Halfway through the MTC

Hey everyone! Sorry I didn't get an email out last week, but I'll make up for it with this email and a bunch of pictures. Anyways these past two weeks have been good, there were a rough couple days, but besides that it's been great. We celebrated Elder Klevins and Elder Godfreys birthday this past week and that was way fun. Elder Godfrey lives in Idaho and his mom baked him a cake and sent it to him, but that thing got absolutely throttled in delivery. It showed up as warm cake slop but we still ate it and had a great day. Two days latter we celebrated Elder Klevins and his mom sent him like this spinning birthday candle thing, but we didn't have a lighter. He lives in provo though, so he got his mom to come throw a lighter over the fence so he could light the candle, but little did we know there would be tons of smoke. We all got are bedsheets off and started airing out his room so we didn't have to make the whole building evacuate when the fire alarm went off. It was a fun night. We live on the floor with a ton of the Elder's who don't know any English, so that has been way fun to try and talk to them. There are some super cool dudes from Mongolia, Japan, a whole bunch of different Islands, and a couple more. We all just bond as we wait for our ramen to finish every night. Oh ya literally everyone and their dog makes ramen every night, but we only have one microwave for the whole building so we end up making like 7 cups of ramen at a time and just blasting it in the microwave for 12 minutes as we try to make conversation with everyone who speaks different languages. Its a pretty fun time. We went to the temple a couple times this week, and it's been good. The temple workers have such a hard time hearing and pronouncing Elder Blyth's name because he says it in such a thick Australian accent. So funny every single time. Also Elder Chang and Lai always get asked where they're from by the older couples. Every single time they say Colorado and New York, and without fail the older couples respond, "Ok then where are your parents from." Super funny because the answer is still in America. It makes us laugh every single time. Chinese is coming along really good. The Chinese teachers are saying that we are learning at a higher rate then usual which is real nice. It's cause we got 语言的恩赐 (gift of tongues). We taught our first practice lesson in full Chinese this week. We did pretty good and I understood everything he said, but I think he tried to simplify it for us. The problem is trying to respond, you always want to say something, but you don't know how to say it, so you have to take the conversation to a whole different place entirely just because that's all your vocab allows. I'm not frustrated with it though it'll come over time for sure. It's super fun to see everyone hear at the MTC. I feel like I'm constantly seeing friends from Draper, BYU, or family members. It's really nice because you know you always got people around you who care about you. So I'm really happy about that. I'm super excited to get into the field at this point. The MTC is great but it feels like we just do the same thing every day over and over again, but it's good because the language is really coming along fast this way although I kind of wish they would just drop me off in some China Town in Calgary and just let it be baptism by fire, just kind of figure it out as you go but it's good either way. I know I'll most likely miss the MTC when I get there and people start hating me and yelling at me, but I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Anyways, spiritual thought for the week and I'll keep it short. In 2 Nephi 28:14 it says talking about people who are followers of christ, "...nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men." I think I really liked this scripture because it says that the church isn't always perfect because it's led by imperfect people. A lot of times we struggle because of certain people in the church, but that's how it will always be and how it's always been. Instead of basing our testimony on others, we need to base our testimony in christ. Anyways miss and love you all! - Elder Horsley (second to last picture was Elder Blyth's drawing during class)

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