Building up Banana Endurance--Farewell to Provo

Greetings from Provo,

Today is our last day here at the MTC.  We got back from the temple and we just finished getting checked out at the medical center before we leave for Ecuador.  Elder Heaps had to get a special flu shot because of his asthma history.  While we were waiting, the doctor came up to me and said "How about you, would you like a flu shot?"  The way he said it made it sound like he was offering me a sucker or something like they usually do at the doctor's office.  I asked him if  I would still have to pay for it and the conversation ended right there.  Anyway, we are getting all packed up and ready to leave and getting our last pictures with all our teachers and other zone members. 

District 48 C--Provo MTC: Back: Elder Brown, Elder Farrell,
Elder Heaps, Elder Olson, Elder Reeb, Elder Johnson, Yours Truly
Front: Elder Pederson, Elder Sainsbury, Elder Westerberg, Elder Mecham

I am glad to hear that you are doing well.  Don't worry about your calculus grade, Lia.  Know you can learn what it means to be ahead of the curve.  It is one of the miracles of our modern scholastic system.  You don't need to know all the material, you just need to know more of it than anyone else. 

The travel times I gave you last week are all in their respective time zones.  I don't know how long it will take to get through international security, so I may not be able to call from Georgia.  I will try and call from both places, though.  Hope I can call when everyone is there.

To answer some of your questions:

1. All the food here is excellent and in great quantities.  However, I am looking forward to all the fresh fruit at the Peru MTC.  Elder Heaps and I have been working on building up our banana endurance.  We try to eat as many as we can every meal.

2. I have only met one sister who is going to Ecuador.  I did finally meet Elder Tait yesterday, though.  He will be part of our travel group going down to Peru.

3. We do like to sing "Called to Serve" in Spanish.  I also love all of the other hymns that are not in the English hymn book.

Elder Sainsbury, my district leader

4. We do keep real busy here.  We just have one classroom, but have different teachers that come and teach us every day for two or three hours.  Usually they start with a grammar lesson and then we talk about gospel doctrines or practice teaching a lesson.  For about four or five hours a day, we have Missionary Directed Time where we can do personal study, study with our companion, and practice teaching other elders gospel principles.  The only "free" time we get is at the end of the day to write in our journal and really take in everything that we learned.  I don't know how similar it will be in Peru, but I know we'll still have teachers that teach us every day.

5. I can't wait to get to Peru.  It will be great to be immersed in a completely Spanish environment.  It will also be great to start teaching real investigators instead of just role playing with volunteers.

Mom, I gave back the Franz Liszt CD to the library.  If you want, you can put Helaman 5:12 or some other scripture on the plaque.  Thanks for writing the questions, Ava.

Love,

Elder Ludlam