08-25-09

I am doing great. I have had a great week, it is hard to believe that I have already been here for three weeks! The time is flying by. The Spanish is still coming along. I have learned a lot in the last week. My teachers are great. Today I got to go to the temple, and that was great. On Sunday we got to participate in the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple Dedication, it is near Salt Lake. That was a great experience. It was in the gym building, where we have the devotionals and firesides. President Monson, President Erying, and Russel M. Ballard were the last three speakers. It was nice to see the Elders keeping quiet in the 45 minutes we had to sit waiting before the temple dedication started. It was dead silent, which is a nice change because before the firesides and devotional it can get pretty loud in there. If we didn't sing hymns for the last 15 minutes before firesides started then it would not be as spiritual of an experience. That Sunday night we had a devotional from the main director at the MTC. I forget what his title is, but he runs the food and basically all the parts of the MTC. He gave a great devotional. He produced all of the Mormon commercials like "Family - Don't You Think its About Time." He showed us a lot of the commercials that had run over the years and they all tied together. It was really great. The message was to not give up when you are feeling down, but to listen to the part of you on the inside that says "keep going." Christ tells us to keep going. Tonight we get to have another fireside. We haven't had any apostles yet, just members of the Seventy, church leaders in different departments, and other MTC people. They have all been amazing though.

Thank you all for writing to me. I love hearing from you.