Well, seeing as this will be my last P-day here at the MTC, I'll have this letter be devoted to recapping my MTC experience. For sure the biggest thing i would say is that it wasn't what i thought it would be. I'm not quiet sure what i was expecting but it shocked me for the first few weeks getting use to it.
The schedule got pretty easy fairly fast. Waking up at 6:30 every morning wasn't to hard and by the end of week 1 i was waking up around 6:20-6:30 on my own without the alarm. Quiet time by 10:15 was also pretty standard, as that was just dedicated to writing in our journals or doing hygienic stuffs. Needless to say i was suppose to get 8 hours of sleep every night, but id say a good 3 of the 5 1/2 weeks that i'll be here i was sick, so it was more like 6 hours of sleep. I wonder what Costa Rica sleeping conditions will be like. I know we do have fans to keep us cool, but who knows, maybe we'll have hammocks down there because of the heat. That would be pretty awesome actually!
The 3 classes a day got pretty easy fairly fast as well. Generally one of the 3 classes was designated to our study cycle ( for those of you who don't know it basically goes an hour of personal study, hour of companion study, and then an hour of language study.) During that time was normally when i did my tabbing for my scriptures or looked up Mormon messages.PS, on that topic, sort of, i found another really really good general conference talk. Look up The First Great Commandment by Holland given in Oct of 2012. That's a goody!
On average i'd say i probably studied 30-60 words a day, depending on my mood and what was being taught during class. Some days i would get super lazy and not study and of my flashcards, so then next day i would just down 80+ flash cards before i got to bed. Gift of tongues is pretty intense, because i can flip back to almost all of my flashcards I've used while I've been here and i can still remember what they mean. Thanks for AP classes in high school, that really trained me well for memorizing. If anyone is reading this and is debating between AP and concurrent, ya concurrent gives you basically the same credits, but they teach it differently meaning its less memorizing and testing and more like a, you showed up to class, here's your grade, doesn't matter if you learned anything or not. AP makes you do good in the curriculum and thereby prepares you better for college and studying in general, so i'd say AP classes all the way. Take it with a grain of salt to though, your listening to the person who took 5 AP tests his senior year and still was super bored, i probably should have taken 8 tests or something to keep my relatively sane XD
Food is decent. I just got use to trying every meal and if it didn't taste good i would get a bowl of cereal and a salad. Not excited for Costa Rica salad though. For those of you who don't know, many areas in Costa Rica use ketchup + mayo (fry sauce) in their salads as dressing. I guess if you look at it its just similar to a stronger version of thousand island, but it still sounds nasty.) The only thing that kept me sane during the weeks here food wise was the cereal, Padre Juan's every other Monday, and going out to eat on P-days. Generally it was either DP Cheesesteaks, Burger Supreme (rip off of Astro Burger), or snacks at Sub-Zero or Jamba Juice. Without those p-day reminders of what real food tasted like, i might have gotten skinny. That being said i'm not sure how much i weigh, i don't get my scale until Sunday, but i'll let you know in the next letter how much weight I've gained/lost since I've been here. I don't feel much heavier, but i do always feel sluggish, so maybe i have gotten fatter. The world may never know.
I wish there was a way for some people to experience the MTC without going on a full time mission though. MTC has completely changed my view on life, the gospel, and people and I've only been here 5 weeks. If i was to go home now, my life would be changed drastically, and i haven't even gotten close to finishing my mission. I can almost comprehend now the reason why people praise missions so much.
That being said one of the biggest things I've learned here, we'll started to learn here, is that everyone is different. That's the only phrasing that makes sense to me, so ill try to explain it to you. I always thought of others in a way that was similar to "he is better at this than me" or "he just doesn't have that trait" which is kind of true. I never really looked at people as being different, only as them being better or worse at the traits i already had. Kinda self center now that i look at it, but hey i practically grew up being an only child with siblings, so i never had the experience to think of it any other way. I'm starting to grasp the concept that everyone is just different, not better or worse, just different. Some people in my district just really don't have a long lasting desire to focus or work hard. during study times they will just sit or do nothing productive, which was always hard for me to comprehend since i wanted to do so much in my limited space. One gospel-learned principle i've started to understand though is that everyone is different.
It doesn't really matter whether we were given 10 talents or 1 talent. What matters is that you are using it. I've learned what i lack and what I've been blessed with while i'm here, and simply putting it i'd say i lack social skills, but I've been blessed with an ability to learn (Shout of to my parents for really helping me develop that one) It was always hard trying to comprehend why everyone couldn't work as hard as i was, but I've started to learn that it doesn't matter. In the eyes of our Padre Celestial, all that matters is that we are trying our best. For my good friend Elder Whitlock who has the attention span of, well, Elder Whitlock, he may not work long, but he really does put forth a lot of effort to try to understand Spanish, and most the time i just don't notice it. Everyone in the world is different, and so we shouldn't judge people based on how they respond to a situation contrary to how you would respond. In the words of President Uchtdorf, "Don't judge me because I sin differently than you." I'm so grateful I've learned that lesson, and i don't know if any other kind of setting could have taught me that without learning painful lesson's in the process. So thank you MTC, you do work miracles.
Lastly, i'm trying to look up some personal study on how i can try to better improve myself, and a lot of stuff i can find information on, but this last one the church doesn't offer to much advise on. That being said i figured i could run it by the rest of you and see if you had any ides. The church talks a lot on being humble, but doesn't really give any direct guidance for being defensive. Probably because it fits into other categories (humility, anger management, patience, etc...) but that being said i'm really looking for things specific to being defensive. Since my resources are limited to basically LDS.org, Mormon.org, and the scriptures, i don't have the ability to search elsewhere. In a nut shell, what I've come up with so far is 1 Nephi 16: 1-2.
"1 And now it came to pass tha
2 And it came to pass that I
That is definitely true, and that's something i can work on, but if any of you have any personal favorite talks on how to hold your piece when people offend you or how to not be defensive towards people, by all means send me an email or a DearElder this week. This last week at the MTC ill have LOTS of free time, so if you send me a DearElder full of your opinions on the topic or a talk given by someone (most likely this topic will be by people who are life counselors or etc. compared to apostles due to the specifics.) But ya if anyone knows of anything that talks about that, let me know, and that would be fantastic! I love learning from as many perspectives as i can.
That being said MTC has been great, and next time i write you i'll be in Costa Rica!
Until then,
Pura Vida
Hasta Luego
Elder Campbell
Family
Glad that Mom and Dad were able to have dinner with the Shallenberger's, they really are awesome people. I never really got to know them too well as they are more of managers in the MTC setting than they are presidents, but that is just because they don't have to ask us to do anything. In the mission field i'll probably be getting assignments or asked to try other stuff out by my mission president, but here Pres. Shallenberger just presides in meetings, gives an occasional lesson in priesthood, and does interviews occasionally in person, but normally through his counselors. So that being said i never got to be to close to him, but from what i have seen, he is a fireball and is such a great person. It is really hard to describe his personality, but he is just on top of everything and crazy enthusiastic. Don't know how else i can say it.
Glad to here the wedding is finally over, and congrats to CJ and Megan for finally being on their honeymoon. Sounds like a lot of crazy stuff happened during the time you were all in Georgia, i guess weddings never do go perfectly as planned. I always here of flights getting delayed and what not, such as you guy's story, sounded miserable by the way. I hope my flight will go relatively as scheduled.
That being said, here is my schedule for leaving the MTC. I get all my passport and visa stuffs either Sunday night or Monday morning, and wake up at 4:35 am to get ready. The last Friday and Saturday i have here will be devoted to cleaning and packing, so Monday should basically just be moving around and waiting for deadlines. We board Delta Air Lines with 28 others going to Costa Rica, and from what i've heard thats a big group of newbies for a mission, but don't listen to me, i don't know anything about the norm. Flight is at 9:44 am and we arrive at Atlanta Georgia at 3:31 pm their time ( i believe.) That being said, i have a call card with 150 minutes on it so ill call home sometime between 7-10 am, and i don't know how long ill actually be able to have to talk. I only get three calls for the 150 minutes total so i dont want to try to call each person individually. So if anyone wants to say high, arrange with mom and dad to be at their house at that time for when i do call. I'll try to call the home phone, so be prepared to answer with whoever may be on the other side of the line.
3 hour layover once i arrive in Georgia, ill be sitting there from 3:31 pm to 6:02 pm. Then we hop on another Delta Air Lines flight to San Jose, Costa Rica, and we should arrive at 8:03 pm, which is on the same time zone as Utah, so i shouldn't have any jet lag. That's the plan anyways. From what I've heard, as soon as i land we'll be doing a session at the temple, if not we'll do it the next day along with all my paper work and what not that needs to be taken care of down there. After that, it's time to play ball and ill finally be in Costa Rica to start.
Health is back up to par, today was the first day i didn't take any Dayquil, and i feel mostly fine. Probably gonna get a parasite my first month in Costa Rica since my immune system is down, but hey might as well get it over with as soon as possible right? Ya still not sure about that...
Grammar rules are finally done being taught here, as we have gone over all the tenses and grammar rules for Spanish, now all that is left is memorizing the however many nouns and verbs there are in the language. Needless to say im not fluent with the grammar, so ill still be practicing a lot, but it makes myself feel better saying i'm done learning the basics of spanish. Out of my two teachers here at the MTC, Brother Thorsen served his mission in Costa Rica 4 years ago so he has helped us learn a lot of the slang words and other things that we might not pick up since they are strictly Costa Rican.
You get use to listening to any kind of music that is on LDS.org, but i have realized what music i miss the most. Lots of genres i just accept not being able to listen to, but some songs still play in my head when i wake up, probably outlining what i really would define as my favorite genre of music. That being said its alternative, thanks brothers for that one, and the songs that i miss the most are 1-Chocolate by snow patrol 2-How to be dead by snow patrol 3-generate by collective soul 4-wasted by cartel 5-anything two door cinema club. Ill wake up with those songs playing in my head all the time, but at least they are mellow songs so i don't feel to bad about thinking about them.
I also miss Spore. There was an Elder here who like me was a nerd back in the old days, and so we would always talk games we use to play or deep doctrine topics. One of which was talking about being kings and priests in the afterlife and the idea of creating our own worlds. The first thing that popped into my head was Spore and i've been craving playing it ever since. Oh and i also miss gamecube games like super mario sunshine, and windwaker. Sorry 360 and wii, looks like you don't have a place in my heart =P
Hopefully the family read the world letter which addressed the defensive topic. Especially immediate family members, you all are amazing to listen to with all your different thoughts and resources you know, so if you do know any person who has written books with good chapters or talks or what not, let me know what you have to say concerning that topic! I really respect all your guy's abilities of gathering information, probably where i get it myself, so share the love and give me all you got!
Well, next letter will be full of Costa Rican news and pictures, so i'll talk to you then!
Elder Campbell
Elder Campbell is one fabulous Elder and missionary! We loved being able to serve together with him. Great to see you Scott and Ronda.
Love you,
Steve and Roxanne
