Week 4

I can't believe it's week 4!  Ah!  Too weird!  Thanks for everybody who writes me letters and stuff, they're the best part of the day. :)  Also, big thanks to Sister Olsen for the package!  That was awesome!  You are the best. :)

 

So I had a request that I walk y'all through a day at the MTC.  I have pretty much the same schedule on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and it is this:

 

6:00 Wake up and shower.

 

6:30 The time I'm actually supposed to wake up, but I have no desire to wait in a mile-long line for a shower.

 

7:15 Breakfast

 

7:45 Personal Study. Usually I read the Book of Mormon or some conference talks. It's often hard to stay awake, and I've managed to fall asleep while reading. Eyes open and everything. I feel like I'm falling and spaz out. Lovely time.

 

9:00 Class.  Usually Irma Pike teaches in the morning and she is the cutest little ray of sunshine. She is SO nice and she's just adorable. She usually teaches us about how to teach investigators and how to find answers to their (and our) questions. She tries to help us understand the doctrine more deeply so we can teach it effectively. Sometimes she teaches us a little bit of Portuguese too and makes us do activities like practicing starting conversations with people in Portuguese. We also have our mock appointments with our investigators during class. With Irma Pike they're usually only 15-20 minutes but they're great. She acts like an investigator she had on her mission, and she's a really good actress. She doesn't let you get away with crap.... For Sister Keenan and I, she's a 50 year old Catholic woman named Rosali. I love her.

 

12:00 Lunch.  Usually it's some form of salad (salad, wrap, etc) and some form of potato (curly fries, normal fries, steak fries, tater tots, etc) with water and chocolate chip cookies. The cafeteria is huge and has tons of food, but those are the things that I've found give you the least crippling amounts of gas. :)

 

12:45 TALL  Technology Assisted Language Learning.  When I manage to stay awake it's pretty cool. It is a computer program that helps you learn useful words and phrases and grammar lessons.  Since they expect us to pretty much teach ourselves the language, it's pretty helpful.  You can listen to natives say the words over and over and over and record yourself saying them over and over and over until they sound the same.

 

1:45 Class.  Usually Irmao Owens teaches in the afternoon.  It pretty much is the same as morning class, except we get 30 minutes to teach him as investigator.  For us he is Alex. Alex is loads better than Rafael, but when we started teaching him he didn't even believe in God.  The teachers don't cut you any slack and they act just like a really investigator would, so we've been working hard to get him to believe in God and Christ.  He agreed to be baptized in four weeks though, so we're trying to work with him and prepare him for that.

 

5:00 Dinner. Same as lunch. Except your not as hungry because literally all you've done since lunch is sit.  But it's the last time you get to eat until breakfast, so you usually stuff yourself and get really bad indigestion anyway.

 

5:45 Go to the classroom and pretend to study until Gym time.

 

6:10 GYM TIME!  I HATE WORKING OUT AND EVEN I LOVE GYM TIME!  WE GET TO NOT SIT! :DDD

 

7:40 Back in class.  Studying some more.  Learning some things.

 

9:00 Planning. With your companion write out your schedule for the next day.  Decide what you want to study during personal, companionship, and language study. Boring stuff.

 

9:25 MAIL TIME!  Mob the district leader for the mail and then run back to the residence halls. Best part of the day.

 

9:30 Get ready for bed.

 

10:00 Companionship study

 

10:15 Personal de-stress-and-look-back-over-the-day time.

 

10:30 Lights out.

 

Tuesdays are a little different because we don't have class until after lunch.  Before lunch we do service time and at night we have a devotional.

 

Sundays we have devotionals and meetings and stuff all day.  We have to write a talk in Portuguese every week because the conductor randomly selects a couple people to come up and speak. Boo.

 

Fridays are P-days.  We do our laundry, go to the temple, clean our room and write letters.  P-day ends at dinner and we have TRC then.  TRC you randomly get assigned a volunteer that you have to teach.  It's scary, because you have to talk to real people, but fun.

 

Sadly, I'm out of time.  But now you know.  That's my life.  :)

 

Tchau!

 

--Sister Peart