Getting off the Bus
Heyyyyy everyone, I hope you all had a great week! Because it's been amazing out here at the MTC (Missionary Training Center).
Our schedule for the most part is pretty consistent, we wake up at 6:30 (which is a little rough but I'm getting used to it), exercise for an hour, get ready for the day (which means being in a shirt, tie and dress pants, get some breakfast, have 2 hours of scripture study which basically means reading the Bible, Book of Mormon, or any other books/ texts that help us learn, or grow closer to God, then we have lunch, and then class starts. We normally have class for anywhere from 4-9 hours just depending on what our teacher wants us to do. Since I'm learning Spanish, my teacher only talks in Spanish and if we don't understand what he's saying you have to ask in a way that allows him to answer using words that you do understand. Hahaha it's a little tough but hearing only Spanish has helped a lot and even though it's only been 7 days I can definitely feel my Spanish improving. My comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation and sentence fluency has slowly been getting better each day, and I know that I'm not doing it alone. God is 100% blessing me to focus longer, study harder and bless me to remember more easily. I took Spanish for 6 years and can honestly say that in the past 7 days I've learned more Spanish than I did taking it from 5th-10th grade. Kinda crazy right? Then after class is over we head back to our rooms where we have about an hour to change, get ready for bed, read letters and write in our journals. Then it's lights out at 10:30.
Anyway I love it here. You can't walk 5 minutes without seeing another BYU kid which makes it soooooooo much fun. It seriously just felt like I'm gone home. I'm sitting down writing this next to one of my good friends from BYU (shout out to Baylie), I live next door to a kid who lived in my hall at BYU (shout out to Pavel), the first day in the opening meeting, I kid who was in my orientation group performed a musical number, a girl in my ward got interviewed and a kid in my writing class gave the closing prayer. The MTC may have a lot of people but man does it seem small.
Something my older brother Mitchell (who served his mission in LA) told me before I left was that the mission is a sprint. But since I'm more of a distance runner I simply responded, "ehhh I'm, more comfortable with making it a three mile (or 5k)" So that's what I'm going to do. While I've learned that there definitely is some truth to the mission being a sprint it's easier for me to compare it to then a 3 mile race. And this week I just got off the bus. I stepped off the bus and finally got to the course (or MTC), I got that nervous, yet extremely excited feeling as I started walking around, slowly taking in my surroundings as I realized what the next day (or two years) is going to be like. I walked around a little bit, took a few deep breathes, but really have only just begun to take in the task at hand. I've worked hard to get to this point, I have to trust in what I've done and what's gotten me to this point, but I'm ready and excited to take on this race (errrr uhh mission) and run as fast as I can for as long as it takes to reach the finish line .
There's a lot of work still ahead I know that, but if this first week has been any indication, it's going to be long, it's not going to be easy or always fun and exciting. There's going to be distractions (like the Cavs coming back from down 3-1 in the finals to beat the Warriors and me not going to get to watch it ughhhh) But man I know it's going to be worth it.
To leave you guys on a spiritual note, because ya know that's what I'm going to be focusing on for the next two years I wanna share quickly what we learned from an Elder Bednar talk we watched (which is only available at the MTC) called the Character of Christ. Elder Bednar is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (think of him as a very high up, church leader) and in his talk he called us all out, multiple times and to put it simply roasted us (in the most loving way of course). He told us our mission isn't about us, we can't be successful missionaries if we're selfish, or think inwardly. We need to follow the example of Christ and think outwardly. He challenged us to read about, think about and ultimately act in a way that we think Christ would have. And if we can do that, then we'll be the missionaries we need to be.
Love you all, and I hope you guys have a good week,
Elder Merrill
P.S. Just in case you missed my last email, I'm sending this to everyone, but this is the only email I'm going to do that. The rest will be posted here: http://eldernickmerrill.wix.com/scottsdale on my blog by a member of my family. If you like the weekly email setup, feel free to subscribe to the blog and you'll get an email whenever it's updated.
Thanks for all of your emails, letters and prayers. I've truly felt loved during my first week here and want to continue to hear from everyone.