8/27

It is so interesting how quickly everyone in my district is improving. I didn't realize that we would learn so fast. I'm sure when I get dropped off in Ecuador I wont be able to understand a word anyone says but that's okay because I will have a solid base for it. We have pretty much our entire day planned out with around 11 hours in a classroom. It's been a really good experience so far though. 

The meals here are still pretty dang good. My favorite so far has been chicken cordon bleu. I think I might be in trouble though because they have donuts out every breakfast so I just like take one every morning, it's bad. And they have ice cream after lunch and dinner... yeah it's bad.

I thought that P-Day would be a lot more relaxing than it really is. P-Days are actually pretty stressful. We have to get quite a bit of stuff done. We get to go to the temple every P-Day which is pretty awesome, and we get to go down to this small shopping center down the sreet from the MTC. There's not much there but there is a pretty great burger place. The MTC schedule is basically insane. When you're not in class getting spanish shoved down your throat you're at a meal where you're supposed to speak spanish or on your way to a devotional (which are actually pretty cool) but there really isn't much down time.  I'm glad that we get to go to the temple every Wednesday though. That's nice and relaxing. But then we have to do laundry, email people, and then we have class again at 6. It's kind of crazy. My favorite day is probably Sunday because we don't have any classes we just go to like 2 hours of church and then have a devotional which is pretty fun.

 I don't remember if I told you yet but one day last week me and my district had a tie trading day. I got 4 new ties that I like quite a bit. I actually traded away one of the Daiso ties that we bought for like a dollar for some really nice like 40 dollar tie... pretty sweet deal if you ask me. I didn't trade away any of my favorite ties and it was nice because I had plenty to choose from. It's crazy because everyday you see so many cool ties around since everybody has to wear them all the time.

8/20 - 1st message from MTC

Hey! So it's my first P-Day!
It's loco how much stuff they have been shoving into our brains in just one week. We have an "investigator" that my companions and I have been teaching in Spanish. It's awesome how well we can communicate with someone after only one week here. I mean obviously it's not perfect but we've had so much improvement in just one week.

So my district is me and four other elders who were all supposed to be in the Mexico City MTC with me. We're all headed to the Guayaquil North Mission and we all got the call about the change on Monday. So I'm in a trio with Elder Taylor and Elder Palmer. Elder Taylor is from South Carolina and he is a super great companion. He is working hard at the language and is great at getting his point across to our "investigator". (He's our "investigator" because next week he is becoming our second teacher, but we're not supposed to know that yet.) My other companion is Elder Palmer. He is from SanTan Valley como abuela and the rest of the Roberts Clan. The other two people in our district are Elders Norris and Hatefi. Elder Norris is from Mississippi and is a major nut-ball. He is hilarious but sometimes he is hard to work with. Elder Hatefi is from Vegas. I was assigned to be District Leader so I guess you could say I'm a pretty big deal... My main job is to pick up the mail from the mail room. (By the way your Dear Elders are getting to me just fine.)

So after one week here I don't really have a whole heck of a lot to say... mostly we are stuck in a classroom for like ten hours a day getting the language drilled into us and studying the scriptures and all that good stuff. I think the funniest thing that happened this week was on the first night. When we got here we had to go through this check in procedure so the people who were showing around the new missionaries took our suitcases and showed us to our rooms and where our classes were then we got straight to work. When we returned to the apartment that night we started unpacking and everything was going fine until Elder Taylor opened his last suitcase and realized that it wasn't his suitcase. In the check in process he got his suitcase mixed up with a hermana (sister) missionary. His face when he realized that he had the wrong suitcase was pure terror. A few minutes after he opened the wrong suitcase someone knocked on the door and told us they had his bag in the front office and that he needed to take the one he had and switch back. That was really funny.

At the MTC we have two devotionals a week, one on Tuesday Night and the other on Sunday night. The first one I went to was the Sunday night devotional. The speaker was Jenny Oaks Baker, she is Elder Oaks daughter and she is some insane violinist so she and her kids played some music for us throughout her talk. Her talk wasn't really about being a missionary which is okay because if I had 12 devotionals exclusively on being a missionary I would get really bored with them. I did like theTuesday night one better though. The speaker was Sister Bonnie Oscarson who is a Young Women's General President or something like that. She talked about the experiences and advice that she and all of her kids who went on missions had for missionaries about to leave. It was a pretty good talk so yeah that was nice.

The way that going to church is set up here at the MTC is you have meetings with every missionary in your zone, and your zone consists of districts. We have 5 districts and about 45 missionaries in our zone. (That's called your Branch) My branch presidency is President Shallenberger, Brother Slangerland, and Brother Dowdle. President Shallenberger is awesome. He talked on Sunday and it was a great talk. He made people laugh and cry at the same time. Okay I'm running short on time so I guess I'm going to sign off.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot to tell you. I'm on West Campus and you should post on the blog if anyone wants to write me that would be awesome and I would try to respond to each one of them.

Love, Elder Roberts

Elder Roberts was originally scheduled to report to the Mission Training Center in Mexico City, but due to complications with his visa for Ecuador he is currently in Provo, Utah.

His mailing address there is:

Elder Tanner Roberts
ECU-GUAN
2023 N 900 E unit 853
Provo, Ut. 84602


You can also use Dear Elder.com
Select Provo West MTC
Unit # 853
Mission code ECU-GUAN

Type your message, click send letter, it will be printed out and delivered for you. Messages submitted before noon MST Mon - Fri will be delivered the same day. There is no charge for this service.

 

Quote from farewell talk:

"Face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility."
    
- Thomas S Monson