#8 MTC

Hey familia,

Thanks for the letter this week. It is all pretty well this week. We get our travel plans in 1-3 days, so we are all getting pretty excited. I can’t believe that it is almost time to leave. In some ways it has gone by fast, and it other ways it has gone by slow. Anyways, it is all going well here. We have learned pretty much all the Spanish that they'll teach us here, so the instructors are just working with us on the parts we need help on. I need to teach a 15 minute lesson or something like that to the class today about Por/Para. Pretty easy stuff, but some guys in our district have problems remembering which one is correct. So yeah, it is all going well. I sent a letter to Bailey on Saturday with some cool stuff about the mission, but I don't know when it will arrive home.

So everyone here is pretty excited about the new missionary thing. On Tuesday, Elder Bednar came and talked to us. It was our first time getting to listen to an Apostle here, and we were all excited. He talked a little about the new missionary thing and making the decision, but the majority of his talk was focused on studying the words of the prophets. Pretty cool stuff.

So because we are here at the MTC, we hear a lot about this new missionary thing that probably not a bunch of other people know about. The MTC is designed for 3000 people tops, and in 4 months they are expecting it to jump to 6000. They have enough classrooms and stuff, but not enough residences. So they are expecting/thinking about letting missionaries to stay in Heritage Halls at BYU, and in surrounding members homes. Pretty cool. So Sam Schriever might be in one of these. Anyways, they are also expecting a lot more Sister missionaries. I think that the projected ratios is 8 sister missionaries for every 2 elders. Also they expect in 2 years to have 100,000 missionaries rather than the current 50,000. All of the time here at the MTC is being cut down by 1/3. For English speaking missionaries, they are expected to have 12 days here. For Spanish, I think that it is 6 weeks. And for really weird languages, I think that it is 9 weeks. Pretty crazy stuff. Apparently, over the past few years, they have done pilot districts for Spanish, with times as low as 3 weeks. So I guess that they have been thinking about this for a while. Our teachers have been in a bunch of meetings preparing for this change, so this is where the numbers have come from. We are all pretty excited. I’m also really excited that Bailey wants to start getting ready to fill out his mission-papers. I don’t really know what great advice to give him, but maybe tell him to read the Book of Mormon all the way through, and write down good scripture reference.

Well, I was really glad to hear from you all again this week. It sounds like you are all having fun and that all is well. Thanks for forwarding me the letters of Elder Rodgers and McGregor. It is fun to hear from them. I'm really excited to get out to the country. Well, have fun and stay safe. I love you all.

Elder Stark