closing prayers, and I just had to sit up front in front of all the missionaries and next to the speakers. I literally didn’t do anything besides try to be good emotional support for Elder Holden, but it felt cool to be sitting up there. The speakers were Brother and Sister Pace, who have some big calling in the church that I can't remember. Ironically, the main topic was prayer, which I think stressed Elder Holden out because he had to give the closing prayer. The message was really good, though, and my main takeaway is to take time to just sit and listen after every prayer and look for the Spirit’s promptings. Honestly, Elder Holden’s prayer wasn’t that smooth, but no one remembers the closing prayer anyway, so it's all good.

Wednesday

We got assigned to help all the new missionaries again and also received one more district. It was an adventure for me, though, because one of the kids I helped, Elder King, had just visited his family in the Philippines for two months and, for whatever reason, had to get an X-ray to check if he was carrying anything from there. Since he had just arrived, I became his temporary companion for this adventure. It took a lot of time because we had to get permission to go off-campus to the clinic for the X-ray. It felt weird leaving the MTC and stepping into real civilization again. While waiting to cross at a stoplight, this guy on a bike saw my name tag and started speaking Spanish to me. I had no idea what he was saying. He then tried to get me to guess where he was from, and I didn’t want to accidentally say something offensive, so I just said I wasn’t going to guess. He then called me a failure for not guessing and rode off. It was a wild interaction, and Elder King and I were laughing about it for a while. I was happy to help Elder King because he’s a super cool guy with an interesting story, so I hope I see him around more on campus.

Thursday

In the morning, we went to the gym, which kind of sucks because there are only dumbbells. Also, my district likes to correct every single workout I do. People watching me lift weights is my least favorite thing, so lately, I’ve just been sticking with core and ab workouts. Peru will probably mess with my body anyway. It was a normal day, though—one of our teachers loves to share about her love life at the beginning of our classes. She makes some questionable choices, but it’s interesting to hear about.

Friday

This morning was really fun—we played sand volleyball. I was on the other team against Elder Holden and Elder Larson, who are the most competitive in our district. We were playing best of five: they won the first two, then we won the next two. In the last game, we had to stop early, but we were up 7-4, so we technically won overall. It felt so good to beat them. We then went to the indoor gym, which has a track, so I ran 2.5 miles and then played speed with another district. This district actually had a lot of people going to Peru, so it was a lot of fun talking with them. They were super cool people. I love our district, but sometimes they can be a little difficult, so it was sad knowing that that could’ve been my district if I’d come a week later. I’m grateful for what I have here, though—they’re still fun people.

TL;DR: Sat next to the speakers at the big devotional, helped an Elder get an X-ray, and had an overall basic week.

Spiritual thought: Read Mormon 9. It’s pretty sad but really good. Moroni sharing parts of his testimony is powerful.

Hope you guys have a good week. Thanks for listening!

-Elder Mitchell IV

Photos:

The squad

Up in front for the devotional

Shoutout to Logan Bishop—caught me in the wild while visiting the MTC

Cookies and gossip

Fine dining

The circle