My First Week in the MTC and it Turns out I am one of the District Leaders

Hey everybody!! I've been in the MTC now for about 8 days and its going great! On my first day here, it was really great because I was SURROUNDED by missionaries all greeting me and saying "WELCOME TO THE MTC ELDER!" It was really nice and comforting. We started out with classes right off the flippin bat, which I thought was great. The classes are pretty much just 3-6 hour long language classes (the 6 hour long classes get broken up into two 3 hour classes) I like the classes and the language is coming a lot better than I thought it would! Everyone is learning Tagalog so fast, it’s crazy! The meals are crazy because you can literally eat anything you want but SOMEHOW I've stayed at the same weight. I've been trying to be conscious about how much i eat, and despite all the lack of physical activity we do here, I'm doing pretty good! And the spirit that can be felt here is awesome. They do devotionals every now and then, and I love them! I can already feel myself becoming better every day.

Decided to Join the Choir

So at the end of the first or second day (I don't remember, the days are all the same here, so they just kinda blend together) all of the new missionaries in my zone were interviewed for like 5 minutes to just talk to some of the branch presidency to get to know them. Turns out that interview was actually to see who the district leaders were going to be, and turns out I'm now one of them. I was super confused because honestly i thought there were like 3 other guys that i met in the first day who would have done better than me, but I guess I just gotta do my best with it.

My district is great! They all get along, and are all pretty dang obedient. I only have to remind them to stay on track every now and then. There's only one guy who I don't seem to click with, and I should have expected that that one guy would be my companion! To be completely honest, I don’t understand him at all- his sense of humor, his quirks, his comments, or even his work habits. He actually is the only lazy one in the bunch and always wants to go against the rules. Despite all of this, however, I'm able to handle him pretty well, and sometimes enjoy his presence. And I think I’m doing a good job with him because he said I'm probably going to be the best companion he has on his mission. I know that figuring him out and how to click with him is going to take time, and I know that I’m going to grow a lot from it as well.

My district

That’s pretty much it from this week! But just a quick thought that one of my roommates shared with me that I thought was pretty interesting! He told me a story and this is how it goes:

There was once a man who wanted to climb an insanely high and desolate mountain that no man had ever climbed before. He was determined to be the first. He trained for months, and finally decided to conquer the mountain. After finally getting to the top, he finds a little pool of water, and in that pool of water he finds a stopwatch. He heads down the mountain and wonders how on earth a stopwatch was at the top of a mountain that no one had ever climbed before! He takes it to scientists, and they decide that the most logical answer is that over millions and millions of years, the winds and waters and elements moved in just a way to create every part of that stopwatch, and after millions and millions more years, those same elements coincidentally moved all the parts perfectly together.

Our service project of cleaning the bathrooms

Instead of just accepting the fact that someone had made it there before him, he makes up a ludicrous theory of the elements and doing it. My roommate said it’s the same thing with recognizing there is a God. People would rather turn to a theory that the universe just coincidentally lined every single particle perfectly by itself, than just accept the simple fact that there is a God who created everything.

Just something I wanted so share :) Anyways, I love you all and hope the best for all of you! Ill email next week with more awesomeness!!

Elder Austin Cook 

Elder brown is just so happy that he forgot to get his typhoid shot

My companion

my companion