June 5 - Letter from Andrew...

Greetings all from sunny Prague!  Aaron here, posting Elder Palmer's fresh-off-the-presses P-day email from the MTC.  A real chatterbox he is not :-)

Here he is, on the far left, with his district:

We love him and are excited to hear from him-- we count the days to Thursday...

Without further adieu...

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Hey Dad,

You weren't kidding when you told me how intense the MTC will be. I kinda wish I listened to you a little more about preparing for that kind of schedule. Latvian is both easy and hard to learn. I can see some Germanic elements in it, but it is still SO different that I have to watch myself when learning it. The Hungarian Missionaries are on the same floor as us. Basically, our classes are pretty close to each other. I think I'm a little better known among the Sisters, because they were the first ones to talk to me, and they're a little friendlier. 

As for my district, my district is just my class. So the Latvians are all one district, the Lithuanians are another district, and so on. The Huns are not in our branch though, just the same floor. My two companions are both zone leaders, which means they do interviews with all the district leaders, and they have other responsibilities that I never bothered to learn. Everyone in our district came from stateside, except for me. One of my companions did A LOT of traveling abroad, but was never an expat. He's a pretty good guy, but I feel for him. As far as I know, he's the only liberal in our district. We don't discuss politics much... didn't end well the 1 or 2 times we did, but we're pretty civil. 

I did get your packages. Thanks for them! I haven't finished the chips & cheese though. I brought one of the giant chocolate bags to class, and now I think I got a good reputation among my district. It's really good here, and we had an apostle come to give a devotional. It was Elder Ballard. You should watch "The Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar with Mom. It was a good film to see.

I love you and I miss you, Dad. Out here, the only thing I can rely on is what I brought with me, and the things you and Mom taught me. I'm grateful for that.

Sincerely,

Elder Palmer