Dear Family/Friends,
My first 3 weeks at the MTC have been tough but also very rewarding. There are four guys including myself in a room. There are two districts of Elders going to Singapore, so all together there is about 23 of us leaving for Singapore on September 17. Our scheduale is the same everyday. We wake up at 6:30 and shower and then eat breakfast at 7:15. After breakfast we have a teacher from Malaysia come teach us the culture for about three hours. We then have 2 hours to study the scriptures by ourselves. After lunch we have one hour of individual language study and then an hour of TALL, a computer program that teaches you Malay. We then get an hour of gym time, I usually either play basketball or sometimes we all play soccer. After gym, we shower and go to dinner at 5:00. After dinner, another teacher from Malaysia teaches us for about 3 hours--an hour of vocab, 1 hour of grammer, and then 1 hour of reading the Book of Mormon in Malay outloud. The language is pretty tough, but we all work really hard at it and all of us can carry on a small conversation and teach the basic lessons in Malay. We have 2 locals from Malay that live in Utah, They act like "investigators" so we teach them every day in Malay and they critique us on our language skills. It's actually really helpful even though they can be brutally honest sometimes--haha.
I've already got a battle wound. We were putting up chairs and I smashed my fingers; so all of my fingers are blue. It's pretty cool. In culture class this week, we learned that missionaries buy knives off the street because the cobras get into their house and the missionaries have to cut off their heads! Hopefully, I'll get to fight snakes!
Today is our preparation day, so we went to the temple and we also ate there--they have the most amazing food ever! Then I went to the BYU Bookstore and bought a family size bag of Doritos and three cans of Mountain Dew (caffeine free, of course). I sat on my bed and ate all of it--over 2000 calories. I am 166 pounds now! I met this Elder and his dad literally owns Slim Jim--he has got 800+ Slim Jims in his room.
Today we had a really good devotional about how we are all part of God's army. The devotional speaker was brutally honest. He talked about how our missions will be the hardest 2 years of our lives, but that we are all serving God and that we should just give everything we have. I have 5 1/2 weeks left until we leave for Singapore. I can't wait!
I've already got a battle wound. We were putting up chairs and I smashed my fingers; so all of my fingers are blue. It's pretty cool. In culture class this week, we learned that missionaries buy knives off the street because the cobras get into their house and the missionaries have to cut off their heads! Hopefully, I'll get to fight snakes!
Today is our preparation day, so we went to the temple and we also ate there--they have the most amazing food ever! Then I went to the BYU Bookstore and bought a family size bag of Doritos and three cans of Mountain Dew (caffeine free, of course). I sat on my bed and ate all of it--over 2000 calories. I am 166 pounds now! I met this Elder and his dad literally owns Slim Jim--he has got 800+ Slim Jims in his room.
Today we had a really good devotional about how we are all part of God's army. The devotional speaker was brutally honest. He talked about how our missions will be the hardest 2 years of our lives, but that we are all serving God and that we should just give everything we have. I have 5 1/2 weeks left until we leave for Singapore. I can't wait!
Jumpa Lagi
Elder Madsen
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