Jared 11/29/10

Jared's second letter from the MTC

Oh hey! Now i get lots of stuff!
Umm, I dont care about you posting my stuff online. Oh yeah i did see Bradon, that was nice, and I also saw Michael Neilson which was also way cool. Andre coming was a big deal, but I doubt it had much impact. I had invited him on facebook and asked his mother to invite him as well, and it worked :)
So everything is great here. Chinese is crazy, I love it. For thanksgiving, Elder Holland came, which was AMAZING. The spirit was so strong, but every day the spirit is super strong, so thats not really saying much. Days are kind of starting to fly by now. When I write in my journal at night, I often forget what happened today, and what happened other days. I also dont quite remember what I've written to people, but this week I got a ton of letters (4 from my family alone) which was super exciting :)
A few of you asked some questions about what I do all day, I'll offer a quick review.
Wake up at 6:30 (out of bed by 6:40 :P (drives my roomates nuts, even though I still get ready before them))
personal study 7-8
breakfast till 9
generally class/companionship study from 9 to 1.
sometime between 1:45ish and 6 we generally have class, companionship study, language study, sometimes gym.
6 o'clock is dinner.
After dinner we teach our investigators normally, have time thats more discresionary (you choose with your companion what you will studying. Often the recommended activity is computer lab where we practice and learn chinese.)
Then after all that at 9 we plan, discuss what our goals were, and whether or not we met them, and plan for the next day (aka copy our given schedules into our planner)
On sundays and tuesday nights we get firesides which you learn a ton at :)
Some other questions you had:
My district is me the three elders I room with (one being my companion elder Mohr) and 3 sisters. The way you can think about it is its pretty much my class, that does everything together. My zone is much larger (all the chinese speaking elders) that have rooms next to us and we generally go to the temple, and firesides with. (although firesides include every missionary at the MTC, we try to sit as a zone.)
Natalie - will say the same thing I said before I left, Chinese 5 is amazing, and its a curved GPA :D
Girlies - Of course AP eauro is hard. I feel little sympathy :P
Yeah I've heard Harry Potter has an inappropriate scene in it, and I'm not sure if i like the implication of not only my lil sisters seeing such scene twice, and even less enjoy the implication of them dating Dirk. Not okay, never okay :P
So did you know Mormons in Northern California say "hecka"?lawls right? My companion said it once and I just laughed. My roomates are all super chill. Although none of them have girls back home, so we don't ever really talk about that haha.
Happy thanksgiving!!!
It was super delicious here. We got a feast for lunch, and a sack dinner :P We got to do a way cool service project though, where we made backpacks for underpriveledged people :) (I doubt I spelt that right, but I dont care, I speak Chinese now) We also got to watch a movie about a catholic preacher who converts to Mormonism, which was super old. Good story, just super old. Oh for our sack lunch dinner, it was really cool, cuz we all got together as a zone and shared what we were thankful for :) It was hilarious though, because my roomate was baring his testimony and Elder Youse barged out of his room and said "If you give a Youse a cookie!" I thought it was a clever joke, but you know maybe not the most appropriate timing :P
So it snows here like all the time... and it's super cold. Everyone else is like "Oh this is nothing" and I'm dying... It was super exciting the first day it snowed tho, I had dreams of building snowmen, and making snow angels, and then the next meeting our leader said "No building snowmen, or making snow angels." So now it's just cold. Although I still enjoy watching it fall and make everything serene, I'm sure I'll get sick of it soon enough :P
So fro Christmas, I would like a CTR ring in Chinese (I have no idea where you'd get those) and I think I'm going to use your card to buy a better memory chip for my camera (right now it holds like 10 pictures...) so thats no good. I'm not quite sure what else I would like, but I'll let you know :)
I love the work up here, but I just really want to go to Taiwan. Oh hey fun fact, if you're an assistant to the president during a Area conference supposedly you get to go to Hong Kong. New goal right there! Alright love you :)
And writing Dear elder is definitely more convenient, because I only get a half hour on the computer, and it'd be nice to not use it reading something I could have by other means :) Oh hey so supposedly I get to call you the day I leave for Taiwan which is pretty cool. Didnt know about that.
Love you family!
(Mom it's your discression what you want to put on your website)
(Fun fact: Missionaries cannot hold hands with girls, ever. This includes temple services. Oh and yes you can get haircuts here, I'm getting one today in like a half hour :)