MTC, week 3

It's awesome that Aaron is so freaking ninja fast. If he works at it, he might be able to beat Zach Smith's records before he graduates. It's also awesome that he has a job. That's a lot better than my employment situation (or lack thereof).

The package arrived, and it was great. My camera is super awesome. I love the pictures of the cats. They capture their personalities. The cookies look good, even though they took some damage during the shipping process. I haven't had any yet, because I've been kind of turned off of sugar lately. (Weird. I know.)

Our Zone Leaders flew on Monday morning, and they've arrived safely. One of them is assigned to Belgium, and I'm not sure where the other one is, or which one it is. You can probably tell from the blog. Elder Calkins and Elder Guanuna are awesome, and they were really great first zone leaders for our district.

Our new Zone Leaders are Elder Merrill and Elder Schulte; they're doing a good job of it, in my opinion.

There's no problem getting visas to Belgium, and we don't need them for the Netherlands. It's kind of ironic, because everyone's been saying that Belgium doesn't really have a government.

According to one of the old-fashioned scales that was sitting outside a building earlier, I'm at 163 lbs., but the electronic scale in the gym yesterday said I was 155.4, or something like that. I'm glad I'm putting on weight, but I'm not glad at how fast I'm gaining. I just need to keep running every time I have gym.

I'm not going to be sending any pictures with this email, because I opened my camera after 8 last night, and three of my seven pictures are of stuffed animals.

What's going on in Japan? I haven't really heard anything about it, except for the fact that all the missionaries are safe, it was the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan (8.9; 25 foot tsunami), and the fifth largest in the world. Zuster Welch has a friend who just got to Japan, and she was super worried about him until she got an email from him. She was super excited.

Dutch is going well. Yesterday, we learned past tense, but with half of the verbs, we won't know the past tense unless we look it up in a 201 Dutch Verbs book, which might not have it, or until we hear somebody say it. (An interesting fact: we learned the "soft ketchup" rule to help.)

The first week and a half here, we didn't have any apple pie or anything like it, but the last week and a half, we've been having a ton. It's gotten to the point where I have part of an apple pie that we were given from a sister going to Sweden who couldn't finish it sitting on top of my closet right now. I've had it for the last two days. It might also be the fact that it's not homemade.

By the way, in the field in my mission right now, there's an Elder Osmond (Donny's son). I just thought you'd enjoy hearing that little fact.

We've had most of our branch go out into the field in the last week and a half, so until later today, we're down to a dozen people, where we had thirty the first two Sundays. It's kind of weird. We have half of the floor in our residence hall, and there are only three inhabited rooms.

I'm really glad to hear that Phil has his visa and is in Brazil. Could you please send me his address?

What's going on back home, besides Aaron's job and running? I got a letter from Gideon a while ago, but to my recollection, it didn't give much info about the rest of the family. The only things I remember from it are that he wrote it using Pepper as a desk, and that he's counting down to the 3DS. Does Andrew have one of the new Pokémon games? And if he does, does he like it?

Last Wednesday, when I was putting on my temple pants, I noticed that they were a little tight. I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever had that problem. It's kind of distressing. Thankfully, the rest of my pants fit just fine, and we'll see how bad it really is when I go to the temple this afternoon.

I'm so excited for Conference. It'll be amazing. And I want us to have an apostle come to give us a fireside or devotional before I leave. That'd be awesome if one came on Easter. That'd be an amazing way to finish my MTC experience.

I'm almost out if time, and my laundry's clean, so I'm going to finish now. I love you all.