Week 16

Hey!

Man its been a weird week. It has not stopped snowing since last Tuesday. Seriously, it has been ridiculous. We have gotten at least 3 feet of snow and driving in it totally stinks. Anyway, Tuesday was a normal day, we checked in on Chuck and visited a few other people, and then we had exchanges starting that night so I was with Elder Stapley. Then on Wednesday afternoon my companion Elder Lewis was told that he was supposed to go to a mission leadership training meeting up near Rochester, so he was picked up by the zone leaders and I went with Elder Stapley and Elder Allred to Arcade.

Elder Lewis was supposed to get back on Thursday but because of the snow he couldn’t come until Friday, so I was down in Arcade from Wednesday afternoon to Friday afternoon just going around with the other elders. Elder Lewis and I got back to Springville at around noon on Friday and it was just dumping snow outside, so we walked around with shovels looking for people who needed help shoveling their driveways, which actually worked out really well and we found a couple people that said we could come back. It's nice because people can't tell us to go away when we are shoveling their driveway for them, so they pretty much have to listen to us.

Saturday was like that too, then on Sunday we went up to the stake Christmas concert. We rode up with a lady in our branch, and we went 30 mph the whole time because it was snowing pretty bad, and there was also lightning, which was super cool because it would reflect off the snow. Weird stuff. The stake Christmas concert consisted of a musical number from every ward choir in the stake. Lets just say the concert was….inspirational. It left me craving some yl 4^th ward choir. The last musical number in the concert was supposed to be by the Cattaraugus branch, but no one showed up except the pianist and the chorister, so the four elders serving down there had to get up and sing a song in front of the stake that they have never even heard of, after 30 seconds of preparation. It was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen. We know the Cattaraugus elders really well and they were sitting right in front of us when they were told that they had to get up and sing. I think the song was “Still a Bach Christmas” or something like that. Anyway, I think that’s it for this week. CYA!

Love, Elder Holt 

Winter Storm

                          

Icicles

                                                   

Week 15

Yo,

So this week was pretty slow. We had all of our appointments either cancel or just not answer the door, except for our one lesson with Chuck. That went well, at least we think. We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and he absorbed it all, but he needs a few days to organize it in his brain. He had never even considered that there was something before this life so he was thinking about that a lot. He didn’t disagree with any of it, he just needs time to think about it and re-read the pamphlet we gave him. Yah, so that was good.

Oh and the sweetest thing we did this week was on Wednesday night. A couple months back we met a guy at the park when we had our basketball night, and he invited us to play on Wednesday nights at his Methodist church, so we went and it was awesome. There were a lot of people there and they were all cool, and wondering why we had nametags on and stuff. We had a good game so now they like us, so we’re probably gonna keep going back and try to talk to more guys. It was nice because me and Elder Lewis were both craving to play, because its been snowing and we haven’t been able to do anything outside lately.

We were also hoping that Chuck and Marie would be able to make it to the Christmas devotional last night but both of them canceled. Its all good though. This week should be good. We plan on doing some tracting in the snow so that people feel sympathy for us. Last time we went tracting it was me, Elder Lewis, and Elder Klumker, and we were switching off every door, and Elder Lewis and Klumker kept on getting the nicest old ladies that would come out and talk, and every time I knocked on the door I got some weird old bearded guy that would just tell me to go away. Seriously, every door I knocked on. It was annoying but also pretty funny. Anyway, I can’t think of anything else worth mentioning. Oh! I was able to weigh myself at a members house this week, which I haven’t been able to do in like 2 months, and I have gained 3 whole pounds since I came out on my mission. I'm pretty sure its all gone to my thighs. Anyway, have a great week everybody!

Love Elder Holt   

Week 14

Hey everybody!

So I spent so much time attaching the pictures, now I don't have too much time for this letter.  Transfer calls were yesterday and I'll be staying in Springville along with Elder Lewis, but my other companion Elder Klumker got transferred to Buffalo. It's lame because we thought we were going to stay a trio because one of the AP's mentioned we wouldn't be moved, but I guess not.
So now it's just me and Elder Lewis in Springville. This week was good, but slow because it snowed for 3 days straight, so it was tough getting places.

Thanksgiving was awesome though! We went to the Owen's, a really great family. It was just different because it wasn't a Thanksgiving I'm used too, but it was still really good. I ate a lot.

Alright, gotta go. C YA

Love, Elder Holt

Elder Knudson and I dressed up as each other for the Branch Halloween Trunk or Treat.

The is the barn across the street from the 2nd Joseph Smith Home that they used to separate the wheat and other stuff.

Entrance into the Sacred Grove

Week 13

Hello Familia,

 

It's been snowing out the wazoo out here. Well, not that much, but all the roads were covered and we’re supposed to get more tonight. Its good. I'm the designated driver right now so my companion’s lives are in my hands. Anyway, this week was good as always.

 

Tuesday was awesome because we went up with Christian to the sacred sites. We had the tour of the Joseph Smith home and then went into the Sacred grove for a little bit which is always an awesome experience. It's really nice because when we go into the Sacred grove we are allowed to separate and go off on our own, so it’s the only chance I have on my mission to be alone and think. I also got lost in there because all the leaves were covering the trail and I didn’t know where I was going. After that we went to the Hill Cumorah visitors center and watched The Restoration movie.

 

Christian’s vaporizer broke in the morning, so he had to go all day without smoking it and he’s addicted to it so he was in a bad mood most of the day. He didn’t have the experience we were hoping he would have, but it was still good. Oh and we went to Nimas after, which is this pizza place that all the missionaries like to go to because they have calzones the size of my upper body that are really good.

 

The rest of the week was good. Chuck was especially awesome. We taught him the Restoration, and after he talked about how he was initially only curious in the Book of Mormon but now he’s starting to feel something. He’s a really smart guy and gets a lot out of the reading, and he’s really interested in going to see the sacred sites as well so we might do that soon. It's really sweet to have the Sacred grove so accessible for investigators, and after taking Christian we want to start inviting our other investigators to go too.

 

Also we visited with Marie a couple times this week. She bakes all the time so we asked her to teach us how to bake pastries, so we went over on Friday and spent a couple hours baking stuff. It was really fun, and we were able to watch the Restoration video with her which she liked. She also said she would read a chapter we left with her in the Book of Mormon so that’s awesome too. Chuck and Marie were the two highlights of the week pretty much. Nothing really happened with our other investigators.

 

On Saturday the 2 other elders in our district had a baptism. That was really cool for the branch. Her name is Olivia and I think shes 17. She might be 18 though. Anyway, she got baptized and her mom will probably be baptized soon too, so that’s cool.

 

Oh and rumor has it (President Francis told us) that we are all going to get “digital devices” (ipads) pretty soon. That’s gonna be awesome because we will be able to whip out videos in the middle of a lesson, and whats even sweeter is that our area book and planners will be on there, so all we have to do is type in information about our investigators instead of getting the huge binder out and dealing with all the paperwork in there. Seriously its gonna make everything like 20 times easier.

 

Alright well that’s it. BYE. Oh and heres a scripture I liked from this week

2 Nephi 28:24 “Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion”

 

Love,

Elder Holt 

Week 12

Yo,

 

So it's officially open season out here. Saturday opened rifle hunting, so everyone around here was out in the forest on Saturday. Seriously everyone. Actually everyone that had a beard was out. You can tell who the hunters are because they all have thick gross beards. They think they are all really tough just because they look like the guys on Duck Dynasty. Everyone loves that show out here. Another thing about hunters is that they will not hold a conversation with another human  being if that human being does not hunt. Here’s how most of my conversations with men go around here.

 

Me: How's it going?

 

Bearded guy: Alright. Just went hunting today.

 

Me: Cool

 

Bearded guy: You like to hunt?

 

Me: No

 

Bearded guy: ……

 

They will then proceed to not talk to me and/or say condescending things to me (“do you even know what a 6 point is”) as if my only purpose in life is to take up space. Its fun.

 

Anyway, this week was really packed with stuff. We combined our areas because we are a temporary trio, so we had a lot of people to see this week. Everyday from Tuesday to Saturday was stacked. We had to skip dinner a couple times too. It was the most fun week of my mission that's for sure. I didn't think that I would ever be that busy.  I can't really pick out what we did on each day because its kind of a blur. The investigators that we inherited from Elder Klumker are Christian, Ray, Denny, Stanley and Dorothy, and the Dispenzas. Christian is the guy that I mentioned like 7 emails ago that had the drug problems.  He’s doing alright. He still is trying to get off alcohol, and he’s waiting to see if he can get approved for detox. He came to Stake Conference with us yesterday though so that was good. We’re really excited for Tuesday because we’re going to go to Palmyra and see all the Sacred sites with him. Its going to be sweet.

 

I’ll talk about everyone else as I get to know them. Nothing new happened with any of the investigators that I've mentioned before. I don’t really know what else to tell you. It snowed this week. Now its all melted. I can’t really think of anything else that was interesting this week. We had stuff to do but nothing noteworthy happened.

 

Oh, I forgot to put this in last week but we had zone conference 2 weeks ago and President Francis told us this really funny story. He was telling us how he always dreamed of dunking in a basketball game and all through high school he never did. Then it was his last game of the season against their rival, and he was like “so I got the ball on a fast break with 30 seconds left, and I was going to the hoop and there was a defender coming on-AND THEN I DUNKED IT!!! YAHHHH!!!” He screamed it so loud out of nowhere and had this terrifying look on his face, ha, ha. It was so funny but we were all trying not to laugh that hard because we were still in the chapel, but it was so funny. I love President Francis.

 

Alright well have a good week everybody.

Love, Elder Holt

Week 11

Hey People!

 

Yesterday was Veterans day so we couldn’t write, but The Owens had all their kids off from school and they were going to the “National Museum of play” up in Rochester so we went with them. They have a 15 passenger van so the 6 elders in our district went up with them. It was pretty fun, except by national museum of play, they literally mean national MUSEUM of play. They had things to do, but most of the time I was looking at toys I wanted to play with that were tightly secured in glass cases, and then they had a bunch of signs all over the museum that said “learning IS playing!” to rub in how much you weren’t playing. It actually was pretty fun though and there were some interesting exhibits.

 

Anyway, things have been changed up again, except this time it was in the middle of the transfer so it was really unexpected. We had Zone conference on Friday and after that President Francis pulled the four of us that live in Springville aside, and then he pointed at me, Elder Lewis, and Elder Klumker and said “starting Monday you guys are gonna be in a trio, and Elder Knudson you’re being transferred to Amherst.” Apparently an elder that is going home at the end of this transfer has to leave 3 weeks early for military reasons, so Knudson's going there and that leaves the 3 of us in Springville. So now that we’re with Elder Klumker we now have 10 investigators that we’ll have to plan around, which is pretty funny because on Thursday Elder Lewis had suggested that we should fast for opportunities to teach more people, so we did, and then the next day we inherited Klumkers 7 investigators. Besides that this week was pretty normal. On Tuesday we had service, on Wednesday we had service, and then Thursday we finally got to see Joe and Amanda. I don’t know if I've mentioned them, but they are a couple that live downstairs in our complex and have a 3 month old baby. We met them a few weeks ago and they said we could come by, so we went down there and we got to know them, and then we left them with a Book of Mormon and we’re coming back this week to talk more about it. They’re pretty cool so I'm excited to meet with them.

 

Friday we had Zone conference which was sweet. I love having President Francis as a Mission President. I love Zone conferences, and hearing what he has prepared. On Saturday we pretty much just tracted and tried to go see people that said we could come back from previous tracting, but nobody was interested. This week will be really interesting though because it will be packed with seeing people. It will also be weird because we’re only gonna be in a trio for 3 weeks, and then we will probably get another elder in Springville so it will be interesting to see how all of that works out.

 

It snowed last night, about 5-6 inches. I think it's here to stay.

 

Alright well I hope everyone is doing well. Letters are welcome around 100% the time.

 

Love, Elder Holt     

Week 10

Hey everybody!

So this is gonna be really short because nothing happened this week. We did service all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then I got sick on Saturday so we couldn't do much. Our service has just been more chopping wood, doesn't get much better than that.

 

We couldn't meet with JP this week. We met with Chuck, but he didn't read so we have another appointment next week. Marie fed us food and we left her a Book of Mormon, and Ed moved to Florida so he's way gone. The missionaries there will get a good referral. So that's it.  

 

Halloween was fun though. The night before we had 'trunk or treat' and it was a really good turn out.

 

Alright well gotta go. I am fully aware that this email was kind of lame. 

 

Love,

Elder Holt

 

 

Week 9

Hey People!

This week was good. It was a little weird at first because I suddenly had to plan everything with my new companion, but its normal now. My companion is a really good missionary, I've learned a lot from him so far. I don't think I have too much to report though.

 

We went and saw JP again. It was exactly the same as every other visit has been with him lately. He did agree to read the Book of Mormon, if we read the New Testament though. Its funny because he's  trying to convince us that the Bible is true and we're like, yah we know. We'll read the New Testament if it gets him to read the Book of Mormon. Our other investigator, Ed has been stuck in some other city because his van broke down. We couldn't see him all week which was a bummer because I was really excited to meet with him. Hopefully he can make it home this week.

 

We also met with out investigator Chuck. I don't know if I told you guys about Chuck, but he owns an antique shop, and for months he's told the missionaries that he would read the Book of Mormon "when he has time". We were finally able to get an appointment with him to read, but he had already read 10 pages and just asked questions the whole time. It was great because he apparently has two history degrees or something and he kept on saying "its amazing how much this just makes sense and fits in with history". It's funny because thats the first thing he noticed when people usually wont pick it up at all because they think its historically inaccurate. He really likes reading it so far and he wants to read more and then have us come back to ask questions. I'm excited about him. Oh also, we met this lady tracting a few weeks ago. her name is Marie, and she said that she didn't want us to "preach" to her, but she said we can come back to see if she needs any service. Well we went back this week, and she weirdly invited us in and fed us these danishes she was making and gave us milk, and then invited us back for pies on Friday. We were a little weirded out because we thought we might have a Hansel and Gretel situation on our hands, but it turns out she is just ridiculously nice. she really likes having us over and she's also becoming more curious about us so thats great. Besides that we just did service and did normal missionary stuff. It snowed this week so that wasn't cool. 

 

Alright BYE

Elder Holt

Week 8

Hello family, friends, and other people,

SOOOO Big news. My companion was just called to be a zone leader, and he was only 6 weeks into training me. I'm pretty sad about it since it was really unexpected and I really like him, and also he was training me so I'll have to figure out how to function without him. I'm getting a new companion and he'll have to finish training me, but he's never been in this area so I guess I kind of have to lead for a few days. That will be weird. 

 

Anyways, I just got back from playing 27 holes of golf with 3 other elders. They had a deal where it was 20 bucks for unlimited golf with a cart, so of course I was going to spend the rest of my money for the month to play. It was pretty fun, except it was the worst round of golf of my life.

 

So last week was fast. We did more service, like painting and mowing and raking, we saw JP for like 15 minutes in his shop and he once again just went and talked to his pastor about everything he told us and then got a world religions book so he could read about Mormons. Its like he's doing everything to learn about Mormons and find out what we believe except reading the Book of Mormon. We have another "Bible study" (thats what he calls it) scheduled with him on Wednesday so we plan on going over the restoration again and then re-encouraging him to read the Book of Mormon. We also went over the Ed's once. We did some service for him too and I think he said we can teach him a lesson this week so we'll do that too.

 

So after we saw Ed last week, Elder Allen wanted to go see a less active lady that lived near by. She is old and hasn't been seen in a while, so we went to the address and as we pulled into the drive way we saw four really angry looking pitbulls chained up to various parts of the house. We both screamed "nope!" and then drove away. We called her house though and her number had been taken by someone else so we don't know what happened to her. 

 

So I think that's about all the interesting news from this week. I wish I had more to tell you, but I can't really think of anything else. Anyways, I love everybody, and don't be shy to write me a letter, physical letters are fun. K BYE

 

Elder Holt

Week 7

OY!

So myldsmail.net wasn't working for the first half hour of my writing time today, so I'm pretty much out of time. I'll try to write a good letter next week though! We had a lesson with JP about the plan of salvation and it went pretty good. He's still stuck on some stuff with his religion though. We'll see where he goes, we basically just said, "stop googling stuff and pray about it" so hopefully he does. We have a new investigator whos name is Ed. We were driving to someones house for dinner, and we had all 4 elders in the car, and we saw someone on the side of the road and it looked like he was having car troubles. We pulled over and he was just checking his oil for some reason, but he's a really sensitive guy and was grateful that we stopped. He said we could come visit with him, so Elder Allen and I went over there on Friday. He's a really lonely guy with health problems. he said he's open to new ideas though so he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and we thought he would come to church on Sunday, but he couldn't make it. Anyways I gotta go, but everyone should watch this video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5FxdCgD-qI

Alright till next week!

Love Elder Holt

 

Week 6

Hey Everybody!

Once again, uneventful week. Conference was sweet, though! I loved it. It was the quickest GC of my life because I was so into it and it just flew by. I got so much out of it. Everything is going great.

We mostly did a lot of service this week and we went back to talk to JP. He didn't read but he said we can set up appointments with him right when he closes his barber shop so that's great!

I'm cutting it short this week because time is low and I want to attach these pictures.

Elder Bailey, me, and Elder Hart in front of the Provo Temple. (While still at the MTC) It was sunny so we were squinting.

Elder Hodson and I (one of my best friends in the MTC)

The is the view from the deck of one our our branch members homes. It's fall so everything is colorful. (Springville, NY)

Our sick risk game we played today.

 Alright, I love everybody,

Elder Holt

Week 5

HEY Everybody!

Weird week. Not a lot going on. I actually don't remember a lot of it. We had days taken up with service and we had a specialized training meeting that took all day too. We went back to JP, the barber shop guy, and we thought that a good way to get more comfortable with him would be for me to pay him to cut my hair. So I paid him 16 bucks and he gave me the works, which was great because I have never been to a barber. He put this hot foam stuff on my neck, and it was like a hot tub just for my neck. He hasn't read from the Book of Mormon yet, but he promised us he would read before we came back so we're gonna go see him tomorrow. Besides that though we just had random stuff going on, and we filled the rest of the time with tracting but no one was interested. We had a crazy old guy yell at us and tell us to "GET" and that was pretty funny. Most people just open the door and say "I already believe Christ is my Savior, we're (input religion) so we're all set." Anyways, sorry for the short letter but this coming week we should have a lot more going on. We currently have a big risk game to get back to at the apartment, so I gotta get going.

 

Love,

Elder Holt

Week 4

YO!

 

Hello everybody. This week flew by, because there was a lot to do. We did a lot more service. We went and shoveled out goat poop out of a pen for a less active person in our ward. It was great, but I found out I'm also allergic to goats. Add that to the list of animals I'm allergic to, which is like, all animals. Anyway, as usual I don't have a ton of time, so I'm just going to tell you about a couple of the people we've been interacting with.

 

I don't know if I mentioned this, but a couple weeks ago we went to the Springville auction, which is  right across the street from our apartment. It's like a giant yard sale and people come and set up their spots. Oh and by "we" I mean all four of us that live in our apartment, Elder Allen (my companion), Elder Knudson, and Elder Klumker. We've had to do some 4 person visits this month because we are low on driving miles. Anyway, we walked around and I asked this one random guy how he was doing, and he was like "not good".  All four of us were taken aback because no one actually says "not good" to that question, so we talked to him and he had recently fallen off a two and a half story roof, while he was roofing, and he broke a wide variety of bones in his body. He also has had a bad past with ALOT of drug and alcohol use, so he is currently trying to get off of those. Also he told us that through his recovery he's been trying to "find God" and he went to a random church that he didn't really feel right about. What a coincidence huh? So he was very open to missionaries coming over to talk to him. Since we had to split the area though, the other two missionaries took him as the investigator, but Elder Allen and I have gone over with the other two a couple times. Long story short, he has a baptismal date for November 2nd, if he can get himself off of alcohol by that point, which will be hard because he's a functioning alcoholic, but he really wants to be ready by that date and I think he will. 

 

So as I said we had to split the area because there were only 2 missionaries here but now there are 4. So basically, it was easiest for the other two missionaries to take all of the existing investigators in the area, which means Elder Allen and I have started from scratch pretty much. I actually really like that because now its not like Elder Allen knows everybody and I don't. We're both on the same level. So we have been going out and proselyting and talking to people on the street, and last week we talked to this guy sitting on a bench outside of his barber shop. His name is JP, and he has had major drug problems too, but went to a religiously based rehab for two years, and now he is extremely spiritual and even has an addiction recovery program that he runs. He was really open to us, so we taught him a brief version of the restoration, and we went inside his barber shop for like an hour and half. He just reopened his barber shop because he's been gone for 3 years recovering from drugs and he doesn't have his customers back so he had time to talk to us. He's pretty young, and super cool. We left him with a chapter in the Book of Mormon to read and we're coming back next week. The cool thing is, is that while he was talking to us, he was telling us about this friend that he has, and he was like "yah my friend he's had a tough time, he fell off a roof a couple months ago". He was talking about Christian, and apparently Christian had talked to him about the Mormon missionaries meeting with him, and that got JP curious so he had googled Mormonism and that's why he was pretty open to talk to us. Its just kind of funny (and really cool) how the Lord has people prepared. Like how we talked to Christian right as he is trying to be more open to religion. There was no way he would have listened to us before his accident. That's what I've realized more this week, is that missionary work is about having the faith to find the people that are already prepared to hear the gospel, instead of trying to just convince people. Anyway, I will try to send pictures next week. I forgot my camera. Alright, till next week!

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 3

HEY EVERYBODY

So crazy week but also a cool week. Oh and I appreciate all the emails! I'm having problems having the time to write everyone back, so send me your mailing addresses because I have more time to write letters during the week.

My current address is:

Elder Jared Holt

366 W Main Street Apt. #14

Springville, NY 14141

Alright anyways, so I flew to Rochester on Monday. I got up at 1:30 am, flew from SLC to Dallas, got on my Chicago plane, which was then delayed so we sat on the runway for an hour. I got to Chicago and missed my Rochester flight because of the delay, so I had to sit in the airport for 7 hours waiting for the next flight. Did I talk to any strangers? No, I was thinking about it but I wasn't in the happiest mood so there you go. I got to Rochester at like 12:30 at night, where President and Sister Francis picked me up. It was great to see familiar people pick me up. (Sidenote; I don't want to forget but happy upcoming birthdays to Brookie, Audrey, and Sammy) Anyways, the next day we got up (there were 5 other visa waiter missionaries assigned to Rochester), went to the Hill Cumorah,  Joseph Smith's house, and the Sacred grove. That was a really sweet experience. Then I had transfer meeting, got my companion (who I really like) and we drove with 4 other missionaries down to Springville, New York. Its 2 hours away from Rochester, and 40 minutes south of Buffalo. It's a really small town, everyone farms, and everyone is actually pretty nice to us. I'm in an apartment with 2 other elders. The next day, Wednesday, we went to this auction (its like a giant yard sale) where they had classic east coast cider donuts. That was really, really sweet. 

Alright so basically the rest of the week was taken up by meetings and service. We had to go back up to Rochester once for a training meeting, stuff like that. We do a lot of service, because everyone around here still heats their houses with wood, so they need help picking up wood, moving wood, other wood stuff. I'm running out of time so I'm just going to write the rest of my letter in bullet form. 

-Everyone calls me a city slicker

-The sky is bigger here. I don"t know how to explain it, but its huge

-I'm out in the country, so there are pretty rolling hills and plenty of farm land

-It is ridiculously green. Not just here, but everywhere in this part of New York. Like for reals. 

-Our branch is really small. I think only 60 people show up each week

-We spend a lot of time visiting less actives, because everyone gets offended by stupid stuff out here, and there is a lot of branch drama,  so people will stop coming to church to get attention, stuff like that

-I met a lady who was baptized in our Lynnfield ward in like 1989, she knew Bishop Chopelas. 

Alright well I really have to go. I wish I could tell you all way more but I don't have time. The Gospel is true. 

Love,

Elder Holt

President and Sister Francis and I

2nd Week

HEYO!

So this week was good. Actually last

Friday and Saturday were really, really long for multiple reasons. I was also sick so that didn't help. FOOD UPDATE: I now only eat cereal because the food has gotten old pretty quick. I used to only eat cereal anyways so its familiar. The time has been flying since the end of Sunday though. This week has gone by ridiculously quick, which is good because I need to get out of here. It's a prison. Just kidding. Its great and all, but I just want to get to Rochester already. Teaching the fake investigators have been good practice but you can only learn so much when you know its not real. 

Gym time is fun. So that's good. Personal study is my favorite time of the day, but I have to use a lot of that time preparing lessons for the investigators when I would rather just study the gospel. I've seriously learned so much though. I was all nervous because I thought I was unprepared for the MTC but everyone is at the same level. I'm way further with my understanding of things then from where I was a week ago. 

We went to the temple today. That was really cool too. I really like the Provo temple. 

Oh yah. So this week we had in-field orientation at the main MTC and Andrew was there, so I got to spend pretty much all day with him. That was really cool too. 

The jist of my letter is that everything is pretty much really cool. I am out of time though so I gotta go.

Love,

Elder Holt

First Week in MTC

Elder Andrew Jones and I

 

HEY HEY HEY

So the internet was down all day so I don't have too much time to write, but the MTC is great! I've been learning a lot and I'm already alot more confident in my teaching abilities. We're mostly just learning how our goal in teaching should be to help them make their own choices in becoming closer with Heavenly Father and to let the spirit convert them. I was made district leader so my extra responsibilities include getting the mail and making sure the elders make their beds. There are only 6 people including me in my district so its not too over-demanding of a job. Also, apparently I am the only elder in my whole zone that is going to the Rochester mission. Everyone else is going to Detroit, Texas, Seattle, and another place I can't remember. I got my travel plans today for when I leave the MTC, and I am in a travel party of 1. The good news is that this makes me group travel leader by default. (its an actual position) the elders in my district will be in a travel party of 9. Also I have  3 flights to get to rochester. 

So I've been drinking alot of chocolate milk. You can't just offer me unlimited chocolate milk and not expect me to take you up on it. Oh before I forget happy birthday Diana! And thanks for the MTC drop off. Anyway, I love my district, alot of really cool and funny guys. They"re all 18. My companion is cool. He's really quiet but I like him. So I was thinking that I would want more time in the MTC, but there is no way I want to spend anymore time here than the 12 days I'm supposed to be here. I love it but I just want to get out there already. 

OK for reals send me letters. Dear elders would be really really great. On dear elder make sure you you select MTC WEST CAMPUS because I'm in the new MTC. And if you decide to grace me with a letter put your email address in there so I can respond. I forget everyone's. 

Alright, well I love you all. The Gospel is true!

Love, Elder Holt