Jake's First Letter

Dear Family,

Being it being the first night I thought (was admonished) I'd write you a letter. My first day was awesome! It is so relaxed here, except in French Class, then I have to listen.

Fun Fact: all the buildings here are dedicated so the spirit is super strong whatever you are doing.  

Elder Call is my companion, same height and weight, curly hair and from Logan, Utah.  Probably 80% of of the people in the MTC are from Utah.  Saw Caden Hammer today, otherwise I am alone.....

Love You Lots,

Jake

A real chatty letter as you can see.  Jake loves interesting little facts and statistics and it will be fun to read all these little tidbits over the next two years.  We miss Jake tremendously, but know that he is doing the Lord's work and we are excited for the all of the people whose lives will be changed forever when they have a young set of preaching missionaries teach them about Heavenly Father's plan for his children.  

Jake's First official e-mail

Oddly enough Jake's Branch President was our neighbor, ward member, and one of  our Stake Presidency councilors while we lived in Orem.  We Love President Mangum, he is an amazing man and we were excited to get this news.

Bonjour Tous le Monde!
 
The MTC is great! Everyone here will always say to the newbies " make it to sunday" and it is so true, the first coulple days are super interesting but they feel like they are several days each. The beds are cozy because we are so freaking tiered every night! My companion Elder Call is super awesome, he is about the same hight and weight as me and is from logan Ut. 
 
The food here is good but we hear that it repeats every week so it could get old quick. We are never really hungry but we eat anyways because we know if we don't eat then we will be starving. We have gym time a few days of the week and I discoved the track upstairs above the gym (not much of a basketball fan). I think I am going to really enjoy running, gives you the same large serving of endorphins as swimming does so it feels good and bad at the same time. I ran for thirty minutes with this guy going to hondurus, felt awesome and another thrity minutes for personal exercise time on saturday. 
 
The Spirit here is super strong because all these buildings are dedicated. Learning is absolutly unbelivable! It has been five days and we have already learned so much in french! If you asked any missionary here that was learning french they will tell you that the gift of tounges is real. like scary reall. 

Did you know that you have real investigators in the MTC? Ours is Christifer but we call him chirstoff because it is easier to pronounce in french. We taught him friday morning and saturday afternoon, heres the catch, he is from Paris, born in luxemburg and speaks almost no english. He is really interested in the church and he played for some really good team till he got a stress fracture below his knee. the team was Paris Saint Germaine? which means nothing to me but Elder Call plays soccor and he was freaking out. we Taught him for 20 minutes both days and it was crazy because i had no idea what i was really saying but it was all in french and he was understanding it. Blessings man blessings. 
 
Well the days are long, a typical schedual includes two three hour blocks of class room instruction, an hour or two of language study, two to 4 hours of personal study, 2.5 hours of eating prayers devotionals and so much more. 
 
Saw a cool devotional recoding of Bednar speaking here on the character of Christ, he talked about turning outwards insead of in and it was just super cool and made me think a ton. well i need to load pictures and send them to the fam bam, who will load them to my blog at jakelewiswestindies.blogspot.com <http://jakelewiswestindies.blogspot.com> if you want to see them. 
 
A Prochain!
 
Elder Lewis