First letter home...

Dear Family!


I am learning so much in the MTC! The first day was very hard for me though. After getting all of my books and stuff, I was sent to my classroom where my teacher spoke just about nothing but spanish... That was the time where I decided that I probably should have studied much more spanish before I even thought about coming here. After being confused for what seemed like a very long amount of time in my spanish classroom, Elder Squires walked in. Elder Squires turned out to be my official MTC companion. He is from American Fork, he loves ping pong, his birthday is August 4th, and loves this Gospel. I'm not sure if I could ask for a better companion. We have taught each other so much about the gospel and about learning the language in the few days we have known each other. It seems like I have known him for a year!


Yesterday, we started teaching our first lesson to our progressive investigator. Oh yeah, did I mention that it was in Spanish??? The progressive investigator is a teacher from the MTC that acts like a person investigating the church. His name is Benito Juarez and he used to live in California, but he moved to Provo to follow his novia(girlfriend), who is going to BYU. He has heard some things about the church from his girlfriend but he still needs to be taught many truths. His dad and mom are both catholic and presbyterian respectively so he knows about religion, he is just confused. In our lesson yesterday, Elder Squires and I taught him about the restoration and Jose Smith. We commited him to pray and ask if Jose Smith es un profeta verdadera(true prophet)...at least I hope we did. We had to improvise a lot because we did not have time to finish our lesson. Elder Squires read a lot off of the paper that we prepared to help us and didn't leave me much to read so I relied on the don de lenguas(gift of tongues) to help me say and ask the things of Benito that el Espirtu Santo(the Holy Ghost) and I felt necessary. We are to teach him tonight... I need to practice my spanish a lot more if I am going to say the things I need to say to Benito.


The food here at the MTC is asombroso(awesome)! I'm not the biggest fan of the chocolate milk...well it's just okay to me, just tastes the same as at home...but what I do get at every meal is about 4 glasses of pure apple juice! Que delicioso! Coming into the MTC, I did not know that there was going to be such a seleccion de comida(food). If you want to get something healthy like a salad, you can. If you want to get a doughnut...well you can do that too! I need to control myself though or else I will not be able to fit in my pants...


I encourage all of you young men or young women who read this that are contemplating on serving mission to pray about it! And keep praying about it until you receive a strong feeling from the spirit. Make sure that you pray with sincerity from the corazon(heart). The MTC is an experience that will change your life as it already has mine! It is so crazy the amount of change I have already seen in myself as I have listened to the spirit and had a good attitude. I know that spanish will eventually come to me--hopefully sooner than I think.


Well, I only have a couple minutes left to write so...I would like to share one of my favorite scriptures if not my favorite scripture. Matthew 4:19-20 says something along the lines of this:"And he said unto them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And they straightway left their nets and did follow him."(I don't have my scriptures with me right now so it is not exactly a direct quote... but I love that scripture especcially right now because of me being a missionary. Grandpa Fletcher, even though we didn't get our fishing trip in before the mission. I want to let you know that I am preparing for the biggest fishing trip of my life!


Thank you for all the examples! Im out of time in ten seconds!


Con amor, Elder Larisch