MTC Week 4

Family, how's life?

MTC is busy as usual. To give you an idea of my schedule: 

5:30-Up/Run 

6:30-Shower

7:00-Breakfast

7:30-Class

12:00-Gym/Lunch

1:15-Class

5:30-Dinner

6:00-Class

9:30-Personal Study

10:30-Bed

Anyway, all this sitting around is not at all what I thought missionary service would be like. Frequently we fall asleep in our 11 hours of class time a day so we have found new games to play to learn vocab words. For example: Whoever gets the word first gets to flick their companion with a towel. That ended when we got so good we began to draw blood. Next we tried whoever wins gets to shoot a marker into a water bottle from across the class. Originally that was super hard, now however we got so good it has no competition. Now we just write them on flashcards and try to guess. This new no adrenaline way of learning vocab has a very strong effect on Elder Robinson, who frequently we will find snoring in the back of class.

I'm very excited to get to Tonga, the MTC is good, but the lack of any adventure or physical activity has me going crazy. I've started doing pushups to failure in class when I get tired. When I first started I'd get to about 40 and stop. Yesterday I made it to 135. Should give an idea of how tired you can get.

This last week one Elder in our district just kinda gave up. No one could get him to do anything. He laid on his bed for about 3 hours. The branch president asked me to go in alone and talk to him and not come back till I brought him to the classroom. At first this was very frustrating. He pretended to be asleep for about 45 minutes while I kinda sat in there and talked. Then I pulled on my motivational speeking skills and finally got him to get up. The other day i was working out and doing pull ups. I was wearing my gloves and Elder Howard(6 foot 8 inches, 340 pounds) thought I was wearing boxing gloves. He came up and started jumping all about and then said open fist only. Before I could ask what he meant he got me in the right cheek. I think he meant it to be a joke, but I'm pretty sure his arm weighs more than half my body. Just kidding, but close. I feel fine but was very startled. Supposedly fights between companions are quite frequent in Tonga, and are to be taken in a brotherly way. This news was acctually quite terrifying, which has me running faster in the mornings haha.

We all miss Elder Nonu and are anxious to get to Tonga. Thanks for the pictures Hanz, Emma, and Izi! Love you all!

-Elder Lunskog