First Week!

Buna ziua familia mea!

I've had a great time in my first week at the MTC! It's been super fun, and we've done a lot. I always knew that missionaries worked all day every day, but it's weird working so much all the same. If I've learned anything it's that it's not impossible to work for 16 hours a day! Honestly though, with that much work it seems like every day lasts at least 2 or 3 and it seems like it's been easily 3 weeks since I saw everyone. The work is going well, though, and I'm glad to say that I'm enjoying it here!

My companion, for all of you who have been asking, is Elder Zachary Jones from Nampa, Idaho. He's a good companion and I think we're already learning a lot from each other (I know I've learned a lot about having a companion already). It's a very new experience having a companion simply because even though I've had a roommate before I don't think Zach and I ever spent a whole day together at BYU. You'll see him in pictures which I'll send sometime when I find enough time to actually print them or put them on a disk. You'll see pictures of my district there too (oh, we have 13 people in our district. Sora Petrisor, our teacher, said that it's one of the largest groups she's ever had and she's been teaching at the MTC for 3 years).

I'll be honest I'm very busy here. We spend at least 3 hours in class with a teacher every day, and about 6 or 7 most days. We spend around 12 hours in our classroom every day, and it's true that I spend more time there than in my residence hall, even when sleeping time is included. The language is coming very well for a week (I think) and I probably already know more than I did after almost a semester at CVJH learning French. The surprising thing to me about learning Romanian is that we don't spend much time doing it during classes. We spend most of our time either studying the gospel on our own, or being taught the gospel by our teachers, or practicing teaching the gospel with each other.

I have loved the things that we've been doing with the gospel here. The MTC is a very spiritual place, and I feel so great here it's impossible to describe! We've had the director of missionary affairs from the Church Headquarters come and give a devotional, and then last night (Tuesday) Elder Russel M. Nelson came with his wife to speak to us. It was so cool being in a room with I don't know how many thousands of missionaries singing Called to Serve for him. The thing that I loved most about his talk was when he told us that the most important thing we can do for people on the street is to give them great first impressions which tell them our purpose immediately and simply. He said that we should be able to sum up all of our conduct, appearance, and teachings into 4 words: We follow Jesus Christ (in Romanian it's only 3 words: Urmem Isus Hristos).

All of the new missionaries also got to here specifically from the mission presidency the first day, which was great. They told us all about mission rules and how they can benefit us. I almost feel bad saying it, but my favorite part of the meeting was getting to sing "We are now the Lord's missionaries" instead of "We will be the Lord's missionaries" in the army of Helaman Song.

Going back to Romanian for a minute, I thought you might want to know a little bit about my district's teachers and how they teach us. Sora Petrisor is our district teacher (one teacher teaches the district for the entire 9 weeks, so that the district can get used to their teaching), and she's a native Romanian from Bucharest who was converted when she was 12 and served a mission in England before coming to the US for school and to teach Romanian. She talks really quickly when she wants to speak Romanian, but that's okay because it means that we'll learn quickly! Frate Jepsen is the other district's teacher, and he's very fun and has been teaching here for a year(?). Frate Sandberg is our other teacher, and teaches both districts. His first day was this past Monday, so we're his test subjects (haha). We've learned how to conujugate most of the irregular and all of the regular verbs in Romanian, and my companion and I will be teaching Sora Petrisor the first lesson in Romanian on Friday. There's a lot of language immersion involved in our learning, and eventually we'll have "language fasts" where one or two people from our district each day will "fast" from speaking English for a day. We also have TALL (technology assisted language learning) lab, where we learn Romanian terms and phrases, to help us in our Romanian speaking.

I'm loving it here right now and I hope all of you are having a great time at home! I miss you all! Va Iubesc!

Elder Michael Nelson Abbott

P.S. Dear Elder is working great, I just wanted to let you know that I don't have everyone's home addresses, so they need to include those in the messages.

Please tell Nana Kathy and Grandpa Lorin that I got their email and appreciated it!

Thanks for the cookies too! They were delicious!

Katie: I hope you did well at your concert even though you were sick!

Caroline: Good job at the art festival!

David: Keep me updated on soccer stuff!

I love you all! Talk to you next week!