Oct 23 2012

This is my last email from the MTC! I'm so excited!

Last Thursday--it came as a complete surprise, because all of us were expecting to get them Friday--we got our Travel Plans! I'm going to be flying from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, then to Sydney, then to Brisbane. It's funny because I'm going to be the travel leader for my group--which consists of myself, and that's it. My companion, Elder Rozier, is taking a different flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, and then directly to Melbourne from there. Oh, also it's funny because if there aren't any delays, I will never experience October 30th on the ground. It will be Oct 29 when I leave LA, and Oct 31 when I arrive in Sydney and Brisbane.

So--what does this all mean to you, you might ask? Haha. You probably won't actually be asking yourselves that. One can hope :) It means that the last chance you'll have for sending me a Dear Elder before I leave will be by the deadline this Friday--they don't send Dear Elders on Saturday, and I will be leaving for the airport on Monday before dinner time. This also means that I have no idea if I'll be able to send an email or not next week, because if the p-day in my mission is Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday I probably won't have the opportunity to email, so the wait will be a little bit longer I suppose.

Anyways. Travel plans were definitely the most noteworthy part of last week. Elder J's eye is fine now. Our whole district is ready and willing (and able) to leave for the field. Just a reminder, one is going to Brisbane (that's me!), one to Melbourne, three to Singapore/Malaysia, two to Taiwan, Taizhong, one to Scotland/Ireland, one to San Jose and one to Anaheim.

Three missionaries from our zone are already gone--two because their Chinese is already excellent (because they spoke it before their missions) and one because his Mission president in Canada wants him to come when all they english/other language missionaries come. Only Australian missionaries like Elder R and I will be leaving next Monday. The majority of missionaries will be leaving Tuesday, and then Elder W and whoever else is going to San Jose, California, are going early on Wednesday.

What else? Oh, for anyone who enjoyed hearing about the story of my district taking on the cereal towers, here's another food tale: Elder Scovel in our district has "Thai Dragon Peppers" in his garden back home, his mom sent some of them to him and almost everyone in the district tried one. It's the hottest thing I've ever had in my life, but it wasn't that bad--I don't know how high Thai Dragon Peppers rank in terms of Scovel units (yes--don't worry, we have already discussed the irony that the name of the person who measured spicyness is the same as the Elder in our district who had the peppers), but the other Elders were telling me that at least the ones from Elder Scovel's garden were not as hot as a Habanero, which I have personally never had.

I learned that my favorite candy is potentially Australia licorice. I wonder if they actually have what we Americans call "Australian-style" licorice in Australia, or if it's just some thing like Canadian Bacon--in Canada, they just call it ham. Elder F recieved a bag of some red ones ("Wiley Wallaby" was the brand, sounds Australian to me) which we all shared. It was delicious.

I apologize, this email is not especially organized. The devotional was another speaker from General Conference: Elder Bowen of the First Quorum of the Seventy. With luck, we'll have another one tonight and that will make three nights in a row!

That's all I can think of. The final week at the MTC is going smoothly, it's been good but I'm not dissappointed in the slightest to be leaving. I've seen generations and generations of English-speaking elders going by--and even some language Elders too! Elder King arrived after me and left a week ago!--and I'm ready to follow them. Wish me luck!