My First week :O

Hey Everyone,

If people want this email directly let me know and I'll put them under "cc." The first day was insane.  I walked in the MTC and went through a huge line where they handed a bunch of stuff name tag, books, etc.  Then I dropped my stuff off in my room and went to class and met my companion.  His name is Elder Bird from Massachusetts.  There is only one district in our branch so just 8 elders total, and I'm the only one from Utah.  We have Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, and Missouri.  Anyway Elder Bird is awesome, we can joke around but when the time is serious we get stuff done and feel the spirit.  He always says something funny in the bathroom like "Imma sit down and get a few grunts in."  I just die laughing every bathroom trip, and we make a lot of them because of the food.  It’s either pretty good or tolerable, and it messes with your stomach.  The chocolate milk has lived up to expectations. Awesome awesome awesome.  I tell myself I can only have it at breakfast so I don’t get lipids all over my body.  The best meal so far has been Papa john’s pizza and "better than yeah cake" last night.  It was amazing.  Thank you for the letters and for the package! I’m so excited to show off mi dulces tonight.  

Anyway the first day we had a Spanish class and our teacher is Hermano Clark.  He is a way cool guy.  I enjoy Spanish so much and have learned more Spanish the past three days than I did my three years of school.  I am nowhere near fluent but have progressed a lot.  El don de lenguas!!!  We had a missionary training as large groups with investigators.  It was fun and interesting.  The best was a large Italian guy named Chicho who liked the "happy plan."  Then that night Elder Brock Miller and his companions gave us a tour of MTC!! Pretty cool.  I also saw j wade (Elder Jesse Wade) and he started to go off.  Also I have seen and talked to Hermana Harris lots of times! It’s been fun.  

The second day was lots of class and training and then we met with our branch president that night! Like I said there’s only 8 elders in the whole thing so the sacrament meeting tomorrow will be really small.  He is a great guy with great assistants and wives.  Fun to meet and learn from them.  All the teachers and leaders are just great people and you learn so much from them.  The MTC is truly amazing.  Yesterday I finally got to go to the gym which was nice.  My shot is so terrible haha I guess I haven’t played for a month now.  But we’re gonna have gym everyday so I'll try to get it back.  But yesterday we had 10 hours of class in Spanish and it was so long.... But we also taught our first investigator completely in Spanish!  Indalezio! He is a cool guy and helped us make it comfortable.  I was able to say what I wanted to get my point across even though I’m not close to fluent.  El don de lenguas.  That was a cool experience though.  He committed to read el libro de Mormon and ask God if it’s true.  We meet again with him on Monday and a new investigator on Tuesday.  It’s crazy how they toss you into the ocean here. I feel like a little kid.

The spirit is awesome here and I know this church is true.  If you need a pick me up read 3 Nephi 17. That’s what we did this week and it’s just awesome.  I’ve also memorized the missionary purpose in Spanish!  So that’s exciting.  I should be writing letters this week because I finally bought envelopes and stamps.  Hoorah for Israel!

Love you all,

Elder Maynard