New Mission policy...

Hey all-- Aaron here, Andrew's Dad.

A quick heads up on a couple things-- Andrew heads out to Riga next Monday morning, and FINALLY gets to his mission proper on Tuesday afternoon.  I had a quick email chat with him yesterday during his last P-day, and he was swamped with last minute travel preparations, so he didn't get a general letter out.  That being said, he wanted me to pass on that he's excited to get started, he feels pretty confident about where his Latvian skills care at (considering its been a short two months) and he's hoping for an awesome trainer that get him right to work.

Here's the issue that cropped up this week-- we (Agi & I) along with every other parent of missionaries serving in the Baltic States mission, received an updated notice on the online privacy laws of the Baltic States.  They are rigorous.  Its illegal to post info, photos, etc of any person online without their explicit permission, so in the interest of being extremely conservative in protecting the church legally in these countries, we've been asked to refrain from posting ANY mission related info to public sites like blogs and Facebook, unless they are private and we strictly control who has access.  SO.  No more posts from us (or links to this blog) to Facebook.  By Tuesday I need to have this blog fully private, as an invite-only deal.  For those of you close family and friends, we'll still be sending his letters out privately, and posting them to this blog, which won't be public anymore if I can figure out the settings this weekend...

thanks for understanding, and if you want to be on the list to get Andrew's weekly updates, just shoot me an email (aaron.budapest@gmail.com) and I'll add you to the private list.

Thanks!

Aaron

only 11 days left....

Hey all!  Aaron & Agi here.  Here is Andrew's latest missive from the MTC.  We are amazed at how quickly time is flying.  He leaves for Riga on the 22nd, so for those of you wanting to send him a letter to the MTC, please do so in the next week!

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Hey Everyone,

This week was a pretty good week. It feels weird that I only have a week and a half left in the MTC. One of my favorite parts of this week was the Independence Day celebrations. It was a pretty normal day for most of it. We did sing the National Anthem in the cafeteria, but that was literally right after my companions and I left. The Sunday after, we got a note in the bulletin to "not participate in any unauthorized traditions in the cafeteria". I guess they got sick of the constant birthday songs. We had a devotional in the evening, which was 60% musical specials and 40% actual devotional. Elder Gentry participated in one of them, which was a country folk music. He looked so happy finally getting to play the guitar again. After the devotional, we watched 17 Miracles, and then watched fireworks from the Stadium of fire. 17 Miracles was an awesome movie, and I've never seen it before. It really hit home, just how big a struggle it was for the pioneers to get to Utah. 

I was also assigned as a district leader for the rest of our time here. It's weird being in a leadership position, it forces me to be more outgoing and open to the district. I have to do interviews, conduct the district meetings, be an example, and be a glorified mailman. It's pretty decent. One of our teachers had to quit this week, because he was just overloaded with collegework. Bro. Bergeson is studying engineering, which is a hard science degree and really tough. So I don't blame him. I really liked him though, he was always really blunt and straightforward when it comes to constructive criticism. That really helped me learn to fix some language errors I was making. My other two teachers are amazing, and they'll get to teach us by themselves for the rest of our time. 

Anyways I love it here, but I can't wait to be at Riga in two weeks. I hope I get an awesome trainer and get right to work. I feel like my testimony has gotten a lot deeper since I got here. As with teaching, I did not know how to teach the gospel back then as I do now. I'm super grateful for that. 

I love you all and I can't wait to see all of you after two years.

Elder Palmer