Week six

Dear Friends and Family,

Wow a whole lot has happened since my last email. To start off, my schedule is completely different now. They pretty much changed everyone's schedule. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It has only been in effect for two days. Classes have changed, gym time has been changed. And pretty much my entire P-Day has been changed. I don't have early morning Temple. That is something I don't really like. I absolutely loved going so early in the morning. What a way to start out the day! Now it's in the afternoon. Which is still great. I'm just so glad my Temple Tuesday can still live on even while I'm at the MTC. I love it. I had the great blessing to see my great friend Brother David Meyers today as he is preparing for his mission. What are the odds of that?! I thought that was so cool. My advice is to make going to the temple a monthly thing, if not a weekly thing. I absolutely love it there.

So last Tuesday night after devotional, Brother Johnson, first councilor of my branch presidency, presided over our district meeting. And upon him speaking a little bit, I found out that he has a nephew serving in Salta, Argentina. That sparked my curiosity. Turns out that my first councilor is brothers to Brother Johnson in our home ward! That was a huge shock. We talked for a bit afterwards, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I knew this before. Like Sister Johnson had told me before I left on my mission. So weird. I don't know. But that was an interesting connection. Connections everywhere!

Yesterday the field finally opened. I'm so glad! The gym was pretty fun, but that big open field has room for so much more. I love the gym time we have here. A few weeks ago, I had a friend from high school come up to me and say he has a shirt for me for gym time. I don't know who started it, but over 20 missionaries that have graduated from Orem High have worn this shirt and signed it. And it can't be washed. Pretty gross right? So I wore it yesterday while I was at the field and got it ready for the next Orem High graduate!

I'm so excited for tomorrow! We have all our new missionaries coming in! We were supposed to get 6 last week, but no one, not even our branch presidency, knows where they went. So hopefully they show up. Other than that, we're getting 25 new missionaries! So exciting. That more than doubles our branch. I can't wait! That'll be one of those looking back moments of how I first was when I got here. I can't wait to help them out and get them going as well. I only have 3 weeks left here after all. That's even weirder. Hard to believe it's already been 6 full weeks. Starting my 7th tomorrow!

I've now gotten to the point where it's no longer cramming Chinese into my head and it's just learn as I go. I can speak pretty well and can pick things up really fast. It's just getting the rhythm and sentence layout more stabilized. I find that quite cool. I still have a hard time speaking straight off the top of my head. It still takes a second to work it in my mind. But I can understand very well. I thought back to the first day and how doomed I thought I was. That is clearly not the case. The spirit really helps direct our learning here. I absolutely love it.

The Branch President randomly told me he wanted to talk to me on Sunday. It was one of those moments when it felt almost a little too random. When I got in there, he said he's calling me to be the new District Leader! What?! So now I'm District Leader over 39G. That's so exciting! I'm so grateful for my calling. I love serving my district and my branch. I honestly love my branch. We're so together and dedicated to helping each other learn and grow.

Elder Plate and I have been working really hard on making our lessons flow more smoothly by working on our switching back and forth. It's really improving so much. Just from last Thursday to now, I can see and feel the large difference during our lessons. There isn't that little choppiness between thoughts like there was before. That is something I think is important in teaching a lesson. You can see the confusion on the investigator's face when the topic just randomly changes and they can soon lose interest. So I'm very grateful we're working on this.

Well I love you all! Thanks for all the letters and support. Thank you for all the prayers. I can truly feel the blessings here. I can't wait to hear from you all and write you again and tell you about this week's adventures. The Lord loves each and every one of us. Never forget it!

 

Love, Elder Anthony Buckwalter