Hey everyone,

This has been one crazy week. It feels like it has been forever since
I got dropped off at the airport. When Heidi and I got to the airport
we met over 35 missionaries. Most of them were coming home from
Argentina and Brazil. It was funny because they were freaking out
about regular things like free refills and Reese's but at the same
time they kept forgetting how to speak English. The flight to Salt
Lake was fun. When we got to the airport there were like a billion
families waiting to welcome the missionaries. I felt like a celebrity
going down the escalator even though none of it was for me. Courtney
and Michael (Heidi's friends) picked us up and we had some JWs take a
picture of us.

We killed some time going to the draper temple and also Courtney's
house and then Chick-fil-A. When we got to the MTC, missionaries met
us and took our stuff. We went and got our name tags, white handbooks,
iPads (for the MTC) and then went to our rooms to drop our stuff off.
Then we went to our classroom. It's so cool because our class room is
in the new building on the top floor. It's such a nice building.

Our district is the best. My companion is Elder Boren. He is one crazy
missionary. There were 15 missionaries in our district. Four elders
were going to Perth and one sister. There are two elders going to
Brisbane Australia and one sister. Then there were five elders going
to Orlando Florida and two sisters. Unfortunately the one of the
elders going to Perth had some family issues and another going to
Orlando has a shoulder issue so they went home. Now I am in a trio
with Elder Cox.

The first week was hard and took some getting use to. It's awesome
because I have never felt so productive in my life. From the second we
got here we have been studying, learning, and practice teaching. It
was awesome the first night when we met with the MTC presidency and
sang called to serve.

One of the things they say here is to make it to Sunday because the
first couple days are really hard and slow but it gets a lot better
after Sunday. On Sunday we met for priesthood and then as a district.
Then sacrament meeting was the whole zone. There are like 80 of us.
For sacrament they tell all of us to prepare talks and then you figure
out who is speaking when we start. I was sitting by the first Elder to
speak and he hadn't prepared anything. That was a fun talk. After we
had choir which was fun. We are practicing precious Savior dear
Redeemer. We had a devotional and then got to watch the character of
Christ video of Elder Bednar. It was such a powerful talk. He talked
about how this mission is not for us and that we need to turn outward
and serve.

Also on Sunday we had a temple walk. I met one cool Elder from Texas
there. It's cool because I have seen Jacob, Dallin, Anna Gillespie,
and Heidi all over the place. It is hard calling them Elder and
sister.

On Monday we started our TRCs. It is when we teach "investigators"
although most of them are members. We have two a day but our first one
fell through. Yesterday we had two TRCs and they were awesome. We got
them to pray and one is committed to a baptism date.

On Tuesday we had service and we cleaned our residence. We also had an
awesome devotional by the relief society general president. Today we
had p-day. We did laundry and went to the temple. The Provo temple is
so big. It was really nice to be able to go to the temple.

Anyway, being a missionary is awesome. Hope you guys have a amazing week.

Love,
Elder Nelson

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