Dear Family (attempt 2)
If you got another email that just says dear family it's
because I hit tab so I could indent over, but that made me select
"send" for some reason and I accidentally hit enter, so it sent, but
whatever.
I don't remember all the things I already wrote you about so
I might repeat some of it.
I love my district a lot. We aren't perfect, some are better
at focusing than others, but over all the 10 of us are all get along great and
we learn a lot every day. Because of the crazy schedule and everything it feels
like I've been here in the MTC forever, but at the same time I was surprised
that it was already Wednesday again. Very strange. Another good description someone
said was that it just feels like one big long blurry day with long naps.
Our usual schedule would go something like this. Wake up at
6:30, brush teeth, get dressed, fix hill-billy hair and then go to breakfast at
7:10. Then we have to be in our classroom by 7:45. We basically live in the
classroom. (we always means our district. we are together basically 24/7,
except that the girls sleep in another building) so once we're in our class,
sometimes we start "class" which is being taught by a teacher for 3
hours (which sounds really bad, but every single class in like the most spiritual
class you've ever had but 3 times better, our teachers are amazing).
If we don't start
with class, we will have either zone teaching, or study time. In zone teaching,
our entire zone meets together for like 45 mins and sometimes has a lesson and
sometimes split into groups of 3 and role play teaching each other lessons. (One
person is a missionary, one a member, one an investigator). You do a lot of
role play teaching here. I'm doing a really bad job explaining this, but every
day you basically do the same stuff, but the order will change.
Always we have breakfast from 7:10-7:45 (or now it think it
might be 8...) you have lunch from 11:45-12:30 and dinner from 4:45-5:30. That
sounds super early for dinner, but it's not that bad, partially because I'm 1/2
robot and I mostly just get hungry when I'm told to. Also in the day we have 2
different 3 hour class periods, 45 mins of zone teaching and about 2 hours of
some sort of study/planning time. We were given a paper on day 1 that has every
day’s schedule on it. Also every day we get back in our residence hall (they
purposefully call it that instead of a dorm) at 9:30 and we have an hour to
brush teeth and write in journal and talk about non-church stuff before we go
to sleep at 10:30. That hour goes by super fast. Usually we don't actually turn
off the lights until closer to 10:45, even though we always talk about being
tired. We’re getting better about that though. Also, we aren't supposed to
write letters or anything in that last hour, that's for p-days only.
Another big thing we do here (during class time) is that the
teacher just tells everyone to companion study and she/he (we have 2 different
main teachers) does "progressing with the investigator" with usually
2 or 3 companionships every day. When it's my/Elder Orgill (my companion)'s
turn to do progressing... we go to the room where the teacher said she would be
and teacher her a 20 minute lesson, only they act like an investigator. My
teacher Sister Winters becomes Blanca (who is someone she converted) and now
it's our chance to try and convert her. My/E. Orgill's Blanca progresses
different from every other companionship's Blanca, so we really get to kind of
see like what's it's like to work with a real investigator through the lessons.
There's a lot more I'd like to write about, but my email time is coming to a close, so i'll write a letter to talk about more stuff.
A few more quick random things though: waking up is not too
bad, but some days are more difficult than others. The food is usually better
than fine but not usually great. We DID get ****mudslide cookies!!!**** once
though so that was cool. Oh, also in our schedule every day is 45 mins of
gym/sports time (with 10 mind before to get changed and 20 mins after to shower
and stuff).
I'm doing well here, I’m actually somewhat surprised as to
how well I've adjusted. This just feels like life now. The first day or 2 was a
little hard just because I didn't know anyone, but now after spending so much time
with my district everyday I have a good friend group.
I've loved all the letters from home, other family and a few
other friends too. Every letter is great. I love you all and you should be
getting a hand written letter soon! Oh and also I can not change my email address.
The E is here to stay.
**Note from me, the mom...just to explain about "The E is here to stay": When Zak was born, we had to write down his name on the birth certificate, but how to spell it?? That was a quandry. I just couldn't decide, so I went with Zachery. About an hour after we got home and discussing it with my Mom, we decided it was MUCH better to spell his name: Zachary. Keep it all "a's", why the confusion with a, then e. Great! So, we have spelled it with 2 "a's" every since. Zak got his driver's license when he was 18. At that point we had to dig out his birth certificate and there it was z-a-c-h-e-r-y. The Driver's license required that he write down his LEGAL name, so he did. Then I guess when filling out his mission papers, he had to write down his legal name again, which he did. The missionary department then assigned Zak an e-mail address with the legal spelling of his name. It is odd to see when we know really how to spell Zachary's name. But, I guess, in some ways, the E is here to stay. Now, you know the rest of the story!
