While we expected to hear from Benson through email, possibly today, we were pleasantly surprised to get our first letter, hand written, in the regular mail instead! His friend received a letter from him yesterday, so we were filled in and knew he was alive and well (made my heart so happy!), but what a gift it was to receive our own letter and in his own handwriting. Sweet joy!
HELLO MOM, DAD, AND FAMILY!
I'm doing great! My companion is Elder L. from Idaho. My arrival day and first day were both really exciting! They pulled all my cases with me up to the 1M building, the registration area, it's the main building behind the gate everyone sees. So when they ushered me there I went from desk to desk about twelve times where they confirmed all my information (date of birth, home address, name, parent's name, etc.) and then I got my MTC I.D. card. Through the registration I got 2 elder badges, a pocket clip one and a magnetic clip one like mom's MoTab badge. They took me through orientation and that's when I met my companion, it was in my classroom. The whole beginning MTC experience isn't hard at all, it's like the temple, you're ushered around and they help with any questions, they help clear any confusion.
So my companion is really cool, he reminds me of my last seminary teacher Brother Y. They both graduated in a small town, in a small school, both schools had a combined total (combined with the junior high) of 300. His whole grade graduated and there were about 15 of them at the graduation. So my companion isn't shy at all. He was interested to know about all my letters from you guys, grandma and bubba; he was like that must mean that if I got that many letters I must have a girlfriend! So Elder L. can be pretty funny sometimes. The other Elders in my residence (dorm room, sacred name because it's been blessed and set apart) are Elder W. (he's our district leader) who is from Utah and plays football, and then there's Elder K. who is Hawaiin/Korean, from Washington. They're all great elders. I'm the senior companion in my companionship until next week probably. But our whole residence is going to the Texas Houston East mission which will be a fun trip when we're done here because we'll all go together. Our district consists of Houston East missionaries as well as Wellington, New Zealand missionaries.
But everything else is great here! I showed my residence at lunch how to split an apple with a finger, table, and a fist; they thought it was unbelievably cool and had to show others as well as try it. The following meal I choked on an apple chunk and since I can't leave my companion even for the bathroom, I grabbed him and sped walked to the bathroom. It took a while of coughing and failed attempts at gulping water before half came out and half went down. Almost every elder who came through made sure I was okay. Maybe I was blessed enough to live because I grabbed my companion, or maybe I had a lot of prayers to help me.
But the rest of the food is great here! Tell the Marbles I met Elder B., he's only been here a week but he's zone leader over our districts and he seems like he's been here for weeks or months. We met our branch president and he's kind of short, about 5' or 4'10". He says he won the division championship wrestling in college because he was the only one in his weight class, "but it isn't worth beans" he says.
Getting to sleep can be difficult but I've been getting up on time. It's not difficult being at the MTC, only because of one reason. It's longer than school for sure and there's a lot of class time and note taking time but it isn't hard at all because I enjoy it. It seems like a lot of seminary and missionary perp, but that's what I enjoy. So if you learn to enjoy mission prep and seminary this part of the mission isn't too much to handle.
The arrival night we had a teaching experience where we went into three rooms, and in each room there was an actor pretending to be an investigator (they are really good actors, probably even paid). In that room was about 30 missionaries...
anyways I'll need to continue that later so I can finish this up. So like it's funny, I'm like the opposite of Harry Potter when the mail comes in. Nobody really gets mail, except when anyone does it's a couple of people and then I get like 5 or 6, it's hilarious! Keep it up! I gotta mail this so talk to you guys soon.
-Elder Texas
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