MTC, Week 5

So, I'm not sure if Gideon told you about the P.S. I put in the letter I sent to him, but the Belgian Ambassador is coming to visit the MTC today, so we get to meet him. The only bad thing about it is it's throwing off our P-Day schedule, so we're doing our laundry in the early morning instead of the late morning. I'll survive, though.

Because we're almost halfway through our time at the MTC, Elder van de Graaff was released as district leader, and now Elder Hendrickson's the district leader.

Is Shani's bright pink wall affecting her sleeping? I think I'd have a hard time sleeping if one of my walls was bright pink. It might be really good for picking her up when she's having a bad day, though.

Next week, we're going to get new Dutch and Danish missionaries. The Danes are leaving on Monday, and we haven't had another Dutch district for two weeks. It'll be really nice to have missionaries coming in who will look up to us and be asking us for help with Dutch. It'll also be nice to finally not be the last district in our zone to leave, especially since we're not the newest missionaries.

At the devotional last night, the music director got up right before the end of "Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?" and told all of us that there aren't any fermatas in that song, despite what ward choristers think when they're conducting it.

It's kind of surprising seeing how immature a lot of missionaries are. There are signs in some of the bathrooms saying that they shouldn't write on the walls or the toilet paper dispensers, and when we were watching "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration" on Sunday night, everyone started whistling. It's really obnoxious. I know they're still 19 year old boys, but they're acting like middle school students: stupid.

Apparently there was a missionary who flipped out and destroyed his room the other day. I heard that he punched a hole in the window, and broke his desk and a few other things. We got some actual details from Elder Hendrickson, who talked to the Elder when he was waiting for Elder Wang in the health clinic (Elder Wang has bronchitis). I'm really glad I don't have a temperament that would lead me to destroy things.

It's really cool that Aaron has a job. That will really help him to make it through school. There were some people on the track team with me who managed to work as sweepers and still do track. They only had to miss work on days with meets. Are a lot of Gideon's jeans in poor condition? You should point out to him that his pants will be significantly more fashionable when you patch up his jeans.

It's good to see that Pepper's being more affectionate toward people, even if she's still not fond of Sphinx. I remember when I realized that Pepper never got up on anybody's lap without being put there. It was sad. I keep praying for the cats. I'm hoping that they'll get along before I get home.

My legs were being uncooperative on Friday, so I didn't get my three miles in until yesterday, but it was nice. The cool thing is that I wasn't even really tired after I finished the three miles. It was the crunches that killed me. I'm just hoping that I'll be able to get in really challenging cardiovascular workouts when I'm over in the Netherlands and Belgium. Because of the altitude change, it might take a really long time of working to challenge my endurance.

I can't think of anything else to say right now, so I'll finish up right now. I'll check my email again later if I have time and opportunity.

I love you all.