First Week

Dear Family:

I have so much to tell you guys! The first eight days have been wild! I have so much I wanted to tell you guys but I do not think I have time! I'll just share the most memorable experiences. First of all, They pretty much throw everything at you the first day. My teachers are awesome though. Both of them served in the Gainesville ward! Their names are Sister Zabetti and Sister Hessing (formerly bBorland). So that was pretty cool to talk aboput when I walked into my classroom. I have an awesome district as well, three elders, me, Elder Prete from Orem, and Elder Hawley from Arizona. We are in a trio and that has definitely been an interesting experience. then we have four sisters, Sister Sherwood, Sister Allred, Sister Thompson, and Sister Manumaleuna (brother of Ethan for you BYU football fans). They are all so awesome and I wish I could go into more detail about them but that might have top come another day. My zone was also pretty awesome, but they left on Monday for the field so we were really sad to see them go. Plus we didn't get new missionaries on Wednesday so it is just us left. The days are super long and we have spent a ridiculous amount of time in this one hallway and classroom. But I am having a good time. The days are just huge rollercoasters mentally. I have quickly gained a reputation for knowing every scripture that my district needs. I actually am not having a terrible time teaching either; it just takes a lot of preparation and faith. That is overall how I am doing I guess; now I will tell you about the really cool stuff.

The first night they have a teaching workshop for the new missionaries where like 50 of us group teach someone. You get a background on the investigator and then ask questions to find out more and just talk to them one at a time. Something really awesome happened for me during that. There were a few French elders in the back who didn't speak any English and the lady we were teaching wanted to talk to them since she saw that they had translators with them. So she asked one of them to talk and he couldn't come up with a question on the spot so they just talked for a minute about stuff and got him to talk about the gospel. He shared a really powerful story about his grandfather passing, since the lady had a very similar situation. The reason the experience has stuck in my mind so much is that even though the elder was speaking in French and then it was translated for us, I could feel the spirit before I even knew what he was saying. Like just when he spoke I could feel the spirit even though it was in French. I though that was pretty awesome.

On Sunday the BYU men’s chorus sang for us at the devotional and that was really sweet. After that we watched the film "Character of Christ," an MTC devotional by Elder Bednar. I do not know if you can find those online or anything but if possible I highly recommend it to all of you, it was an awesome talk. For the Tuesday devotional Elder Zwick of the seventy and his wife came and talked to us. They had really great talks about Hope and the Atonement. Other than that it has been a lot of studying, classes, and teaching. I feel pretty good about it so far. I haven't figured out how to work the whole sending pictures from my camera but I will try and get them by next week. Things are a little crazy and I haven't totally unpacked yet. Sorry this is short but so much stuff has happened and I have so much stuff left to do that it is necessary. I leave for Oakland on Wednesday, at like 3 in the morning. Elder Prete and I will be in the same mission, so that should be sweet.

Thanks for all the support.

Love,

Elder Hyde