DAY 28: Christmas With the Elders (and Sisters. let's be PC.)

Hey Mom (and everyone else!)

 

      Thanks for the E-mail! I sure hope you still had funeven though I wasn't there. Christmas here was excellent. Christmas eve we had a devotional with the mission presidency, where we sang a really fun version of 12 days of christmas, (the MTC gave me). I dont remember all of them, but there was like 10 new commandments, 7 lukewarm showers, 6:30 wake up, 5 hours of gym! 4 chocolate milks, 3 new companions, 2 free haircuts and a rock solid testimony. We also watched Mr. Krugers christmas, which is very high on the list of cheesiest church movies ever made, and thats sayin something! Chirstmas eve night, my 2 companions and I decided to do something nice for the other elders in our district (Elders Philpott and Thomas). Someone had sent me a christmas package that had a stocking in it, so we took that, a bunch of candy that we had already recieved, some soda from the vending machine, and whatever other goodies we could find. During the evening time where we all run around the halls doing crazy stuff, I went in their room and stealthily grabbed one of there keys off their desk. We wrote them quite a funny christmas note, set our alarm for 2am, then went into their room as quietly as possible, hung the stocking and put other stuff on the floor beneath it, and snuck out without them waking up. I'm sure they were excited to see something there on chirstmas morning.  We had a big talent show on christmas day, I performed in a group of people where we did a variation of canon in D with the first noel over it. It sounded pretty cool. There was 2 guitars, a violin and 5 singers. We had an afternoon devotional with Russell m. Nelson, it was excellent. He gave us some wonderful advice to be better missionaries and people. We had an evening fireside where there was 2 actors portraying the story of scrooge, it was quite excellent, very well done. Russell M. Nelson also spoke after that briefly. On sunday after chirstmas, elder nelson addressed the priesthood bretheren in a big combined meeting, which was also excellent, he gave us some wonderful advice as well. On the monday after, all the excitement and festivities had died down and it was back to normal.

 

    I was super excited about both presents! The e-mail server here wont let us attach pics, but I think I will try to get my SD card to jay and maybe he could email them to you. I have been practicing juggling, and am getting pretty good, and me and my companion are practicing the 2 person juggling where you go across from eachother, were getting pretty good at that as well. Someone else got some oranges in one of there christmas packages, weve been using those as the extra two. We kept dropping them and they exploded one by one. The pocketwatch is sweet, it looks quite "dapper" according to Elder Rose. Him and I have been working on our arrangement of "I know my heavenly father loves me" and its sounding really good! We're going to try out with it on Thursday. In his former life, he did Krav Maga, which is this crazy Israeli martial art that has some of the gnarliest ab workouts you could imagine, we did a few and I was sore from just a short workout. Nothin beats the intensity of 4 square though.

 

    Well, I'm about out of things to talk about. Incase you were wondering, yes I'm still studying alot and learning spanish. I feel like Im getting alot better when we speak alot, which were trying to do more as a district. Speaking of district, my new district is pretty cool we have 7 sisters and 5 elders, which first of all is a huge district, and very rare to have more sisters then elders. They arrived here 2 weeks after us, so I'm reviewing some of what I learned, but still trying to move forward in my personal study.

 

   Well, I always love to recieve letters! You can do it for free through dearelder.com, which will be delivered same day if done before 4pm, or you can write me, same address, but the mailbox number changed to #130 (please change accordingly on fb)

 

Love,

 

Cam

DAY 20

Hey Everyone!

 

     Week 3 at the MTC, and its starting to feel a little repetitive. But, still awesome. I got "transferred" into a new district this week, because Elder Shaver and Corradi both left for the Madrid MTC this morning, so I have two new companions named Elder Howell and Elder Rose. Elder Rose said he played the violin and liked to improvise. They have a few instruments you can check out, so we got a violin and went to a room with a piano to jam. I had figured out the chords for "My heavenly father loves me" and without me even telling him the key, he just busted it out with very few mistakes. It was ILL! We made an arrangement that sounds awesome, and were going to audition to do it at a fireside or something. 

 

   Speaking of auditions, we tried out for the christmas day talent show. An elder in our zone had a cool idea of using the chord progression of canon in d and singing the first noel over it, it sounds good. Elder Rose is playing the violin and we have two elders on guitars, who are both really good as well, then 5 people singing, including me! it sounds pretty good. I think we have a decent chance, mostly cause of uniqueness.

 

       Gym time is still pretty fun, Elder 4-square jerk is still out there, gaining more of a dislike by the day with his attitude. But, I still just try to get him out whenever I can, to be the more humble person (does it make me less humble for saying that?)

 

       With classes, like I said before, we have teachers who kind of teach everything. So in their 3 hour teaching time, they'yll teach us a new grammar concept, some new vocab, then talk about companionship unity and how to deal with lazy companions and stuff. Then we'll go over a lesson, and either practice teaching on them with a review after, or learn some other doctrinal stuff. The cool thing about the doctrine is it's all so simple, but you can get really deep into each concept and learn alot.

 

      Anyways, theres not a whole lot of time for our email here, so I may have to wrap up. I got a few christmas packages, thanks alot! I got the music as well!

 

Love,

Cam

DAY 14: Now back to elementary?

Well, I was a little dissapointed to not see an email from you, but I guess the letters count :p

 

Anyways, this week was pretty fun. Time is this weird thing here in the MTC, the days feel like weeks, but the weeks feel like days. It seems like last week writing an email and doing laundry was so far away, but somehow it feels like yesterday. Its weird! So alot of you have asked what "really happens" in the MTC- well, I guess I'll fill you in- Basically we live in the classroom, the gym and the cafeteria, and just sleep and get ready in our actual dorm rooms. An average day would go something like this:

 

6:30 (ish at least) wake up, get ready

 

7:00, in the classroom, doing personal study

Basically, just your own time to do what you want, whether just reading scriptures or studying preach my gospel, or your own language study.

 

7:45 Breakfast

Lots of options for food, even though most people complain alot. Lots of people tell me dont drink the orange juice??

 

8:25 Gym time

This is probably one of my favorite times of the day. Its in the gym (duh) and theres 2 volleyball courts, 4-5 basketball half-courts, and a 4-square court all in one big open area, then upstairs there is a track that goes above the whole building that is 10 laps to a mile, with weight machines in every corner where there is more space. I usually play 4-square, and do a few laps upstairs when the line starts getting long. Let me tell you a bit about MTC 4-square. It is definitely not your average playground game. This gets gnarly. Lots of people think that missionaries learn humility or something while there here. Well, if they do, its all forgotten in 4-square. Theres one particular Elder who is pretty good, but plays dirty. By playing dirty I mean slamming, throwing cheapshots in the corners and at your ankles, and has an attitude with it too. Whenever theres a close call, he always argues it his way. So one time I called him out on it, and basically just told him to afuera (get off). Luckily a few people backed me up, but he pointed to me and said "I'm gonna get you next time". Well the next game right when he got in, he nailed me in the feet right as I turned back around from returning a volleyball to the game behind us. Of course he smugly invited me off the court. I figured if I stayed at the game one of us was gonna start a fight and we'd both be sent home, so I just ran for the rest of the time that day. The next gym time we were standing in line right next to eachother, and talked for a little while, and hes actually pretty cool. He ended with "well now were friends so I wont go for you every time". That was no calmer of fiery competetion for me. Right when he got in after me, I threw him what looked like a nice easy shot, but put a bunch of sidespin on it, so when it bounced it went straight out of his square, getting him out. Whos the fool now Roberts. Who's the fool now.

 

9:15 gym over, get ready for class

9:45 back in the classroom doing MDT

MDT stands for Missionary directed time, basically time for us as a district to do companionship study, work on our district goals for language and memorization and stuff, and just do what we need to do. The weather has been actually quite nice, we even studied outside once or twice.

 

12:30 Lunch

The foods decent, but cooking for 2500 is tough stuff, I'll give em a break.

 

1:15 Class

This time slot we have a teacher, I have 3 different ones: Hermano Blazzard, Johnson, and Garcia. I wish I had time to tell you about all of them, but I dont right now. They are kind of hybrid teachers, they teach us how to teach lessons effectively, spansih grammar and anyhting else

 

5:30 Dinner

 

6:15 class

Same as the other one

 

 

9:00 plan for the next day

 

 

 

 

Anyways, im out of time, Love you all!!

 

 

-Cam

DAY 8: Sorpresa!

My parent's friend, Lisa Jacobs, volunteers at the MTC as a Spanish-speaking investigator, and guess who she saw the other day!

She said he looked great, upbeat and happy with a huge smile on his face. We're so glad to see that someone else has actually seen him there, and that he's not traveling the U.S. and writing made-up letters to us. That was a relief.

Don't forget to write to him! DearElder.com is a good way to get quick and easy letters to him- send it to the MTC, Mailbox 85, LA-BAT mission.

DAY 7: Still teenagers, despite the "Elder"

Dear Family:

    Well, its been a great week at the MTC, I hope you got the letter I sent. I can already tell my spanish is improving alot and I am having a great time! I am in a trio instead of a companionship and I have two awesome companions. There names are Elder Shaver and Elder Corradi. They are both going to Malega, Spain. Elder Shaver is from Arizona, and he also plays guitar and piano and does music recording stuff. He is a funny guy and we get along well. Elder Corradi is from France. Like no joke, this is his first time in the U.S. His english is alright, but betwen english and what spanish he knows as well, we can come to an understanding. Occasionally he will ask us what a word is. The other day he took out his camera and said "what you call this in english?" We told him "pillow". He spent the rest of the next day and a half thinking it was a pillow and us telling him to make sure to bring his pillow to the temple walk on Sunday. We tried to get the Hermana in our district to go along with it, but of course being a girl and having low tolerance for those types of jokes, she told him. Now whenever he doesnt know what a word is we tell him its a pillow. It always brings a good laugh.

     After the second day our teachers were talking to us almost completely in spanish, because we are in the intermediate level. I understand alot more than I speak, but I am improving alot. Its mostly the quick conjugations that I had trouble with before, but I am getting alot faster at that now. Its really intense to be in class and studying for so long each day, the first two days I wondered how I was going to do this for 9 weeks, but el tiempo empiezo a volando despues de two days. That was a bit of "spanglish", which is the language we speak in our district. Essentially you just go back and forth to whichever language is easier, or has a shorter word or a simpler conjugation, just whenever you feel like it. It's pretty fun. My district is really small, it consists of us 3 elders and one solo sister, who is in a trio as well, but her companions are in a lower level class, because she already spoke some spanish. She actually speaks some french as well, and is able to help Elder Corradi when he doesnt know some words. Her name is Hermana Wirth, she is from Pennsylvania.  

     As you can also imagine, there is an awesome spirit here. We got to attend the temple this morning (on our preparation day). It really doesn't even feel tiring to read the scriptures and study Preach My Gospel for so many hours on end. My companions and I all had similar feelings at the beginning, like feeling completely dead at the end of the day and being a little frustrated with spanish, but after not that long it starts to get mas facil. I enjoyed getting the letter from dearelder.com, that definitely works alot better, because if its done before 4pm it is delivered same day! And its free! Well thats about it, not really sure what else to write about. I already kind of feel like I'm living in a bubble, like when our teachers talk about watching football over the weekend or going to a movie I almost start to think "Elder, you're not supposed to do that!" but then I remember they live in the real world. :p

     Anyways, I would love love LOVE to hear from any of you, either via a letter or via dearelder.com, its always a nice thing to have a letter. Until next week, Adios!

-Elder Cardon

DAY 2: First Impressions

Dec 2^nd, 2010

Dear family,

                I first want to tell you all that I am having a great time! When I first got here, all I could do was smile. I was super excited to finally be doing this. I am in a trio rather than companionship, so it is cool to have a bigger dynamic within our group. My district is just us and a solo sister, basically. She has 2 companions, but they are in a different level (we are in intermediate). So since she can’t be alone, and one of us can’t be alone with her, we always have to travel as a 4 person group.

                My 2 companions are named Elder Shaver and Elder Corradi. Elder Shaver is from Arizona and plays guitar and piano and does recording as well. He is a little more quiet and reserved, but is a good elder, he was just made the district leader. Elder Corradi. Is from France. No kidding, this is his first time in the U.S. His English is alright, between the two of us using simple language and some Spanish, we can understand and have some laughs. Hermana Wirth is the lone sister in our district, she is from Philadelphia. I have yet to make a Rocky joke. She is very nice.

                The food is pretty good, can’t complain there. The days feel really long, but I hear they get quicker. We have 3-4 hrs a day of personal and companion study, which is a lot to fill, but I think in time it will get easier. I do need a better immunization record, I don’t really know where to get it, but its supposed to be accurate. I also want that record player icon T-shirt, I forgot it when I left. Anyways, I’ll get to email on Tuesday, so I’ll talk to you then!

                                                Love,

                                                Elder Cardon

Day 0: brb in two years!

Buenos Dias, folks! 

Here is where it all happens- where me, Elder Cardon's favorite little sister, will update with all of his news, really long, well-thought out letters, and pics. Elder Cardon will be serving in the Louisiana Baton Rouge Spanish-speaking mission for the next two years.

Our dear Elder Cardon entered the MTC at 12:45pm today. All 11 Cardons, Millers, and Bryces piled into cars to go to the airport and say a weepy, sniffly, nose-horn-blowy farewell yesterday (not really, only Mom was crying, and Cam a little bit but don't tell anyone). Here are some of the pictures from the bittersweet event:

The Whole Fam (Daniel was a little conked out)



Ain't he handsome?

Goodbye Elder Cardon!

He'll be in the MTC for about two months and then go out to the mission field in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For now, you can write him letters at:

Elder Cambridge Paul Cardon
MTC Mailbox # 85
LA-BAT 0201
2005 N 900 E,
Provo, UT 84604

Please pray for him, and hope that the next two will be the best years of his life!

-Ellyn