Week 5 (MTC)

Week 5 means only one week left! Not sure how I feel about that yet...

The MTC is great, I’ve learned a lot about being a missionary. It’s a lot of work to teach the two lessons a day we have now, with the weekly TRC lessons. Teaching Resource Center lessons are where we teach a church member instead of someone (acting as someone) investigating the church. They’re usually returned missionaries, but this week we taught someone in France via Skype. It was really cool to talk with a native speaker.

We also celebrated the Fourth of July. And Canada Day; we have a few Canadians in our zone. It was weird being in the MTC for it, but we were able to watch some fireworks from BYU’s Stadium of Fire. We also watched a video on religious freedom just before the fireworks started. There’s actually not as much to talk about as I thought, it was a pretty normal day other than the fireworks.

Last a Sunday was a sad day, though. Our Branch President, President Newell, was released. He’s amazing, if I remember correctly, he was a US ambassador and worked with President Ford, and he was just an outstanding Branch President. Many tears were shed as he bore his final testimony in sacrament meeting that day. Our new Branch President is President Adams, and he seems nice, but I haven’t had an opportunity to get to know him yet.

We also had to say goodbye to the missionaries who left for Montreal Tuesday morning. It was sad to see them go, and some of us are realizing how close we are to leaving. A lot of missionaries actually can’t wait to head out into the field. I am too, but I feel like once we get out there, we’ll wish we were back here.

The good news is that we’ve gotten a lot of new missionaries these past two weeks, and no one else leaves until we do. Last Wednesday, 8 missionaries headed to Tahiti came, and this Thursday (just yesterday) we got 12 new Montreal missionaries. I should probably mention, I think there is/was one missionary in each Montreal group that’s serving in Arizona, and one Sister in the Tahiti group is serving in Barbados. Another fun fact is that of the 12 missionaries, there were how many Elders vs Sisters? Go ahead and guess. There are eleven Elders and a lone Sister. Pretty crazy, right?

I also love the devotionals here, they’re super spiritual and give a lot of good insights. Every Sunday, they also show videos following the devotional. They have some recordings of devotionals where Elder Bednar and Elder Holland spoke here at the MTC. Those are sometimes better than the live devotional that night, mostly because they’re apostles. For anyone heading to the MTC, I’d be a terrible missionary if I didn’t recommend that you watch all the apostles’ videos while you’re here. I’m not sure how many there are, but again, all the ones I’ve seen have been amazing. For anyone not going to the MTC, I’ll recommend reading (and rereading) President Nelson’s latest Conference talk about revelation. I’ve lost track of how many times it’s been recommended that we read it, so I can’t imagine that the same doesn’t apply to all of you.

It’s weird how true it is that the days are like weeks, and the weeks are like days. At the end of every day, I can barely believe things from that morning were the same day, but at the same time, I just got here yesterday, didn’t I? I wonder what it’ll feel like next week, when I only have a few days left.  Regardless, I love being a missionary.

À plus tard,
Elder Wood

Elder Wood, Elder Ellsworth, Elder Poulson, and Elder Bunker with their outgoing branch president, President Newell

He likes to send pictures of the temple - it is pretty stunning with the mountains in the background

Elder Poulson on Canada Day (July 1)

Happy 4th of July!

Fireworks from the Stadium of Fire, nearby at BYU's LaVell Edwards Stadium

The care package box we sent him - he wanted to let his dad know that 1) It took 5 minutes to get the box open with all that tape and just a key available to cut through it and 2) That was a lot of packing peanuts!