First week in the MTC

Hola everyone!!

So I left for the MTC in Provo, UT this last wednesday, September 25th and have now been here for nine days.The first day, before I actually had to report to the MTC, Brian, Jeff, Dave, and I all went to the Pizza Pie Cafe. They have free meals for missionaries who are reporting so I got that for free! For the first hour I just picked up all of my language and study materials and then took a bus over to the west campus to go to my apartment. My roommate/missionary companion is Elder Warth. He is super small so it's funny seeing us side by side. Once I can send off some pictures I will. We had class the rest of the day and didn't unpack until that night. One of my zone leaders, Elder Durham, actually knows Brian Clarine! Thursday is our designated Pday (Preparation day), but because we had just gotten there we didn't have it which was kind of lame. Pday is the only day I can email and it's when we do laundry and just kind of relax. It's awesome being here and I don't have to focus on myself or what I need to do, I just focus on learning for others and teaching others. Spanish is coming a lot easier than it did in higshchool! I've learned more in 10 days than I did in two years of highschool. We've been praying in spanish, talking in spanish, reading in spanish, etc. It's Crazy! Even though I haven't been here that long, time is just flying by! It is super fun here and you don't really have time to slack off since we are in class, study, or meetings for 13 hours a day. on Friday we taught our first mock investigator. He "could't speak" ANY english, so after only 2 full days we had to talk to him and give him an entire lesson in only spanish. Clearly, we couldn't say everything we wanted to but it was still amazing how much we could do. My teacher, Brother Wiest, is a 23 year old student at BYU from Boston who served in Argentina and he can speak english, spanish, french, and arabic fluently. Crazy! I was called as the pianist so I'll be playing the piano for our zone from now on. A zone is 3-4 districts, and a district has 6-8 people in it. Fast and testimony meeting was really awesome on Sunday and there was a cool missionary conference after. There is like a small stream here which is really relaxing to study by (I'll get pictures when possible). I miss everyone at home and hope to here from most, if not all of you, soon! I can only check this email every Thursday but there is a website called dearelder.com where you basically write an email but it gets to me the next day in the form of a letter. I PROMISE that I'll make time to respond with a hand written letter to anyone that writes me! I don't have a phone or internet (outside of this) so I would love to hear from everyone and know what's going on. My mailing address is:

Elder Joshua Michael Clarine

Nov05 ARG-RES

2023 N. 900 E. Unit 812

Provo, UT 84602

If you have any questions about anything here or anything in general just let me know! I hope everyone is doing well and I love being here in the MTC (CCM in spanish) learning about the gospel and preparing to help others! There was a quote in our devotional yesterday that said, "A missionary leaves his family and friends for 2 years so that others can be with theirs for eternity." I love that, and I'll be home before you know it.

With Love,

             Elder Joshua Clarine