First Week

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the first of probably many weekly emails that I will send over the course of the next two years.

So you may be wondering what I am actually doing. Well, I am serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what does that mean? you might ask. Well "that" is a word which is commonly used in reference to a noun which someone doesn't want to say more than once. For example, "look at that" or "that was a very pointless explanation of a word which everyone already knows, so get to the point and actually answer the question."And serving a mission means that I will spend the next two years serving and ministering to God's children and inviting and helping people come unto Jesus Christ. 

As you probably know I'll be serving in Scottsdale, Arizona and the surrounding area, but right now I'm not actually in Arizona. I'm in the "Missionary Training Center" which is somewhat of a center, you could say, for missionaries to be trained. It's also commonly referred to as the MTC, which actually stands for "Missionary Training Center" and not "Marvelously Tasty Churros" as you probably thought.So basically, if you aren't aware, at the MTC we have classes and workshops and firesides and devotionals all about how we can become better missionaries and representatives of Jesus Christ. There's so much scripture study and prayer and it is seriously such a wonderful experience. It's really hard to explain what the MTC is like. Because we're all college aged kids, and we go to classes and stay in dorm room style buildings, like college. Except for instead of boring things like studying math, we study the scriptures. Another difference between the MTC and college is that it's actually nothing like college.

Seriously though, the MTC is unlike anything I've ever experienced. I've never been somewhere with so many people and felt so united. There's just so much love here, like people are just so nice. I don't know how many times a day my companion and I will just be walking to a class and then randomly have a super friendly conversation with someone I've never met. It's just so cool to be there and know and feel that all of us are here striving to serve God and become better missionaries.

Also, if you're not aware, as missionaries we call ourselves Elder and Sister and not by our first names. For example I am Elder Oswald. You may also be wondering why that is. And really that's just because it is a respectful title we use. Additionally, as missionaries we are representatives of Jesus Christ and something were are told a lot to do is to "lose ourselves in the work," meaning that the focus shouldn't be on us, it should be on Jesus Christ, and using Elder and Sister helps us to remember the sacredness of our calling. Along with that, I've thought a lot about that exhortation to "lose myself in the work," and for a long time I was confused because I was also always told that I should be myself and use my personality to help others. So I thought, wait what does lose myself mean then? So the other night we watched an awesome talk called "The Character of Christ" and it was all about how the character of Christ is to always look outwards in love and service whereas "the natural man" is self centered and selfish. It was a really awesome talk and was really motivating and inspiring and the thought I had was that to "lose myself in the work" doesn't mean to lose my personality, it means I need to lose my self centeredness and selfishness. That the problems and struggles I have, I don't need to worry about. Because as we strive to be like Christ, turning outwards and looking for ways to serve and love others, we don't need to worry about or wallow in our trials or challenges. Jesus Christ will help us through all of our pains and struggles as we trust in him, and as we turn outwards in love to others. 

So that's kind of the conclusion I came to about that.

But yeah things have been going really well here. My companion, Elder Adamson, and I are getting along very well. He's from England and has an awesome accent and he's super cool. We also get along with the two other Elders in our room, Elder Hymas and Elder Rusnell. We're all going to the Scottsdale Arizona Mission and we've just been having a blast here at the MTC.

Well, thank you all for the prayers and support. I love you all, talk to you next week!

~Elder Oswald

(The above was his group email to a bunch of people, many of whom are nonmembers. This will be a great opportunity for Kendall to do some extra missionary work. But I thought I would also include a few excerpts from his email to me that has a bit more information. Normally though, I'll probably just share the group letters on this blog unless there are experiences that I feel are particularly noteworthy).

Well so it's been a lot of fun so far. It was crazy how we got dropped off in this underground parking lot, then all of a sudden were met by an elder who took my bags and then we were off, it was so fast. All of a sudden we were in this building and a lady put a name tag on me and then I put my stuff in my room and then we met our companions. Literally so much all at once, and right from the very second we got there we were busy.

So my companion's name is Elder Adamson. He's so cool. He's from England and he has the coolest accent ever. We're getting along really well.

Elder Oswald and Elder Adamson

I know I already talked about this, but literally it's blowing my mind as I'm recounting this, that this took place only this last Wednesday. Time is literally fake. I can't express this, other than saying what I said before that literally, I feel like I have been at the MTC for a year, and that I'll never leave. The airport, the uncles and the cousins, meeting my companion, that seems like an entirely different lifetime. I feel like I've been with Elder Adamson forever, and I've known my MTC teachers forever. It's just so crazy.

So Elder Adamson is also going to Scottsdale. As are Elder Hymas and Elder Rusnell, the companionship we share a room with. They are also really cool. We're all leaving on the 12th I believe. Seriously though, we get along so well. It's been so much fun. Elder Rusnell is actually hilarious. Literally, I don't know why, but all we have to do is look at each other and we will start laughing hysterically. Sometimes in class which is funny. Because the rest of our district is really cool too, and they will start laughing. And our teachers, Brother Martin and Brother Curiden are so chill, especially Brother Martin. So class is always super fun.

Scottsdale Missionaries

MTC District

We do learn a lot by the way. It's really cool to have church classes literally all day every day. It's also get exhausting, but the spirit is very strong and so it's cool. And we are working on being more serious in class though and we are getting better.

Anyway, so there's a bit more of legit missionary work than I had imagined. Like Friday, we li went to a class, found out that in 15 minutes we'd go down into a room and actually contact an investigator.

Monday we actually just had our first lesson with her. It went alright. She asked some hard questions. It was on the plan of salvation and so that does open the door for a lot of hard questions. But yeah it could have been better. It was a really great learning experience though. I think it's really good how they have it set up where it's not just random role-playing all the time. Like we do that sometimes in our classes, but not for the actual TRC lessons. Which, the TRC people, some of them are actors, but they're good actors. And you don't actually know if they are or not and it doesn't matter because no matter what, you treat them like they're real investigators.

So Sunday, holy cow. I said every day is like church all day, and so Sunday is like three times that. There's a bunch of meetings and there's choir practice (Which I'm doing and is super awesome and fun) and there's a huge devotional with everyone in the MTC, which is really cool because of how many people there are, and then the very last thing is when we get to watch a movie, which we have the choice of. And by movies, I mean talks, except for I think the Testaments. Our Branch President (who's super cool by the way) suggested to our district that we watch the talk "Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar. It was a talk he gave to the MTC on Christmas a few years ago and it was one of the most exceptional talks I've ever heard. It was seriously so amazing and I wish you could watch it, except apparently they only show it at the MTC. Which is really sad. It was really good though and was pretty much about how the character of Christ is to turn outwards and serve and love always, whereas the natural man turns inwards and is selfish and self centered. It was really good. He shared this story of when he was I think like a stake President or something and he got a phone call about three girls who were in a car accident and one was already pronounced dead. The woman on the phone though was also on the phone with another woman, the mother of one of the girls and a Relief Society President. So they wanted Elder Bednar to help identify the girls since they didn't know who was who yet. Then on the phone the Relief Society President says to the woman on the phone with Elder Bednar that she just found out it was her daughter who was killed. And her reaction was to make sure that the other families knew that their daughters were safe and they needed to visit them at the hospital. So her daughter was killed but she was still thinking of others. Then after all that going on, the night before her daughters funeral she got a phone call from some whiny selfish horrible lady who complained to her because she had been sick for days and no one from the Relief Society had stopped by yet to bring her a meal. And so the next morning she dropped off a meal she had made to that horrible lady, on her way to her daughter's funeral. How does someone do that? But yeah it was such a good talk and it was so like inspiring and motivating to be better at service and loving others. It was such a good talk.

A typical day in the MTC pretty much is waking up, showering and getting ready, exercise time if scheduled, breakfast, then we have various workshops and then our main classes with our district (taught by Brother Curiden and Brother Martin who I mentioned before) and then we have lunch, then we have more classes and workshops, then dinner, then exercise time if scheduled, and then something in the evening which could be a devotional or personal and companion study or another class or meeting. It's so much in one day. 

I really like the food. In fact just yesterday I had an amazing food called Chicken and Waffles. I've heard of it before, but it's always sounded kind of disgusting. But seriously, holy cow it's so good. I'll send a picture of it. Also the chocolate milk is amazing.

Chicken and Waffles

So it's just the four of us who are going to Scottsdale in our district, but we have come across some other Scottsdale missionaries here and there. We ran into Brother Bailey's niece and her companion the other day but that's the only time we've crossed paths at all. 

 So music is rare at the MTC with the exception of singing hymns, since no one has CD players and we obviously don't have things like YouTube or Spotify. So for the first three days we actually went without listening to any music other than every once and a while when a teacher would play some music before the start of a workshop. But then the other day we discovered something amazing called the LDS Music app, which has not only hymns, not only primary songs, but the Youth Theme Albums. And there are some awesome songs on there. And you can actually make playlists on that app and so it makes us feel cool. One of the songs, is called Peace in Christ, and it is so good. It was the first song we heard after listening to no music and we just got so excited. It's such a jam. Or a "naughty wobbler" as Elder Adamson would say. That's a British expression apparently. Elder Adamson has a lot of cool expressions. As opposed to Elder Rusnell and Elder Hymus (from Utah and are stereotypically modern teenagers) who have expressions like "dummy stupid in the paint" which Elder Adamson and I still don't know what that means. I'm pretty sure they just made it up together. But anyway that song is really good. You should look it up and listen to it. 

I think that's it for right now then.

Well thanks for emailing me. It was nice to hear from you. Everything is going really well and I'm having a lot of fun.

Fall at the MTC