Feb 13, 2013 The MTC is an Amazing Place! Wk2

Week two is over and gone and so much has happened it's impossible to tell you everything! But at the same time, everything that has happened is all the same for me so sometimes I don't know exactly what to put in things like letters and emails.

 I'm still learning the language, still studying the gospel tons, still have the same companion... One thing that is certainly new, we have started learning Cambodian script and it's wildly difficult. 33 consonants, 32 sub consonants, 25 vowels and 14 independent vowels in addition to all the numbers I have to learn and things like their punctuation and also these things called didactic marks which look like ' ^ " ~and stuff like that but acct like vowels. For sure the language is hard and only going to get harder, but I'm going places! All of my prayers are in Khmae and yesterday we taught a 15 minute lesson to a role play investigator! Crazy stuff.

I was practicing writing several subconsonants on the board and it ended up looking pretty cool.

 I'm really glad to have the companion I have. He's really easy going and has a very self deprecating sense of humor. He's actually kind of become the mascot of sorts in our district because he's so very likable. Also, he's only received one letter, maybe y'all could write him just a little something? Also, thank you so much for the letters! It's the best thing ever here at the MTC! I'm sure Dad understands and maybe Mom a little but you kiddos won't until you get here. Seriously, best feeling in the world.

Elder Vore with his companion, Elder Khem

 You'd think that being around so much gospel centered stuff all the time would get tiring, but the more I'm around it the more I get excited about things like devotionals and speaking assignments and such. On Sunday we watched a talk given by Elder Bednar that was an hour and fifteen minutes long and I loved every second of it! I spent the entire rest of the evening in such high spirits because I couldn't stop thinking about how great his talk was. The MTC is an amazing place, but I can certainly see why some people don't exactly thrive here.

 One of my roommates is having a really hard time. He's generally immature in a lot of ways that are unsuited to living by himself, away from his parents, or in the MTC like: he stays up about 45 minutes after lights out, talking; he can't get up in the mornings; he doesn't want to do his laundry; he doesn't take the medicine for his thyroid that he needs unless we remind him and other such things. I can see that it will be hard to live with some people. I don't know how his companion does it really.

Every night now at 9:45 I gather anyone who is around and we sing three or four hymns. Usually there is at least one other guy who can read music so we usually sing in 3-part harmony and it has really become one of my favorite parts of the day. So far the actual MTC choir is pretty disappointing. The music is easy, a lot of people there only kind of want to be there, and of all the people that really want to be there, not a huge portion are very good. Still, the choir probably has between 200 and 400 depending on the day, so the sound is pretty big, and worth singing in anyway just because it's different than everything else I do. I don't know yet if we are singing in conference but it sure would be cool!

 Today is P-day so we went to the temple at 6:30 in order to avoid the rush of missionaries. P-day is, oddly enough, not actually very relaxing in the MTC. I like having the change, but we don't get much done, we don't get to rest very much (doing things like laundry, temple, service and writing) and we don't go to the gym. The gym is pretty fun here. I get to play a lot of basketball at least. There's also an MTC record board here with extensive records like pushups, situps, mile times, 3-point shots in a row, and soccer juggles. The juggling record is 960 and I'm going after it but I only get one try a day so that's kind of lame. So far my best is 407... Oh well, I have a lot of time to get that one.

 Our district has divied up the board and are looking to break about a third of the records. Something to keep us busy for the next few months. We have the latest exit time in the MTC right now, meaning that everyone coming after us is all the way down to 9 weeks. Well, my time is up. I don't know how organized this email is, but hopefully y'all got a little picture of my life here. Love you guys!