Week 3 in the MTC

Elder Sadler: Pictured back and center with his arms spread. Probably the funniest guy in our district, he hails from a rural town just south of Birmingham, Alabama. Just a good ole country boy. Dad, you would love talking to him, he's a hoot.

Elder Crippen: Front and center, crouched. Although he currently lives in Utah, he grew up surfing in Cali, and is a total Cali surfer dude. Always super relaxed, and wants nothing more than to chill on an island.

Elder Cuff: haha, what a dweeb.

Elder Jones: Pictured between myself and Elder Sadler, standing. Although a bit quiet, he's really the go to guy for vocabulary words and translation. He stresses about the language a bit, but I can see

that he's slowly relaxing about it. Overall amazing guy.

Elder Chab: Pictured far right, looking fly as can be. My companion, just a goofy guy who doesn't mind lowering his shoulder and going to work, what more can you ask for out of a companion? Nothing. Nothing is your answer.

Elder Davis: Not pictured, but took the picture with his old school Polaroid. You'll hear about him in the rest of the post. Although a bit unconfident, he's got an amazing heart, works his tail off, masterfully handles the piano, and is fluent in French. Super great sense of style too, the guy never looks bad.

Elder Davis, owner of the old school polaroid!

So. Much. Food. And maybe 2% of it was actually ours before all the Dai-Senpai left, the rest is their leftovers. But we have 4 boxes of Oreos so I can't complain.

Mom insert: Above are the pics and the captions Eric Elder Cuff sent with them. Below is his letter.

FOR THE BLOG: First off, HUGE shout out to Veronica! Those cookies were fantastic, you Da Bomb! Except they called me from the residence hall at night to come pick it up from the front desk, they did it over the intercom, while I was showering. So that was a wild night. 

Thursday: Honestly, just another day in the neighborhood, we went to class, ate food, and laughed a little. Nothing special or commendable really happened, which was really weird. Except for one minor detail, I had a head cold, but it wasn't anything I was worried about, took some meds and a good amount of Vitamin C. 

Friday: Woke up with a fever, and had to back out of class. Turns out that same morning Elder Davis woke up vomiting, so he was my buddy at the residence hall for the day. Elder Davis is absolutely amazing, he's picked up the language faster than anyone, and it helps that he's already fluent in French. He's a classically trained competitive Pianist, and he is GOOD. He plays those big classical epics, and he's played through the hymn book enough times to have a majority of those songs memorized, if not, he can sight read them perfectly fine. It's insane, and he's got some amazing fingers, he plays so smooth. So it was nice to have some music while being sick, and he was able to relieve some stress. I miss music (And my dogs), music is strictly prohibited at the MTC, so choir and Elder Davis practicing is the only release I've got. 

Saturday: I'm back, and conference is starting. But time is nearing for the Dai-Senpai to leave for Japan. What's Dai Senpai? I'm glad you asked. So every 3 weeks a new batch of Japanese elders arrive at the MTC, we're here for 9 weeks. The new guys are Kohai, the guys who have been here for 3 weeks are Senpai, and the guys who have been here for 6 weeks are Dai-Senpai. The senpai kind've kept to themselves, but the Dai-Senpai really reached out to us Kohai and we became real close. So to reward us for being fun guys, they gave us all their food since they couldn't take any to Japan (They flew out early Monday morning). Anyway I'm on a tangent, it was sad to see them leave, and besides all the Dai-Senpai, over 700 other missionaries around the MTC left that same day, so this place has turned into a bit of a Ghost Town. I always love Uchdorf's talks.

Sunday: BEST. DAY. EVER. First off, I'm no longer sick, so it became a lot easier to pay attention to conference, and I didn't fall asleep, unlike half of the MTC. Also, turns out Elder Yamashita was our teachers (Brother Strauss) mission president when he served in Nagoya. And our teacher knew the guy with the prosthetic leg, who I guess is the nicest guy on the planet. The entire day was awesome, and it was fun watching and listening to the MTC General Conference Choir, a lot of people we knew were in there so we were constantly pointing out friends when it showed the choir. But listening was the best part, man it was pretty. Then Sunday night after priesthood we had a devotional, so here I am not wanting to here anyone talk considering I had been in the gym listening to guys talk for 6 hours. Well that works out, cause our devotional was a performance/devotional from Vocal Point. All of them RM's, and between songs they each spoke to us about missionary work, and other doctrinal topics. It was also the last night for the Dai-Senpai, so there was a bitter sweet feeling in the residence hall. Spiritually, I was spilling everywhere, my cup was more than full.

Monday: Well now our residence hall was full of food that the Dai-Senpai gave us (Seriously, Don't send anymore food) And we're back in class. We taught 2 different lessons that day, one was with a returned missionary who went inactive, and the other was with and investigator who comes from a buddhist family but doesn't have a belief. The Japanese is flying, for the first time, we were able to answer questions without having to use a bunch of translated phrases. It came straight from our mouths, forming our own sentences. Which is hard to do cause the grammar is completely backwards, and most the time you don't need a subject in a sentence which you always need in English. Most the time it's implied, it's a very implied language. But we did it! The investigator lessons are becoming less of a hassle as it gets easier to communicate. 

Tuesday: Tuesday FLEW. It was seriously the fastest day to ever occur at the MTC, we only had one class black, so the majority of the day was study time. Myself and some of the other elders have been working on getting a head start in reading and writing Kanji, which are the crazy chinese characters. So we've been having races and competitions in reading and writing kanji, which really helps the learning process. We also found out that if you hold you missionary name tag just right, you can turn it into a kazoo. So we started making motorcycle noises and ran around the MTC. We regret starting it, because now a lot of elders around the MTC run around making motorcycle noises with their name tags, which is funny until you're trying to study. Then it's just annoying. Also we had a devotional with the Relief Society General President, Sister Burton. but the talk I really liked was her husbands who mentions "Scraping away the world as a missionary." Which is the best thing ever, life as a missionary is so simple. Difficult? Sure. But simple none the less.