Barrett's 2nd Email

He has written some letters but generally writes the same day as the email so not much additional except, he does tell me what the secret is so read this and then I will put the secret at the end :)

Dear FAMILY,

Hey! How's it going? Things are great here! I'm not really sure where to begin... So much happens here! Language is going great. Church is great. Do you remember at stake conference when every one was supposed to write a talk and then they just sniped someone from the pulpit the day of? Well every sunday is like that! It's pretty exciting. And in two more weeks, we're expected to prepare our talks in Russian! We have firesides every tuesday night. At the last one we sang "Called to Serve" - the big version with the whole MTC in the gigantic room. Holy Cow! It was unbelievable!

So to answer some of your questions: We, the Elders, are organized into districts of 8-10 people. Ours has 8 - well, it started out with 7 (2 groups of 2, and 1 group of 3), but then we got a transfer and now we're 4 groups of 2. We all came into the MTC on the same day. Russian and Ukrainian missionaries only come in every 6 weeks. So in our Zone there are three Districts of newbies and three districts of old timers. Elder Black and I are both headed to Moscow, along with Elders Francom and Campbell (our fellow roommates). Elder Jones is headed to Moscow West. Elders Woolley and Bishop are headed to Samara. And Elder Holmes is headed to Rostov. We will all be companions (Hamp+Black, Francom+Campbell, Bishop+Holmes, Woolley+Jones) for the duration of the MTC. Our district is the best!

So every P-day (tuesday for us) we go to the Temple at 7:20am. In fact we just went this morning and guess who met us at the gate and went through with us - Elder Mackey! It was great! Today is his last p-day! He leaves next Monday for Honduras!!!! Tonight at 5:00pm we all made an appointment (wrote it down in our planners and everything) to meet at the Map and take the picture of all of us (Me, Seth, Brandon, and Carl Smith - yeah, he's in here too!) pointing to our missions. I can't wait! Then, there's a fireside, and we're all gonna get there early so we can get a really good seat because... Well, I've been sworn to secrecy, but I'll tell about it after :)

Speaking of secrets - well, not secrets, but information that I have that not everyone has - There's going to be a curriculum change at the MTC, the likes of which hasn't been seen in a few years, so to answer Cindy's questions, right now our district meets together every day at fairly random times, but soon it's going to change, and maybe go back to a more structures schedule. We'll see

Thank you to everyone who has written! Cindy, Uncle Randall, Carrie, etc... (Still not a competion, but I beat Elder Francom yesterday) Keep the letters coming! It's amazing what a stack of letters means to the whole district, even if they're all for the one person. Well, gotta go! I love you all

Elder Hamp

Hard copy letter says that the rumor is Richard G Scott was coming. Still nothing confirmed because he wrote before the fireside. I guess we will know for sure when his next email arrives, but he was very excited at the thought.