Letter from Mission President

Week 3 & 4

A lot has happen in the span of eleven days! I woke up on Tuesday morning and said my goodbyes to half of my amazing district, and then flew with the rest of my district to Baltimore. 

In the airport baggage check in they forgot to give me back my boarding pass so I got to go the TSA security twice, lucky me... Once we got to Baltimore, the first thing I started to notice was the humidity. Nothing will dry here. Second thing was all of the trees. Third thing was the lack of mountains. 

We stayed the first night at the mission home and had some good food and got to know each other. After that we met our new companions. My companion's name is Elder Dameus. He is from Haiti and is pretty funny. He does his daily morning yoga while I lift weights. It's hard to be his companion sometimes because of his accent. 

We are both new to the area so we have no idea what's going on. Our area is very very large. It's supposed to be a car mission but it's hard to drive with one car and having to share with the sister missionaries. We also only have 1,100 miles per month. Plus the elders before us used 850 of those miles before we got there... So we have bikes but Elder Dameus will not bike. That means we usually end up walking 10 or so miles a day. 

The ward is pretty awesome though! They are pretty supportive. The only down side is that we are new and the area book isn't that great so we haven't taught a single lesson yet. There's a lot of dry Mormons in our ward so we'll have to work on that. That's all for now! Sorry for the lack of pictures. Not much has happened and I don't carry my camera around often.

New Companion

Picture of Elder Dameus (from Haiti) and Elder Beardall sent by a ward member. Thank you!

Baltimore here I come!

More pictures of MTC

Week 2

 This week has been crazy! We had a change in Zone leaders which means a change in everything! We had this elder move in down the hall and he knows all of these crazy magic tricks. So we called him demon sorcerer child and now everyone calls him that.

We had chimichangas last week and the entire district had to have periodic bathroom breaks all day haha. And then we had Taco bell a couple days ago and don't even get me started on the smell of our residency hall.

Me and Elder Munden and all of the sisters of our district joined choir this week. We practiced twice and we were performing for this tuesday which was kinda crazy. We had a devotional with Elder Christofferson which was awesome. It was amazing to be able to sing in the choir let alone sing in front of an Apostle and to all of the MTC's around the world. 

Me and my district have gotten so close and its sad that we leave next tuesday. It's weird to think that I'll have people's eternal salvation in my hands. 

Anyways that's pretty much all I have this week.

Until next week

The group picture of my district goes from left to right: Sister Page (Cleveland), Sister Conway (Baltimore), Sister Snell (Baltimore), Sister Benson (Baltimore), Elder Valenzuela (Cleveland), Elder Airmet (Cleveland), Elder Mowrer (Cleveland),  Elder Henwood (Cleveland), Elder Shaver (Baltimore), Elder Scorse (Baltimore), Me, Elder Munden (Baltimore)

Week 1

Hey everyone! This is my first email of many! There's so much but at the same time I can't remember any of it!

My companion's name is Elder Munden. In my district half of us are going to Maryland Baltimore and the other half is going to Cleveland Ohio.

The group picture of my district goes from left to right: Sister Page (Cleveland), Sister Conway (Baltimore), Sister Snell (Baltimore), Sister Benson (Baltimore), Elder Valenzuela (Cleveland), Elder Airmet (Cleveland), Elder Mowrer (Cleveland),  Elder Henwood (Cleveland), Elder Shaver (Baltimore), Elder Scorse (Baltimore), Me, Elder Munden (Baltimore).​

I have had a cold since the day I have been in the MTC which hasn't been fun. It's weird getting used to eating dinner at 4 in the afternoon as well. I'm used to eating dinner four hours later so usually I'm not hungry when it comes to dinner. We've had Papa Johns and Chick-fil-a and BYU creamery come and serve us which is pretty awesome.

Everyone says make it to Sunday and you'll make it through the rest of your mission. I have found this to be so true, The first week is horrible just because you're in a new place and it's nothing but meetings because you're new. The only thing that has help me is my companion and my awesome teacher Brother Welch who is a RM, who is so energetic I think he could power all of Provo with a stationary bike. Once you make it to the second week you start teaching investigators and its awesome. We teach in a place called the TRC. We teach investigators M-W-F-S and get new ones every week. Our investigator this week was Austin and he is awesome and always keeps his commitments.

It's crazy because we had a whole bunch of elders leave on our floor so they gave us their food so we have so much we started an Elders Storehouse. 

They keep you busy here, when we're not in class or teaching we're studying or eating. The only time we have a break is half hour before bed to write in our journals and get ready for bed.