"We are having a lot of fun in here, too!" (Week 3)

August 17, 2012 

Hello Everyone! 

Another week in the MTC! The week went by really fast, it seems like we were just barely having our p-day yesterday. A lot has happened though. 

So this week-- I don’t even remember what we've done. Basically we wake up, get ready for the day, go to breakfast, go study, go work on the computer on the language, do other language study, have personal study, companionship study, prepare to teach, and teach investigators. I think I told you all about Lesme who is getting baptized, but now we also have Daniel who we challenged to baptism on the first lesson, who is thinking about it, and Patricio, who we gave a Book of Mormon to and he said he would read and pray. But we still need to follow up on them.  

We sit a lot and are sleepy a lot. But it’s all fun, except for language study, which is way too easy and boring and repetitive and dull and I dislike it, and the TALL (the language computer program). We had a good Tuesday night devotional from Elder Evans of the Seventy on Luke 15, a chapter that talks all about lost sheep, lost coins, and lost sons. He showed a picture of a shipwreck that President Monson talks about. Really a good talk. Look for the similarities between the three parables in Luke 15 and the different sides of being lost they focus on. It was really enlightening.  

We are loving gym time-- we always have a really good time with Elder Howe and Elder Walton balling, they are really good and we are getting a lot better, too, and sometimes we play soccer, which is fun as well. Our classes are three hours long each, and we usually have them twice a day, so gym is a really nice break from our studies. We have still been running each morning.  

We are having a lot of fun in here, too! Elder Howe is a really quiet, big kid from Ephraim, and he says the funniest, most random things. We were talking about how, as a missionary, you have to keep a picture of an attractive girl around so that you don't lose all sense and appreciation for beauty for the next two years; we were saying how we have pictures of our girlfriends and stuff, and then out of nowhere Elder Howe says-- 'Is it okay if I just have a picture of my dog?' He was totally serious and it was the funniest. 

We have been growing closer as a companionship as well-- running together really helps, but sometimes Elder Clawson has a hard time staying focused. We are practicing our patience and our trust in the Lord doing our lessons; we tend to plan too much and end up kind of shoving stuff down the investigators’ throats. And we are working on being brief in our testimonies and words-- all too often a testification of a point during a lesson takes like three minutes of our precious fifteen minute lessons. 

But we are all doing pretty well. I love getting letters-- they really are what we look forward to every day. We have been having district fifteen-minute spiritual sharing times at the end of each night, which helps us all come closer, and we have been focusing on how to increase patience, humility and love, with emphasis on your companero.  

Love you all!