Mission Map (Week #6)

My Mission President and His Wife (week #4)

Dear Brother and Sister Flynn,

   Your son has arrived at the Mission Home, has been well fed, and will sleep there or at the home of a nearby member who loves to pamper our missionaries.  Attached, as “proof of life” is a snapshot of your tired but excited missionary with President and Sister Strong.  Tomorrow morning, he will receive his (prayerfully considered) first assignment, then one of the mission vans will transport him to his first location!  He will be able to email you on Monday with his new address.  Let me reassure you that President Strong assigns his best missionaries as trainers, so your son will have a cream-of-the-crop companion.

   

MTC pictures (week #3)

I am leaving to Arkansas tomorrow. Today, I am doing laundry and packing. I haven't mentioned it yet in my other emails, but it has snowed a lot last week, and there is snow everywhere that has not yet melted. For the frst and second or so week while being here, it snowed almost every day and possibly every night. Some of the flakes were huge. My favorite snow day, I think, was on either the third or second Sunday. All the missionaries went to attend mission conference (stake conference for missionaries) in the gymnasium. On the way out, we were returning to our class rooms and there was a long line of branch presidents and their wives along with hundreds of missionaries walking towards T4, one of the main buildings. Many of them had pitch black umbrellas up against the snowflakes which were falling very rapidly. Everyone was kind of a blur with all the snow falling. It looked pretty fantastic. 

There are two new mission training buildings, and they are very modern architecturally speaking, and they are great places to learn and study. The rooms inside let in lots of light and there are ponder spaces located all over the buildings. Some of the ponder spaces have music boxes that play soothing rearranged instrumental hymns for you to listen to while you study. There are six floors in each building. There are also giant murals on the walls. The murals are snapshots taken from church films. I suspect some of them come from the new Book of Mormon movies coming out.

In T3 though, you can only go to floor three.T3 is for workshops and helping people who don't know about the Gospel.

I can't wait to meet the mission president. Here are some pictures:

Experiences at the MTC (weeks #2 and #1)

I have started to overcome the effects of the food at the MTC.  The food is not bad food, it is just not why I am used to. 

How did you find out that the guest speaker for Christmas was David Archuleta? He was actually pretty good. He can definitely sing. 

This last week was the toughest for me. My companion and I are Zone Leaders now. We just welcomed a new district of 12 missionaries. Tomorrow we have to welcome and orient 24 new missionaries so in total we will have 3 districts on our hands. Elder Cantrell and I don't know exactly how we are going to manage it all. We can barely get ready for our TRC people, which are people who come to the MTCto investigate the Church. 

Our branch president is amazing. He is very much like an old hardened war general. He doesn't have the use of his right eye. He is very clear and direct when he speaks, but he isn't offensive or rough. He is a go getter type of person and he likes to get stuff done. The branch presidency in totality has the same vision.

My travel arrangements have come in for heading to Arkansas. There is no direct route to Bentonville, so all the missionaries flying there have to fly first to Atlanta and then to Fayetteville which I think is in Missouri but I have to check again. Fayetteville is where Elder Bednar lived for twenty or so years. Elder Bednar was actually the stake president there. 

There are actually lots of missionaries heading to Arkansas for some reason. The district in the classroom in T4 next door are all headed there and there are 12 of them or something like that. Three companionships from my districts are headed to Arkansas. There are more than that total going through. I just haven't seen them yet.

There are missionaries going all over though

Canada

Georgia/Armenia

Russia

Thailand

Japan

South Korea

Tahiti

Figi

Cayman Islands

Madagascar

Romania

Italy

Great Britain

Hong Kong

Starting from the top more missionaries in large groups are going to those places. This is based on what I have observed while at the MTC. It may or may not be accurate, but in general, there seem to be lots of missionaries going to Russia and Japan and Asia in general. 

I was able to meet some missionaries going to Italy. They taught me that saying thank you in Italian is "prego" I think. At the MTC, the teachers are very diverse. There are teachers orginiginally from Europe, Asia, and particularly from Brazil. Anyways though, I met a teacher who served his mission in Jacksonville. He asked how things were going and he wanted to come back to visit after I described what changed to him. Most of the teachers are young BYU students who have already served missions. 

I went to the Provo temple today. I don' t like the exterior very much but the interior was very impressive. The inside is huge and the rooms are very spacious and well adorned. There are lots of stairs and rooms. It's loaded with incredible paintings and other forms if art. It's also circular which is strange but unique and it is stock full of sealing rooms. Tons of them. I know because my companion and I accidentally got lost on our way out.

Here is a surprise for you. Go to an endowment session as soon as you can. You'll see what I mean. 

The MTC presidency is changing out today. We got to meet with them at the temple. It's possible that another apostle could be coming tonight, but I doubt it. It's probably a seventy (or the prophet). 

One of the Elders in my zone is a distant relative to Mitt Romney: Elder Romney- that's his name. He looks almost like Mitt Romney too. 

Till next P- day,

Elder Flynn

Leaving to SLC early on a Wednesday Morning