Thursday, November 11, 2010

Four Apostles...it's a record!

Alrighty, well, only about a week and a half left.  I still haven’t received my travel plans, but I will be getting them this weekend.  It's snowed a couple times, but it pretty much stopped after 15 minutes every time.  Yesterday I got to be one of the New Missionary hosts, and I helped some of the new missionaries get settled and figure stuff out.  One thing I want to let you know before I forget is that I might be able to call home when I get to the airport.  Missionaries are allowed to call their families when they're at the airport. So I’ll let you know more about that when I get my travel plans (next Thursday).
When I said for Jaren's stomachs sake in my last email I just meant that the food isn't very reliable for being tasty, and it gives you really bad gas, so that’s what I meant in regards to that.
Three Elders in my district are still waiting for their Visas.   I think they'll either have to stay here for some extra time, or they'll get temporarily reassigned. 
This last Tuesday’s devotional was once again really good (although I've yet to see an MTC speaker that isn’t very good).  We were talking to President Smith (MTC president) about the last few speakers, and he said that there had never been three apostles at the MTC in a row.  And guess what...that record just got made four.  My favorite apostle came and spoke, Elder.....David A Bednar!!!!!  Man, it was such a great talk; although I'll admit after it was over I had a bit of a headache, because his talk was so full of doctrine.  He talked to us about our teaching and the kinds of things we need to do to have our teachings stick.  He explained that you need:

1. Doctrine - which answers questions of why
2. Principals - which answer questions of what
3. Application which answers questions of how 
He explained using the example of Home Teaching, he said you can come up with all sorts of ideas that can get the elders to do their Home Teaching, but that’s just focusing on application.  You need to teach the doctrine, and if they understand the doctrine, they'll want to do Home Teaching.  He said that in the church people focus too much on application when they need to be focusing on doctrine, then principal, then finally application.  Anyways his talk was really good and had a ton of info in it.  But I don’t think I'll be getting any more apostles or prophets while I'm here.  He also left us with more apostolic blessings which are too long, so I won’t include them in this email.
So far my MTC experience has been nothing like I'd expected.  The hardest thing about the MTC is that every building looks pretty much the exact same with a couple of exceptions.  My classroom is in one of the newer buildings, and has the nicest desks and chairs of any other building at the MTC (that’s pretty sweet to have).  The food here is pretty bad sometimes, although you do get some good foods.  My favorite breakfast is the biscuits and gravy.  Every other day they have waffles pancakes, or french toast.  Lunch and dinner are very similar, not a whole lot of good.  Pizza night is every Friday, and we get ice cream on Wednesdays and Sundays.  The best ice cream is Strawberry Sundae Crunch.  It pretty much tastes exactly like strawberry cheese cake.  The other elders in my district are Elder Lee form Kaysvill, UT; Elder Mower from South Jordan, UT; Elder Barton from Peoria, AZ; and Elder Garrett from Fullerton, CA.  Elders Garrett and Barton are the other ones in my room.  I got some pictures printed off, and I'll be sending them out today.
When I teach people like Bro. Arnell it's in a thing called the teaching evaluation, I teach them while they pretend to be an investigator from their mission and then give you feed back through your teacher.  It’s a super great resource for missionaries to practice teaching.
Oh yeah, please go ahead and sell my car.  But I wouldn’t complain of you didn’t sell my amp and sub...  but anyways go ahead and sell it.  It does need an oil change soon.
That’s about all the time I have for today.  Again, I look forward to hearing back from you.  I love all of you.
 Elder Dilling