Fwd: Love from home #1

[Tim Stay]

This is Zach's letter after his first few days in the MTC.  If you want to send him emails, his email address is:

Zachary Stay <zachar...@myldsmail.net>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Zachary Stay <zachar...@myldsmail.net>
Date: Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: Love from home #1
To: tim...@gmail.com, Dalita Stay <lita...@gmail.com>


Dear Family and Friends,

Hello from the MTC! These past few days have really been a whirlwind. When I first got into the MTC, I was really choked up. Just leaving my parents, my family, my life for two years just hit me. Thankfully, for the first half hour or so they have you busy going from place to place, so you can get in the right mindset. My companion is Elder Chamberlain, and he's pretty cool. He's from Washington, and he played basketball in his High School. He spent last year at BYU-Idaho and is going to major in Business Management.

They really push you hard on the Spanish here. Within two days, I was teaching a lesson in Spanish. One of the most impactful experiences though happened on the first night. We were teaching an "investigator" (someone who was pretending to be an investigator), named Luwana. There were about 30 of us in there, and various people try teaching her various things till at the end, she got really upset. She said that she was alone, had cancer, ran away from home, and that all she really needed to hear was that God loved her. It was a very humbling experience, and one that I keep in mind as I prepare for Aron, me and my companion's Spanish "investigator".

As for Spanish, I was teaching a lesson within two days (Did I already say that? Oh well!) The first one was difficult. I ended up reading most of the words, which really limited the Spirit. But by the second, I was better prepared, and it flowed a lot better. And Elder Chamberlain is helping a lot with that too. He's pretty good with Spanish. and remembers more than I do about tense changes and such.

Choir on Sunday though? Fantastic. We're singing "This is the Christ", a song about the Atonement, and singing that song with 200 missionaries about to go off and proclaim his gospel- amazing. Sunday night Devotional was also really good, and had a lot of things that I needed to hear. After that, I went to Elder Holland's "Lifetime Mission" talk that he did here at the MTC. I forget sometimes how much he can get in your face and breath fire. It's inspiring.


Thanks for the letters and packages friends! Mom, my district leader (Elder Taggart) just about died when he had one of your Andes Mint cookies. He literally fell on the ground. He's an awesome guy. And his first name is Tenyson, which I thought would make my Brandon Sanderson friends laugh. He's really confident and has this fantastic laugh.

Advice for friends about to go on missions? Learn to grow close to the Lord, and know the scriptures. And practice being Exactly Obedient. And just so you know- the MTC's going to be pretty hard. But His work is hard. The road to salvation goes through Gethsemane.

Sincerely,

Elder Zachary Stay