More Q & A for Dana's benefit

I had just asked him about where they do haircuts at the MTC...

i just got my haircut today, they have a little barber shop in the basement of a building, you have to sign up for a haircut a week in advance.

So to continue the other list of questions:

 

On sundays we have sacrament in little chapels which are located in the main building and we have sacrament with our branch which consists of like 5 to 6 districts with similiar languages.

 

The only time i have to read letters is right before bedtime from 10:15 to 10:30

or basically P-day.

 

They have a gigantic cafeteria here, and theres three different choices of main dishes to

choose from everyday. They have pretty good apple juice but its nothing compared to the martinellis.

My favorite food so far here has been a smoked salmon soup. So good.

 

We do role playing all the time, so much to the extreme when we dont have a extra person to talk to we draw a picture of a person and tape it to the wall and talk to it, its hilarious to see the different pictures and to just see missionaries talking to a picture, but its amazing how seriously we take it at the same time.

Mail and PICTURES from MTC - February 25, 2011

Ola! Meu querida familia! e todo mundos!

It's been another week here at the MTC and I find myself all amazed that the love I have for the gospel keeps growing and how antsy I'm getting to leave the MTC.  Don't get me wrong, at the same time I don't want to leave because I know how much harder it's going to be in the field and how much of a blessing it is that I'm here.  I'm treasuring every moment.  At this time here in the laundry room it's always one of the worst and best times of the week, because the laundry room here is always a battle and race to claim an open washer and then you finally have some downtime to write letters, which is the good part, I guess.  I say I guess because a problem I have is figuring out what to say and remembering all the great things that have happened this week, because so many good things happen here.  I promise that in the field I will not miss any amazing stories.  I'm sorry I don't really have much to say this week again.

Portuguese is awesome, but its kind of frying my brain.  Besides all of the great little personal revelations I have received here, the two, probably most noteworthy things I can mention are from the weekly firesides on Sundays and the devotionals on Tuesdays.  Every fireside and devotional we usually get to hear from a general authority!  Sunday's fireside was so amazing, we had a musical theme.  Besides going to the temple on P-days, Sundays have to be my new favorite day of the week.  Anyway, the fireside musical was amazing!  The special speakers we were going to hear from that day were going to be Brother and Sister Nally, who are the special musical directors here at the MTC so go figure it turned out to be a musical fireside.  But anyway, to our surprise instead of taking turns speaking, they both got up together and shared the mic, I thought to myself, "can they do that?"  It was really cute and the message they told about the power and influence music has on us was truly remarkable.  One story that blew my mind that they told was about a battle in WWII.  So the British and the Germans were battle ready in their bunkers ready to unleash horror one Christmas eve night and all of a sudden, one soldier from one side started to sing "Silent Night" and on after another the soldiers started to sing together and the Germans started to put candles on the end of their guns and waved them around.  Then some soldiers started to get out of their bunkers and wander into no-man's land and they all gathered around each other and sung with arms around their shoulders.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing considering here are people who were ready to kill each other and a couple of minutes later they are like singing Kumbaya at a summer camp.  That's some serious power that music can have, especially with spiritual music and the spirit it can bring and in this case the power of Christ's love and joy in His birth and the unity it can bring to people.  The story went something like that and I want you guys to look it up because it is unbelievable. 

Besides that incredible story that was just the beginning to that meeting.  Next they gave us 2,000 missionaries the opportunity to choose our favorite hymns to sing together and share why that was their favorite hymn.  The put out some mics at the bottom of the bleachers.  We sang in this order 1) I Believe in Christ, 2) Come, Come Ye Saints, 3) Nearer My God to Thee, 4) If You Could Hie to Kolob - one of my new favorite hymns, 5) How Firm a Foundation, 6) God Be With You Til We Meet Again, 7) How Gentle God's Command, 8) O My Father.  The Spirit was so strong when we sang all those songs, and to top is all off, we did a special rendition of "Called to Serve."  Sister Nally had us sounding like a serious choir instead of just one mass, if you know what I mean, which doesn't sound bad, but for this rendition they put up special instructions on the two big projector screens in front of us.  For the first verse we started off real quiet, basically with each verse we got louder and at the end we were singing with such power and we all stood up at the same time on "King" in "Called to serve our King!!!"  She had us imagine as if we were Helaman's army coming over a hillside.  It was so powerful.  I seriously almost cried.  Since then I love musical firesides.  We sang that rendition again for the devotional Tuesday because the speaker heard it was so good.  That devotional was also really amazing, but I'm out of time and I wish I could tell you about it, just like all the amazing experiences I've had here. 

That Tuesday I also completed my electronic visa application! 

I continue to increase my faith in the power of prayer and continue to appreciate all of your love and support.  Please be aware of what music you listen to and how it makes you feel because of the influence it has.  Never doubt the power in prayer and please continue to show your faith and love for our Heavenly Father by appreciating His blessings for you and by helping others. 

I wish you all the very best and know that you are in my prayers.  Til next week!

Elder Howell

p.s. I will have some more pics coming soon.

First night in the MTC - new badges!

Andy's District

Some info from Andy about the day to day...

Note from Dana...a couple weeks ago, I sent a letter to Andy that included a list of a bazillion questions I had about what his life is like at at the MTC...here are a bunch of his answers:

I occasionally read the O Livro de Mormon whenever I can and I am able to understand most of it! My companion and I read during language study and try to translate every verse we read.

During personal study Im sad to admit I have fallen behind in Jesus the Christ but I try to read when I can becuase during Personal study I have started the BoM again becuase while Ive been here Ive learned a new way to read it and I need its influence in my day.

In companionship study we generally go over Preach my Gospel and Yes in Portuguese.

I do use my fast dry towel and I love it, it drys so fast!

Sister missionaries do go to the temple the same time we do but we are not allowed to participate in the prayer circle becuase we cant hold hands....

I sleep great! even without my pillow fort :)

P-days are on Fridays.

I see the Sloans and the other guys pretty often becuase the sloans and elder black are in my residence.

Oi todo mundos! como vai! Feb 18, 2011

I don't really have that much to say this week besides the fact that my testimony of faith and obediance and the power of prayer and of the Holy Ghost grows stronger every day, along with my anxiety and anticipation to get out in the field...and I have only been here three weeks!  I have to admit that after the 1st week at the MTC the excitement of "Oh, I'm finally a missionary at the MTC!  I can't believe this!" starts to sink in after being here 3 weeks.  Don't get me wrong I still get those moments of "wow, I"m a missionary" and one of my teachers Irmao Cannon says that will happen a lot during my mission haha, but I hate to say that I've felt discouraged and a loss of enthusiasm while being awake for 16 hours days (way longer than I used to be awake for) and going on 3-4 hour straight times of MDT (basically free study time).  It's hard to stay focused at times.  Lately I've been praying a lot for diligence and it's helped a ton.  Plus whenever I feel the Spirit, its like my energy bar is refueled, and my drive to learn is back.  Luckily I feel the Spirit here tons as well :) and luckily I have two of the greatest teachers in the world.  I always look forward to class time with Irmaos Porter and Cannon and whenever they bear their testimonies in Portuguese, I feel the Spirit so strongly.  A couple nights ago Irmao Porter bore his testimony on fe' (faith) and he just started tearing up and he got me going as well (I'm such a crybaby when I feel the Spirit).  I can't tell you exactly what he said, not because I couldn't understand him...it's because he was talking so fast, but I got the profound message he was trying to get across that faith is the foundation of our testimonies and of prayer.  There are countless examples of the importance of faith in the Book of Mormon, like Enos.

Also a recent example of having faith in the power of prayer was this week during TRC, which is the greatest practice for missionary work.  We first contact a random stranger through a door contact, then set up a lesson with them.  Then we try to teach this random person acting as an investigator about the gospel and the situations vary every week.  Well, before we were about to be assigned our investigators this week we found out that we didn't have enough volunteers in that day.  So our teacher told us to pray for someone to come and so we immediately did such and immediately after a bunch of people came in saying "um we're not scheduled to do this today, but we were bored and felt like we should come here."  It was amazing and just little things like that keep my testimony on prayer strong. 

Also on faith, Irmao Cannon said an awesome quote that I loved "Miracles won't happen for you if you don't believe in them, but if you do believe in them, they happen all the time."

We lost our District Leader this week.  He got his visa!  He left Wed. It was really sad to see Elder Harston go but it was great to see that visa's exist!  Your prayers are working, lots of Brazilian missionaries are getting their electronic visa confirmations!  Thank you so much for the prayers! Plz keep it up! I pray that everything is going well for you guys!  I love the MTC so much and the love that I feel from you guys and from the gospel and I love you all very much and wish you the best week!

Love,
Elder Howell