MTC week #2

Doug's District in Provo

MTC life is still grandiose as usual. Oh hey. cool thing happened. So my district got asked to usher for the fireside last night... kinda weird cause we've only been here for a week. So I'm pumped cause ushers get like the best seats ever. right up front in the bleachers, all kinds of leg room, and on this particular night... a direct line of eye contact to Elder Scott. INTENSE. He didn't use a teleprompter or write any of his talk out, he just had a few sheets of paper with some pictures of the slides he used and just talked for like 45 minutes. So baller status. Then at precisely 7:38, April 19, 2011, He drops the bomb... not even just a regular bomb... like an ultimate nuke star trek ion cannon laser beam bomb. He just stops for a second and says (looking dead at me, i swear) "how many of you are learning a foreign language?" I raise my hand with everybody and then he says,"I'm going to exercise some of my authority as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, holding all the keys of his church, and envoke upon each of you the blessing of the gift of tongues." Elder Dreiling (who's also teaching me how to Jimmer in gym everyday) and I about fainted from sheer intense, glorious awesome.So riddle me this, I've eaten like i've never eaten before in this place (consequence of having a samoan constantly forcing me to eat "like i was a samoan") and somehow i've still lost eight pounds. so the bad news is I'm gonna hit the ground in peru (if i ever get my visa) and straight up blow away into the sea. And then they're gonna have to scrammble the coast guard or whatever peruvian equivallent they have there, but as Christy can attest the quality of peruvian aviation is somewhat lacking, so then the helicopter will probably crash. so then they have to scrammble their navy for that... and this starts a whole international incident when i'm plucked out of the water by a foreign military ship. And that just sounds inconvenient for everyone. So I hope that doesn't happen. Might though.

Anyways... That's what happened here in the happiest place on earth last night. woo. so can someone get me trent's address already? also ask casey if he's getting any letters from me. cause I'm still waitng on him to get me addresses for like... everyone i know in kaysville. cause his is the only one i have.Try to get like Alex, Trent, Thomas, Josh W., and Mal's. Pretty sure some of
them think I forgot them cause I'm not writing them. but I just have no addresses.

Love you guys.

do good things.

MTC week #1

I definitely wrote a letter home... just not on my first day. Being in the MTC for a week didn't cure me of procrastination. surprise. So thus far purgatory's no big. Like it's tons of scheduling and you've constantly got something to do, but that makes the time go by way fast. So I guess if you were lazy and didn't plan/do anything each day in here would feel like an eternity. But fortunately for me I have Elder Dickerson to keep me from ever doing anything not specifically sanctioned in the missionary handbook.As for the rest of my district--Hunt's a big Samoan from Australia, born in New Zealand and called from Samoa. He's way funny. I knew I'd have a big polynesian friend. I traded him my trashy hat for a lavalava and we'll probably keep writing all through our missions. He's going to oakland. So I'll miss him. but for now he's the best.He taught me this hilarious game called pukana that i've gotta teach you. super fun. Anyways Dickerson thinks he's a terrible, slacker missionary and that, if i make friends with him, I'll surely waste all my mission and cause all the people of Peru to perish in ignorance....ha.Also there's Elder Jones. He's sick. He's a falconer from Missouri. Falconer meaning he caught a hawk (the biggest red tailed hawk in missouri's history) and trained it and hunts with it and stuff like that. He showed me a video of it diving from like several thousand feet and drilling this pheasant out of the sky. So. Sick. Everybody else in the districts pretty chill and almost all the guys in our zone are dope.  For the record, Emails fine for like you and family but Dearelders way more convenient for everyone else so I don't waste computer time reading them.  Some pictures would be nice. lots of them. so find some good ones. get my friends to send me some too.
Wellp, love you guys.
later.

First Companion

We got our first letter from Doug! He's loving the MTC so far and here's a little excerpt from his letter that paints a pretty good picture of what his very first companion is like...

"SO ONE OTHER FUNNY THING HAPPENED.  ELDER DICKERSON AND I WERE STUDYING SOME SCRIPTURES AND HE SAID, “I CAN’T REMEMBER EXACTLY WHERE, BUT I REMEMBER A QUOTE WHERE ONE MAN WISHED HE HADN’T BEEN ASKED TO DO SOMETHING, AND THE OTHER MAN SAID, “SO DO ALL WHO LIVE TO SEE SUCH TIMES.  BUT THAT IS NOT FOR THEM TO DECIDE.  ALL THEY HAVE TO DECIDE IS WHAT TO DO WITH THE TIME THAT IS GIVEN TO THEM.”

Hilarious.

Some Pictures from the Big Send-off

Thanks to everyone who came and shared this day with us. I didn't get pictures of everyone but we love you all!

Costley Fam



Hererras



Friends

Brians



More Friends

"The Eulogy"

To whom ever reads this and maybe couldn't make it to Doug's farwell...it just so happens that my sweet Uncle recorded it.

You can listen to it here: Doug's Farewell

(it might take a second to open/load but just leave it open and wait and it will eventually start)

Heyo.


So right now this is Doug. Soon to become Elder Brian. But starting Wednesday Christy's gonna take over as my official "Blog writer". She'll probably post my letters and stuff and hopefully beg you guys to write me but this is officially my first and last blog.


I don't have too much to say right now and hopefully you all came to my eulogy on Sunday and heard it all already anyways. But here's some of the highlights for those of you who didn't.


I'm leaving Wednesday for purgatory (aka the MTC). After three weeks in Provo I'll go to the Lima MTC for more language training and studying and such and then I'm off to Trujillo to sink or swim.


It'd be real nice if you guys wrote me lots of letters. I dunno if that sounds super desperate but that kind of thing will really help me out. So do it. I'll like you for it.


So I want to write a few things down I didn't really get into during my talk Sunday cause I was out of time and crying... kind of a lot. First of all I want to tell everyone that I know why I'm doing this. It's kind of the clichè thing to do around here, but it really is a special privilege to remove yourself as the center of your life and replace it with Christ for two years. I know this gospel can bring peace, joy and healing to the human heart like no other thing on this planet. I was raised in this church and kind of always believed it was true through everyone else's testimony. I was pretty embarrassed when the day came that I realized I had never put the Book of Mormon to the test on my own. This church can only be explained in two ways: The first, that at fourteen years of age, just one year older than my baby sister, Joseph Smith devised the most elaborate, well conceived hoax of all time and became one of, if not the greatest authors and theoretical historians in human history. OR he saw what he said he saw. And this church not only contains the restored and full gospel of Jesus Christ but He stands at it's head as our living redeemer. All we are asked to do is read a book and ask, but it still took me a crazy amount of time to do. So I wanna stop typing now but I'll leave a quote from Elder Holland that has kind of become my own, "I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days." 


- Elder Brian