Elder Mason Scott Campbell
Missionary Photo
To The World:
Hello all. Sorry i couldn't respond earlier. Turns out my P-days are on Wednesday and not Monday so i didn't get to reply back to anyone for a good week after I arrived here. Life's been pretty good so far in the MTC. It isn't as bad as i thought it would be, but then again i am in the new MTC Campus which is only for the Spanish missionaries, so that's fun. Waking up at 6:30 isn't really as bad as i thought. We get an hour to prep in the morning before breakfast and our classes start, so there is a lot of time to sit around, or study depending on who you talk to.
My dorm room has two bedrooms in it with two sets of companions. In the larger dorm room on the right is Elder Ferrin and Elder Kirk. Ferrin is from some middle of nowhere town called Far West next to Plain City, Utah (not a joke by the way, actually called Plain City.) He is a stereotypical farmer/redneck and is a party to be with. Elder Kirk looks like the old school version of dad with the fro and all, or Napolean Dynomite with a shorter cut. Fun to talk to, and always entertaining. On the left side of the hallway in our dorm room is my bedroom, which for some reason is about 40% smaller than Elder Ferrin and Kirk's bedroom. Ridiculous i know. My companion is Elder Haslem and he is from Cedar City, Utah. And no Ryan and Charie, he doesn't know the Brown family. He is actually really quiet and doesn't talk very much. Not very motivated to do anything or do extra time to better study for something, but he knows a decent amount of Spanish so at least our lessons go well, mostly.
Speaking of lessons, picking up Spanish is coming really quick here. They didn't put me in a fast track program here seeing as there is only the group of newbies, and the group of people who have taken about 6+ years of spanish and are already fluent who will only stay for 2 weeks at the MTC. For me and the rest of us recruits, we start in the beginners class and learn the basics on up. I used to always joke around with people when they heard i was speaking Spanish that ya i took 2 years in high school but it would only get me through the first day or two in the MTC. Actually no, taking two years has helped a tooooonnn in learning my spanish. In our district, made up of 6 guys and 4 girls, only 1 person had never taken any Spanish before and the rest of us are picking it up pretty fast. They really do throw missionaries out in the ocean when learning a language and expect them to swim. I got here Wednesday night, and by Friday morning we had to teach our first lesson to an investigator using only Spanish and no English at all. Surprisingly, i was able to do it, and i just had to drag my companion with me through the lessons, as I do everything else. I expected my companion to not do anything and be pretty bad, which was partially true, since he doesn't want to do anything, but he at least does what the teacher tells him to do, sometimes, and tries to memorize things.
It's hard getting use to staying at the same pace as everybody else though. We are frequently in class and given assignments to memorize something like the invitation to baptize or the missionary purpose in Spanish, and regardless if its all new words or not, i tend to pick it up in about 2 minutes tops. Everyone else though takes the entire night's worth of personal study and the next morning going over it, and still struggle with it. So, i know for a fact that the gift of tongues is true, because holy crap i can understand Spanish so well. By day three in the MTC i can already bear my testimony fluently in Spanish and speak whatever comes to mind, not the basics phrases they teach you to say. I can also pray in Spanish, and as long as they talk slow, i can understand almost everyone people say. Its also cool because these past couple days i've started getting to the point where if they are talking in english, i can translate it to spanish while there talking.
Glad the language is working well for me, because now i can focus on other stuff, like focusing more on the gospel and my ongoing personal conversion process. They have a devotional every Sunday and every Tuesday night by some famous church person or general authority, but for the month of July all the GAs are off for vacations so i don't think ill get anyone famous until August. Oh ya PS i leave August 18 for the MTC and ill be returning home from my mission on June 21, 2016, so i still get my whole summer to party and work, thats exciting!
Speaking of exciting, but not really at all actually. I've been sick this whole week. I had a mild head cold the Monday before i went to the MTC and it was starting to get painful on Wednesday when i arrived. Wednesday morning i awoke to find out that my ear hurt and so we put some silver in my ear to hopefully help it, but nope, just made it worse. Turns out i had an ear infection in my left ear that only has gotten worse over the week. Friday morning i awoke to find out my right ear had an ear infection as well. Yay, exciting first week of MTC. So basically from thursday morning at all, i couldn't hear at all out of my left ear, i could barely hear tuesday morning, and it hurt, and my right ear hurt as well. Soo its been really hard to focus on MTC and everything when my entire head hurts constantly... both sides... luckily i went to the doctor on friday and he gave me 3 different meds which i have been using, and so far my ears have been getting better.
Haven't seen too many familiar faces here. I only saw one friend i knew from high school and that was Trae Hansey, but he is in the main MTC so i only saw him once and waved to him from across the stadium for the Sunday devotional and then he vanished. I did meet Pres. Shallenberger though, who knows a lot more about me then i do him. The Pres and his wife kept saying they were so excited to meet and and they were so glad i was in their district, but i still don't know them very well so i'm still in this relatively awkward stage with them.
Food is pretty good here at the west campus. We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, and you can eat as much as you want while you are in the cafeteria. Sometimes the meals are pretty good, other times they aren't really bad meals, its just i'm not a fan of the taste. Every day is a new meal item, and they always have a salad and cereal bar, which are both very convenient to have for food. So during the day i'm well fed, but i'm starving at night and in the afternoon between lunch and dinner. I don't remember who said it was better to have 6 small meals compared to 3 big meals a day, but who ever it was, you're making the MTC experience very since im always starving. Hopefully ill be able to break that habit soon, but in the meantime i keep buying bags of chips or E.L. Fudge cookies at the creamery since i need something to eat at night.
MTC experience is very different from the actual mission field though. Timing is all different from when you can and can't do stuff. We have an hour and a half of gym time every day which i didn't expect, so i definitely under packed a lot of athletic clothing and regular attire.
Loving the MTC though, learning Spanish is fun, and i'll get use to my boring companion eventually... i hope.
Talk to you soon, ill keep you posted.
Elder Campbell
PS. From here on out, if anyone wants to talk to me, send an email through DearElder.com. Its much more useful then the email which i have to go all the way to main campus to print of to read. For DearElder.com, you just gotta know my name, Elder Campbell, my relative departure date which is August 18, and my unit number which is 827. Thanks again!
.jpg)
