Week 2 Letter Provo Utah MTC (8/28)

Anyway this week at the MTC has been a rough one but I like it here just fine. Life here at the MTC is pretty busy and I have been trying my best to study hard but it can get very discouraging

 My district is doing just fine and yes we arrived here all at the same day. New mandarin missionaries only come every 6 weeks so that's why I'm here in August and not in the beginning of July. We have been teaching Lin Jie Mei since day 2 here at the MTC and last Thursday we received news we won't be teaching her anymore... turns out it was just one of our teachers incognito. So now it's Brother Anderson and Sister Morey (An Lao Shi and Mie Lao Shi) that are teaching us from here on out so it's all good. I like both of them and they really bring the spirit into the classroom with they way they teach. 

If you could please send pictures from home of all the family that would be great, everyone else has a little photo album and I don't... 

also I bought a binder from the book store and a lot of those plastic document protectors and I'm putting all my letters in that... Your letters are what keeps me going everyweek so keep them coming!!!!!!! Post a status on FB to urge all my friends and family to send me more letters through DearElder.com... they really make a difference in the way I work.

Anyway let me tell you about this past week more in detail since I last wrote....

Tuesday... we went to the temple as a district and let me just say that I love the Provo Temple!! it's a n awesome temple and it was great to spend some time with my district there... later on Tuesday we all went to the Tuesday night devotional with our hopes up of seeing an Apostle the first Devotional that we had... and guess what...? It was!! wooohoooo. It was Neil A Anderson and he gave a great talk right along with his wife... tons of notes in my little study notebook from that... at the end of every night at 9 PM we have planning for the next day in the classroom so that's how I ended up on Tuesday... I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking i'm at home and I can just go downstairs and get a snack or some water, but nope... bottom bunk in a room packed with 6 missionaries..

Wednesday was the toughest day because you feel like you have so much to catch up from P-Day so hopefully that won't be the case every week.  I got all 8 of my letters that I had written out to people (I also have a picture of that,... pretty funny) and I hope everyone got them... We had classroom instruction from 2-5 and then from 6-9 so it was a pretty normal day...

Thursdays and Saturdays are always the best days because we have EARLY MORNING CLASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which gives us the whole night to do gym and personal study and whatnot... it really stinks staying in a hot cramped classroom all night.... so Thursday I worked out... I usually use the cycle trainer and cycle 7-8 miles and lift weights and also the rowing machine is a killer workout for sure... my best time for the 2000M in rowing is 9:11... so if that's a world record please let me know... I've been making a lot of good friends in the district by going to the gym from the "Older mandarin generation" that are 6 weeks ahead of us...

Friday is just the same as wednesday practically.... just another classday but friday was tough... the grammar in chinese is very very easy but memorizing new words and phrases has been tough so If you all could pray that I am able to be receptive to that more that would be great.

Saturday is another GREAT DAY woohooo tuesdays thursdays and saturdays are always great but i didn't get any mail :(... sadly... but I knew I would hopefully a lot on monday which I did~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday was a day of meetings... being a district leader means I preside at every one of the little district meetings we have and I have to be at all of the other meetings as well, but the Fireside speaker was very very good and the theme from Sunday was repentence so it really let everyone know that they can do better and they can be better people through that amazing Atonement we have! So generally a good sunday and it ended up being a restful and rejuvenating day for the rest of the week. We also had the rare occasion of watching a church movie in Mandarin after the devotional... every sunday we can watch a movie or a talk and since it was in Mandarin all of district 39 (all 80 something of us) packed into a small room and watched "Legacy" in Chinese... it was funny because we didn't understand much of what they were saying but it really did help a lot.

Well yesterday was good, it seems they let you learn Chinese on your own through trial and error and them BAM!! they give you a new concept that helps IMMENSELY!! We had a Mandarin Zone Coordinator come help us with out daily planning and study techniques and i'm excited tomorrow to get started on this new 'plan' and hopefully get a new faster and more efficient stride going... It's really great the language program here but it really does put a lot of stress on us Elders... Elder Edwards is doing okay with the language but he is really struggling with the pronunciation of words, but he definitely is getting better... oh and to answer your question about singing in Mandarin... we do sing in Mandarin but not in characters... in Pinyin (romanized Chinese) because they don't typically teach too many of the characters here in the MTC because you will just end up learning in the field a lot easier... so I will definitely get a video of my district and me singing a hymn so you guys can hear...

Today was pretty awesome, I love P-Days even though I have to do laundry... you can sleep in on p-days so I slept in until a whopping 6:48... wow a whole 18 minutes... I just need to tackle the day head on every day... I woke up did laundry and wrote a whole 2 letters to the people that have responded already (I won't tell you who though mom ;) haha ... ) and we went to the temple again as a district and heard from the fireside speaker who has been serving in China... I just ate dinner super fast so I could come and email before the devotional tonight... So here I am and Elder Edwards is like marveling in how fast I can type compared to him hahaha

oh and also I haven't really been eating the food here all too much... the food here is delicious but it's not so good healthwise so I've just been eating salads and going to the "wrap bar"... it's like subway but for wraps.. it's pretty good and it's not so greasy and nasty... anyways is there anything I could do for anyone out there within the sound of my voice? I have 7 minutes left so I'll just go ahead and ramble on because I might as well... umm the MTC is cool and having a cool family is cool.... ummmmm Exodus 29 is pretty crazy so everyone that sees this go read Exodus 29 and laugh and be happy we don't have the law of sacrifice anymore... also I don't need a CTR ring... I have one and it's good... hmm what else? I don't really know... lets see ... how is jessica doing??? tell her to get to work on preparing for her mission!!! she will like it here... there's a lot more sister missionaries that I thought and the devotional speaker asked all of them to stand on Sunday and then asked the ones that their mom also served missions and then all the ones with their grandmas served missions and it really surprised me...

i don't really know what else to say besides talk to you guys next week... i have 4 minutes left and I have a few minutes before the devotional... also I would like a picture of easton!!!!

So I love you all!!!  keep on keeping on i will talk to you all next week...

我爱你！！！！(Mom do the translation) 

Done - it is I love you

First P-Day in MTC (08/21)

Hello Family, it's my first P-day (every tuesday) I am doing very well here at the MTC, and I wanted to answer your questions mom that you sent my through dearelder (and yes anissa is does work just fine)

When is your P-day? 

Tuesdays all days

Who is my companion? 

My companion's name is Elder Manuirirangi Edwards and he is a Maori from New Zealand, he speaks english and he is also learning Chinese (my room is all learning mandarin)

How many people in my district? 

11, I have also been called as the district leader for my Districts which is 39E... my branch president is President Baker.

How is the Mandarin going? 

It's going well actually, right from the get-go you are immersed in it and the teachers are not allowed to speak in English, most everyone in my class is non-native except one, so we're on the same basic level of Mandarin, so it's been all good.

Are you having trouble getting up?

 No not at all, actually I have been getting up at 6 instead of 6:30 just so I can get in the showers before everyone else, it's pretty crazy, someone pulled a prank and took all the curtains on the showers over the weekend, so I've been going on the 2nd floor (i'm in the first floor of the Pratt Building, 14M) to take my showers since they have curtains up there.

My mailing address is as follows:

Elder Nathan Sanchez

Provo MTC Mission

MTC Box #90

CA-SJO

2005 N 900 E

Provo, UTAH 84604-1793

Do I need anything?

Well yes, I do. I need more brown socks,  also that backpack would be great to have. Also you need to buy another SD card and send it to me, and I will send you the one I have in my camera and that's how I will handle pictures.

I didn't forget anything I don't think.. so there's that.

The MTC is really great, and the food is really good. The first few days are the hardest but every missionary said it gets better after your first sunday, and how true that is. There's one other missionary here that's going to California San Jose as well, but he isn't in my district. I depart from the MTC on Oct 31.

Let me tell you about class times, usually there are 2 classes a day which are both 3 hours long and taught by the same teacher Brother Anderson or as well call him An Lao Shi (Teacher An) and he mixes basic mandarin and teaching techniques within these classes. We have been teaching an "investigator" in a "lesson" and her name is Lin Jie Mei... she is a real person, but not a real investigator, but she might as well be because the lesson seems real and the spirit is real as well. Yesterday we had our 3rd lesson with Lin Jie Mei and it was the first good lesson we had with her... it was really hard to understand the Mandarin the first two lessons which made it very hard for me and Elder Edwards to get through it, but yesterday after reviewing vocab and phrases a lot over the weekend I finally was able to understand about 60% of what she was saying, and we got her to commit to reading and for us to teach her the first lesson which is The Restoration on Wednesday. Afterwards Elder Edwards was ecstatic, saying "YOU'RE A CHAMPION ELDER SANCHEZ" in his Kiwi Accent... Elder Edwards is having a lot of trouble with pronunciation and is pretty frustrated with that, but he is definitely getting better... I would ask that you pray for him in that aspect, and as for me, pray that I may be able to keep my hard work up so that I may be proficient by the time I get out of here...

Today is P-day so we basically just do laundry... later on we go to the Provo temple as a district and I'm really looking forward to that... let me tell you about me and my wonderful district...

Elder Edwards-- awesome guy, kiwi accent new zealander!!!!! he will be serving back in new zealand mandarin speaking

Elder Vandiford-- spiritual giant from Ohio, he's a really nice guy he's going to TaiChung Taiwan to serve

Elder Wolf-- He's from Springville Utah and he's having a lot of trouble with the language, but he's working hard and it's great to see him progress, also serving in Tai Chung

Elder Cutler-- also from springville, utah was in elder wolf's ward... he is also going to Taichung Taiwan

Elder Kim-- He's a Korean, from the US but lived in Thailand with his family-- going to Taichung as well!

Elder Cranford-- He's from somewhere in Utah I forgot where but he's a nice guy--- he's going to Singapore, I told him to say hi to the Mains' for me.

Elder Passey-- he's from a lot of different places in Utah, going to Singapore as well.

Elder Cheng-- the only native in the district-- he's from Hong Kong (xianggang) and he's going to NY, NY South mission, he's going to love it!!!

Elder Gummow-- he's the best! he's pretty fun guy to be around, he's from northern Utah and he's going to Taiwan Taichung

Elder Wesemann- he's from Kuluo reduo (Colorado) and he's going to Taiwan Taichung (also has a Twin brother serving at the same exact time going to Taiwan Taipei)

Anyway I need to wrap this email up, I receive DearElders a lot faster than if you email back (I only get 30 minutes to write you guys a week for emails) so send responses through dearelder please!!! if you send it by 1:30 PM today EST I will get it by dinner and I just wanted to let everyone know that i'm doing great and that I will talk to you next week, love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE YOU MOM, DAD, JESSICA

LOVE YOU ANISSA DONALD BETHANY CONNOR

LOVE YOU LISA DEVON LILY

talk to you guys next tuesday..

make sure you write back on dear elder, and carbon copy it into an email just in case ;)... 1 minute and 51 seconds left BYE

Entering (MTC) Missionary Training Center (08/15)

Spent the day with my grandfather and his friend, Leonard Christensen. Last meal was Chinese Buffet buffet in Provo, really wanted Americanized Chinese food. Arrival time at 1:40 pm and was really impressed with the organization for the arrival process, Elders from the MTC were directing traffic, assisting with luggage and helping all the new arrivals get where they needed to go.

Pre MTC days in Utah (08/10 - 08/14)

Friday after massive flight delays, was picked up at the Salt Lake City airport by Tommy Hirschi (an Elder who served in Easton last year and that I consider to be one of my best friends) and his wife Calee. We drove to Hurricane, Utah to watch Tommy's younger sister compete in a soccer tournament.

Saturday split the day between helping a different sister move and going on a hike in Zion National Park. It is really beautiful here, called home and told my parents that they really should look into moving to Hurricane (don't think my dad will go for it because it was 104 here but know that my mom would love it).

Sunday after Church ate lunch with Hirschi family and said our goodbye and drove back to Salt Lake to my grandparents' (John and Ann Spears - they really live in South Jordan, a suburb of Salt Lake).

Monday was spent sightseeing with my grandparents and visiting with extended family in the area. Saw quite a bit but realize that there is so much more to see, will have to come back in 2014.

Tuesday was given the opportunity to attend a live endowment session in the Salt Lake City Temple by my grandparents. It was a wonderful experience and one that few people who don't live in Utah get the opportunity to experience.

                                   Dinner in Salt Lake with Papa John

Last Days in Lehigh Valley (08/04 - 08/09)

This was a very busy time with all the last minute items being taken care of, so will just give a brief summary.

Saturday was devoted to going away party that was attended by friends from both school and church as well as family. Really missed having my Texas family here but just got to see part of them last month and the other ones I saw at Christmas.

Sunday was my last Sunday at the Easton Ward and my friend James attended with me as an investigator. I am the first Elder from the Easton Ward since we just split so I get to have that honor.

Monday my sister Lisa and her children Devon and Lilly arrived from Texas and I went to pick them up from Newark. Can't believe how much Devon has grown this year, he is only 9 so I can't even imagine how tall he is going to be when I come back and he is 11.

Tuesday my mom, dad, Lisa and I went into New York to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and then had a late lunch at Cafe Habana (love their corn and Cuban sandwiches). Then it was back to Easton to be set apart as a full-time missionary by my Stake President, Keith Dunford. Very special and spiritual experience.

Wednesday was final packing day as well as selling the remainder of my VW parts (sold the car to finance part of my mission costs, thanks also to Cintas and Crayola for giving me jobs that provided the money for me to go)

Thursday the entire family (except Donald who was at Boy Scout Camp) went to Frank's Pizza (Northampton Crossing) for last meal in Easton and then it was off to airport for a 4:30 pm flight that did not actually take off until after 6.

                       Both love VWs, granted different models, but.............

                                 Family saying good-bye at ABE airport

                                  Off to Atlanta and then Salt Lake City