March 10, 2015 -- Hola!

Part I...

Hola everyone!

First of all, thank you Mom and family for the package, I didn't even know they have personal sized bottles of Martinelli's, I'm saving that for my first practice investigator here in the MTC who commits to baptism since Martinelli's are for celebratory occasions. Thank you for all of the letters and packages as well. Dear Elder's (he means www.dearelder.com) are also a great way to send me letters since I can read them all the same day they are sent, which gives me a little more time to respond on p-days. For this first email since so much has happened, I will split it into two sections: what has happened at the MTC and what I have learned. (Please see sidebar for Elder Allgaier's current address and email address!)

The first week at the MTC was crazy. Some things I had to get used were 1. Wearing my nametag 2. Being called Elder Allgaier 3. Waking up at 6:30 4. Not being able to 'hang out with the sisters' (meaning we can't even hint at flirting with them, that's rough) 5. Learning Spanish and using it in everyday conversation. First thing they gave me in the MTC was my glorious name tag with the infamous orange sticker signifying exactly how green I was on it for all to see. I was probably welcomed to the MTC 30 times that day ("Welcome to the MTC"). Almost everyday we have classes three times a day, first is Spanish lessons where the teacher only speaks in Spanish even though we are the beginner level class. On the topic of the language I have to say that the gift of tongues is real. Almost all of the time I will try to be translating what I hear or what I say or what I read to spanish or from spanish to english. My district of 10 missionaries sometimes uses study sessions to speak only spanish to each other. We all get along pretty well. My companion is Elder Johnson from Texas ("tehas" in spanish) and he will be leaving for the Barcelona Spain mission after the MTC. Pretty sweet being able to go to the second best mission in the world after Mexico Monterrey West. Anyways, we taught our first lesson in Spanish to our practice investigator last Saturday, that's right, all in Spanish, she didn't speak a lick of English (at least her character didn't). It was very interesting being able to do that after just three days. She was really nice when we kept stumbling through words, but we got her to commit to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Sunday we had a devotional followed by a movie watching a talk by David A. Bednar called Characters of Christ. Great talk, you should read/listen to it if you get a chance.

I'm out of time for now but I will write more soon (before next tuesday) I had a great experience today. Sorry.

-Elder Allgaier