Halfway Through The MTC

I've now passed the halfway mark of my time in the online MTC! My Spanish is getting a lot better, but it's still been very difficult at times. The first few months in San Diego will definitely be a grind. Huge learning curve incoming!

 Several times a week we practice teaching. Usually, the person we are teaching is another missionary in the district or one of our teachers roleplaying as someone interested in the church. I remember how when we first started these roleplay sessions in all Spanish, I would rely almost entirely on notes and google translate. My companion and I would write a very rigid script, detailing who would say what and when. I would have my scriptures open in English and in Spanish, already turned to the verse we were planning on sharing (After sharing the scripture in Spanish, I'd quickly read it in English to remind myself of what I just read, before moving on). 

I'd have both an English copy and a Spanish copy of Preach My Gospel out. I'd have google translate pulled up on my phone as well as on my laptop. I'd have sticky notes placed all over the place, containing important words and phrases I'd like to sprinkle in.  I'd have little notes about what to say during the prayers that we would start and end our meetings with. I would even have basic questions like "¿Cómo está tu familia? (How is your family?)" written down, so I could attempt to small talk with the "investigator" before the meeting started. The conversations my companion and I would have with whoever was roleplaying as the investigator were always very unnatural haha. 

I still have a very long way to go before I would consider myself close to fluent. But at this point, our meetings go a lot smoother. I still use some help, but mainly, we just listen and talk. I know enough now to be able to teach a simple lesson, have a conversation, bear my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and understand the gist of what the other person is saying without having to type everything in Google Translate on the fly. It's been pretty cool to see how much I've learned in such a short time, but I'm also learning how much further there is to go.

As a way to combat boredom after my classes end at 6:30 pm, I've been going on bike rides when it gets dark (it's way too hot right now in Provo to bike during the day). On Sunday night I was biking around the BYU campus, and I could hear a big crowd of voices singing a church hymn somewhere nearby. I tracked it down to a tunnel nearby the Marriott Center (BYU basketball arena) and found a bunch of people there. It was pretty cool actually! Apparently, it's something that's been going over for over twenty years at BYU. Add it to the list of cool/interesting/social things I didn't know existed or didn't get to experience in my first semester at BYU because of the whole Covid situation :(

Here’s a funny story that’s not mission related: I had some food delivered to me through DoorDash. The app lets you type in specific delivery instructions, and ever since January, I’ve had the same instructions for every order- “After you drop it off, make your best animal noise instead of knocking”. Someone finally came through!! Watch the video for a good laugh.

Hope all is well!

Elder Pettit

Pics 1-2: Some zoom class pics!

Pic 3: Provo Temple at night

Pic 4: Tunnel Singing

Two Weeks Down, Two Years To Go

Hola!

I wasn't sure I would even write any emails until I got out to San Diego, since the online MTC is a bit more of a gradual lifestyle change than the regular MTC likely is. I wasn't sure I'd have anything to write home about haha! So I'll keep this first email short.

On May 26th, I began the online Missionary Training Center, where I am being trained on how to invite others to come unto Christ, as well as learn the Spanish language. On July 6th or 7th I will complete my training and fly out to San Diego, California. It is there that I will spend the next two years!

The first couple of days of classes were very exhausting mentally. My teachers started out speaking about 50% English, 50% Spanish. Listening to that much Spanish for 6-7 hours a day really wore me down at first haha. At this point though, I'm much more used to it, and I can usually understand what they are saying! Now my teachers talk exclusively in Spanish, except for the times my teacher will ask a question and be met with blank stares from the whole class. Then, she will translate it to English. 

I had a pretty good basic understanding of Spanish, which has helped a ton. I remembered a lot more than I thought I would from Spanish class in High School (Shoutout to Mrs. Imaz!). But I've also learned a ton the last few weeks, and can now say decent prayers in Spanish without opening my eyes to look at my notes. I still have a long way to go before I will feel completely confident in speaking Spanish, but it's been very eye-opening to see how fast I am learning.

A normal day for me consists of 2 three-hour classes with my District of 11 other Elders y Hermanas, occasionally a one-hour workshop (with all the districts in the MTC, so about 200 missionaries total), one-hour of companion study, one-hour of language study, and one-hour of personal scripture study. All of these take place over Zoom. 

Here's a funny story from the workshop on Monday:

One of my good buddies from high school, Jacob Ballard, started his MTC on the same day that I did (I'm sure a lot of you know Jacob haha). So we see each other on zoom every week during the MTC-wide workshops. Usually we just make funny/dumb comments in the chat to each other after one of us speaks in the workshop. But on Monday, I saw Elder Ballard with this (picture 1) sign in the background of his room. I thought it was hilarious, so I sent a message into the chat telling him to pose. I took a screenshot, then thought it would be funny to set it as my background. He saw it, and did the same thing. We did it back and forth a few times, picture 2 is the final product haha.

That’s about all I got for now. Nothing too crazy exciting just yet, but I’m sure once I get to the field I’ll have more interesting things to write about. 

-Elder Pettit

Pictures:

Pic 1 and 2: Elder Ballard and I in the workshop

Pic 3: Oakley and I had dinner with our sister Jenna 

Pic 4: My district

Pic 5: Pickleball!