Finishing up at the MTC

Feliz Acción de Gracias!

That's Thanksgiving in Spanish haha. Hope you guys all had a good one. They make it pretty special here! We started out with a big devotional at 8AM from none other than Elder Neil L. Anderson! It was pretty awesome!

Elder Neil L. Anderson speaking at our Thanksgiving devotional.

After the devotional we all went and had Thanksgiving dinner (lunch) with some great turkey, stuffing, mashed papas, and even some pie. It was good but I did miss my mothers cooking, I'll be honest.

After lunch we went back and had another short devotional, all about the new LDS #LightTheWorld campaign, we got to see it a day early so that was cool! It's all about service and being Christlike, and what better to go do next than service! So then we went to the cafeteria where there were like 100 stations set up for a service project to put together food packages for the hungry. We worked there for a while and then we got a little break and just chilled in our classes and ate a sack dinner (PB&J).

Myself and about 1,500 other missionaries at the MTC, spent our Thanksgiving
afternoon preparing more than 350,000 meal packs for Utah children in need.

Then, we went back into the big auditorium and got to watch an awesome movie, Ephraim's Rescue! If you haven't seen it I recommend it, it's about Ephraim Hanks, a pioneer man who helped the Martin Handcart company come to Utah. After that, we stayed in the auditorium and went straight into the final devotional of the day. This one was all about Thanksgiving traditions and what not, so there were some awesome performances from different cultures. There was some Korean dances, a big Polynesian performance, and some other awesome singings and songs and such. All in all it was a pretty awesome Thanksgiving and I really liked it.

A group shot of myself and fellow District members.

In other news, we practiced street contacting this week and it was a lot of fun. We had to chase down our teacher and teach him a super short lesson in like 30 seconds because he was walking the whole time. It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to try it for real.

I played volleyball for my last exercise time, I'm gonna really miss it in the field.
Oh and I almost forgot, for the end of Thanksgiving they turned all the Christmas lights on and they are on every night now. It looks pretty amazing.

Christmas lights at the MTC

I'm excited to be out in the field. My next p-day I will be in Reno! Not sure what area yet but I'm super pumped.

Although I am looking forward to going out to the field, I will miss the friendships made at the MTC.

Talk to you all next week.

Elder Nick Jones

Thanksgiving Week

Hola everyone! 

Sorry for the lack of posts. I was sick for about a week and then last p-day was super hectic and I didn't get much time to email or anything. 

Everything is going super well here. I leave for Reno in 6 days! (the 29th). My Spanish is much better now and I can say pretty much whatever I want as long as it pertains to the gospel, and I can say mostly what I want otherwise.

It's starting to get pretty cold here in Utah. I actually had to whip out a scarf a couple days ago! Also it snowed! The mountains are starting to get some snow on them too so that's pretty awesome. It's nice to look right outside your classroom window and see some picturesque snow-capped mountains.

Newly fallen snow in the Wasatch mountains.

I'm super excited Thanksgiving is almost here. Hopefully they have some killer food for us, because that's what Thanksgiving is all about right? Just kidding. But I am super grateful for my decision to come on a mission and come to the MTC. It has definitely changed me for the better. 

Our district has been going to the Temple every day early in the morning so afterwards we are able to eat an amazing breakfast that they serve there. Its truly a blessing to have one so close. Oh yeah and last week a few of us went a Spanish session in the Temple. It was difficult but super interesting!

Myself, along with my fellow missionaries after attending a Spanish session in the Temple

I'm excited to be fluent in another language. The other week we were doing a Temple walk and we met someone who asked us where we were serving and we said "Reno, NV Spanish Speaking" and he started asking us questions in Español and we just had a whole conversation, it was sweet. It was a little difficult because he is from the Dominican Republic and talked super fast but we got most of it and it was awesome.

I get to play volleyball pretty much every day now. I've gotten a lot better and I'm going to miss it since I probably won't have much of a chance to play in the field. But I'm sure there will be plenty of fun p-day stuff to do in Reno. Like Ball-in-a-cup or drinking water! I'm joking, I'm super excited to get out in the field.

Miss you all and talk to you in a week!

Elder Jones