Barrett's First Email from the MTC

Barrett wrote a hand written letter Friday that I received yesterday. The missionaries here told me that he would have been told to write his family the day he arrived. It was wonderful. A lot of it is repeated here. The fun thing that he did was send a rub of his name tag so we could see his Russian name tag. Dear FAMILY! Hello! Greetings from the MTC! I don't even know what to say, so much has happened in the past week! Has it only been a week? The first day, not even a day, half day we were here, they had us in a class room learning Russian for I-don't-even-remember-how-many hours! It was incredible. Then we went straight into a large group teaching room were we all practiced teaching investigators. Then we had dinner. Right when I walked into the cafeteria I was attacked by both Seth and Brandon! It was insane!! They just came out of nowhere. We all have overlapping mealtimes, Seth and I have the same p-day, and Brandon lives upstairs from me in the same building! It is unbelievable! My district is so great! They are definitely the best group of Elders in the MTC! My companion's name is Elder Black. He is great! Today the other Elders called me and him Harry and Ron. Haha! Elder Black is tall and redhead. The other Elders are Elder Francom and Elder Campbell (who share a room with me and Elder Black), Elder Bishop and Elder Holmes, and Elder Woolley and Elder Jones. They are seriously the greatest district probably in the history of districts! In the cafeteria there is an alcove sort of thing on one wall with pillars and all the Russian speaking missionaries sit there. They call it 'the Iron Curtain'! Hilarious. They even do a toast to Mother Russia on Saturdays (but it was decided at branch council that they should actually stop doing it, so they don't do it any more...) But anyways We definitely spend most of our time learning the language. I bought the Russian Hymnbook! I couldn't wait to get my hands on one! It is definitely the coolest thing I own now. We sing in Russian everyday, and we have learned how to pray and bear simple, very simple testimonies in Russian. It is amazing! Even the slowest are picking up the language so quickly! Oh, and it has been confirmed: Russian is a 12 week language. Ok, 5 minutes to go before the email automatically shuts off. So real quickly let me say: Ya znayu shto Bog zhiv. Tserkov Iisusa Khrista Svatikh Poslyednikh Nyey istina. Ya vas lublyu! (and I will try to figure out how to type in Russian for you:) I love you all! Write letters on Dear Elder. It's not really a competition, but... Elder Francom got like 12 letters yesterday... haha Talk to you soon Love Elder Hamp