DAY 56: Transfer Plans!

Hey Mom!

 

   Well, 2 items of big news for this week. You can decide which ones bigger. Number one, I recieved my travel plans!!!! I am leaving next tuesday, the 1st, to go to Baton Rouge. I have to be at the travel office here at the MTC at 3am! Ouch. My flight leaves from SLC at 6 to dallas, tx, and after a 2 hr layover I head to Baton Rouge. I actually met one of the elders I will be traveling with, he is a friend of my companion elder howell, but he is going english speaking to the same mission. and it does say explicitly not to have your family meet you at the airport, sorry :p. But, apparently I can call you from the airport in dallas during the layover, so watch for that one. Anyways, the other big item of news is that last week, we practiced up as a district, combined with Elder Jordan Barrett, and tried out with Seek this Jesus. We then got to perform at the big sunday night fireside in fromt of 2100 missionaries! It definitely brought the spirit, and the keynote speaker complimented the song and invited us to constantly be seeking that Jesus that we sang of. Small world: there is a Sister in my district named sister Young, who is from issaquah, and her uncle is President Chambers! And, there is and Elder in my zone named elder Olsen, when I met him I said I was from seattle and he said "oh my aunt uncle live in a city near there, it has a weird name..." I said "Sammamish?" and he said "Ya! do you know the Broomheads?" Turns out its Jeff Broomheads nephew, I can see some resemblence.

 

Well, I do miss you family, yes. And I am very much looking forward to heading to Louisiana. I can hardly wait! Its even harder when you have a date and are counting the days (even the hours). I wouldnt say I have a favorite person in my District, everyones a little different, but some people will have things that bother me, and others less, but thats part of life I guess. I am trying to be the best leader I can, relying on the lord for help, but continuing to press forward with faith even if I'm not totally sure.

 

Well, I've got a week left, so send me lots of dearelders before I go!!

 

-Elder Cardon

DAY 49: The new DL!

Hey Mom! (and everyone else)

 

     How has everyone been? I'm doing well! Some cool things have happened in this last week. Last Tuesday, just hours after I sent the email, Jeffery R. Holland came and spoke to all the missionaries. It was awesome.  But of course it was awesome, it was Elder Holland! He talked about the apostle Peter when after Christ was crucified, he and the other apostles went back to fishing, then saw Christ on the shore, and he said "if ye love me, feed my sheep". He made a great parallel to our lives as missionaries, that we need to leave our "nets" which are things of the world and old hobbies we had, behind us and focus on the work.  It was great. On Sunday, just before our sacrament meeting, a member of the branch presidency, brother Jurgens, asked me to step aside with him. Brother Jurgens is a tall, intense-looking, ex-military no messin' around kind of guy, so when he pulls you aside you know somethings bad. At the same time he said to my companion Elder Rose he wanted to talk to him next. I was totally freaking out and trying to think of what I had done wrong, but it turned out he called me to be District Leader! Elder Rose was the previous DL, and he talked to him just after me to inform him of the change. So the first two days Ive had as district leader have gone well, I think I will be able to do what needs to be done. We just got a new MTC presidency, president and sister Brown. They spoke to us in the sunday night fireside, I can tell they will do great (not like they call any old hack to come be the president here).

 

     Something else awesome is that my district just started practicing "seek this jesus" today to get it prepared to try out to perform as a special musical number. I went to get copies and they said "we cant do it its copyrighted" and I said "its by mom" and there like ".... oh. ok." so we got some copies and have been rehearsing, its coming along great!!! This week, we are doing "La Semama de Espanol", and so were trying to speak completely spanish, for every minute we are awake. I did direct our musical practice in english thought. Siento un poco extrano de hablar en ingles. Well, hope everyones doing great, send me a letter everyone! Dearelder.com or the real kind, I'm not picky!

 

Love,

Cam

I don't know how he managed to sneak out and see Aubrey, but I'm jealous.

 

DAY 42

Hey Mom!

     My Spanish is coming along great. Every monday is "El dia de
 espanol", where we try to speak pure Spanish the whole day. It went
 better than the last few weve had. Besides that, weve try to speak
 spanish as much as we can, but when were having discussions or other
 things where we need to be able to express ourselves fully and
 understand eachother, we speak english. The 501 verbs book is very
 handy, actually I'm planning on going through and testing myself on
 how many I know, to try to have all of them memorized before I go.
 Just by flipping through, I realize I know alot more than I think I
 did. There are sometimes where I think in spanish, I want to get to
 the point where I can just read or think in spanish without
 translating. I can already do that with most things, but some trickier
 stuff like the scriptures is hard to understand.

     Obviously we spend alot of time focused on the doctrine, but its
 mostly how to talk about it and teach it simply, not really learning
 it. We do have a branch, which is basically our ward, its about 80%
 elders. We have a sacrament meeting in the morning, and a priesthood
 meeting in the afternoon, and all the sisters have a giant relief
 society. We have the oppourtunity to watch music and the spoken word
 every week, its great, because thats the only music we get around
 here. Did you see the one right before christmas with Richard York?
 Legit. That guy is a pro.

    In my own scripture study, I'm not on a set plan, I will usually
 jump around, spending a fair amount of time in the New testament, as
 I'm likely to run into people who know that very well also. But I do
 want to know the BOM better also. Its weird to say I wish we had more
 time to study, even though we spend 2-3 hrs on just personal and
 companion study per day. I am definitely looking forward to getting
 out in the field. I felt like that at week 2. I have that feeling
 thats sort of nervous but excited at the same time about it. Its gonna
 be awesome.

    There are alot of things that are fun at the MTC. Gym time is
 always a blast, 4-square is still my favorite game, though I try to
 mix it up with running and occasionally b-ball or volleyball. Also, an
 Elder from down the hall, Elder Ragsdale, have started juggling alot.
 He is a pro. I have gotten alot better at juggling, thanks again for
 the Juggling balls for christmas, and I can do the throw behind the
 back trick fairly consistently. Elder R is really good, he can do 4
 balls at once, and do lots of cool tricks as well. He showed me one
 where you juggle like normal, but bounce them off of a wall in front
 of you. Then I showed him the 2 person juggling with 5 balls, where
 you go across to eachother, and then were like hey- lets combine them!
 So weve been practicing doing that off the wall to eachother, with 5
 balls. I'm sure it looks just crazy, us standing next to eachother
 hucking balls at the wall, and somehow cathing all of them and getting
 them going again. It's pretty fun. I took some videos of us juggling
 earlier, with my companion elder Rose, but I havent taken any with
 Elder Ragsdale, and in all kindness, Elder Ragsdale is way better. I
 gave my SD card to Jay today, who is going to take it to someone and
 have them email some pictures and videos to you, but keep in mind weve
 improved alot from tho.se

    I definitely laugh alot, our teachers tell us funny stories and we
 joke around when appropriate. I'll tell you a story my teacher Brother
 Adams told us, he went to Chile. So the little kids there had somehow
 learned swear words in english, and they would yell them at the
 Missionaries. But since their pronunciation is so bad it didnt really
 carry alot weight to it, and he'd usually just respond with "no, the
 playa is that way ninos". So one time on a bus some kids were swearing
 at them in english with funny accents and he said to them, "you know,
 those arent really mean swear words in english" and the kids said
 "tell us a mean one!" and he said "no, no I dont want you going around
 saying it" and the kids said "no, tell us! we promise we wont say it!"
 So he made them promise not to say it if he told them, and he said "ok
 here it is: Baptize me" and the kids immediately started saying it and
 asking him what it meant. He said "No I cant explain it to you, its
 too mean" and so all the little kids on the bus were yelling
 "Baptizeme baptizeme!!" and he would put his hands over his ears and
 say "No, dont say that! You promised!"  And so for the next few weeks
 when he was in that area all the little kids would yell at them "Hey
 Elders, Baptizeme!" I'm sure there are little kids in Chile still
 yelling at the missionaries Baptizeme!

Anyways, I'd love to hear from all of you via dearelder or
 otherwise, tell Daniel I love him! Thanks for the pictures!

Love,
 Cam

Extra note-

Oh yeah, we sang "we'll bring the world his truth" in a large meeting the other day, and they changed the words from " we will be the lords missionaries" to "we are now the lords missionaries" and that was a HUUUUUUUUGE rush and confirmation from the spirit that what Im doing is right. It was really awesome. You can put that in the main email if you want.

 

-Cam

DAY 35

Hey Everyone!

     Well, another week at the MTC. I reached the halfway point this week, which is pretty exciting. Time is this weird unexplainable thing, somehow it feels like I've been here forever but somehow I just got here last week. Crazy. We didnt have any special festivities on new years, at least not as an entire MTC. But on the night of, me and 2 other missionaries had recieved bottles of Martinellis from various people (thanks guys!) and we had a little midnight celebration.

      We all went to bed at the normal 10:30 time, and woke back up at 11:50 and all went to someones room. Before we went to bed (the first time) we took a small recycling bin (basically a big tupperware container), and went outside and filled it with snow, making my hands very conld and numb, but also giving us a sweet cooler to but the bottles in. We woke back up and had an fun little party, I wish I could attach pictures. I'll try to remember to see if I can get an SD card to Jay and maybe he could email a few.

     Not much besides the normal has been going on, still studying alot and learning alot, having fun in gym and in other things too. If anyone has any questions about this place they call the MTC, feel free to ask!

-Cam

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