Elder Benjamin Darrel Mitchell : Week 8

Friends and family,

My time at the MTC is coming to a close. It doesn't feel like I've been here for that long, but I am starting to get tired of the MTC life. We spend almost all of our time in classrooms or in the cafeteria, and there's not a whole lot that you can see from the MTC grounds (other than the Y depending on where you are, and the building that I used to live in at BYU if you look at the right spot on the way to the gym from exercise time). But even those get old pretty quick when they're the only interesting things you can see.

I would like to apologize to all of the people who have sent me emails and have not received a response yet. I promise I do still love you all, but there are only so many heartfelt emails that I can send in my limited emailing time here at the MTC (which is actually longer than I'm going to have when I get to Japan). But I do still really enjoy hearing about things going on in the outside world, so please keep sending them, and I'll just reply as soon as I can.

The weather has been really interesting lately. Yesterday it was in the 50s all day, even in the morning, and this morning we woke up and there were probably three inches of snow on the ground. And it has continued to snow all day. So that's fun.

I have only gained about five pounds while I've been at the MTC (I'm a little bit proud of that. Having all-you-can-eat meals three times a day does test your self-control sometimes :P). The only problem is that in between the time when college got out and I reported to the MTC, I gained ten other pounds. So that's unfortunate. I've netted 15 extra pounds since I left school.

I'd like to share a scripture this week that we used in one of our lessons with an investigator (we're still in the MTC so our investigators are just our teachers pretending to be Japanese people. It's kind of funny because all of our teachers are white guys that go to BYU but served their missions in Japan so they're not Japanese at all). It's Doctrine and Covenants 121:7-9. I don't want to ruin it for you all with my interpretation, but it talks about trials and how we can find hope in the midst of our trials. I really liked it, and it's one that I'll probably come back to often as I start doing real missionary work next week.

I love you all and hope you have a great week,
Elder Mitchell

P.S. I may or may not get a Pday next week because once in the field it's supposed to be Monday's, but that's the day that I'm flying to Japan. So don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me for the next week and a half. :)