#9 MTC

Hey Family,

Thanks for the letter. It was fun to hear how it’s all going. So on Friday of last week, we got our travel plans. We are flying on Monday, and we are supposed to be at the Travel Office at 5am. We fly out of SLC to Dallas around 7.  From Houston to Miami, and then From Miami to Nicaragua. We get into Nicaragua around 7. Anyways, so we are all really excited. I have a 1 hour layover in Houston, and a 2 hour layover in Miami. I probably will have some time to kill in the SLC airport too. So I can call you all during these times. Pretty exciting. We are flying United (or maybe American, I can’t remember). I’m not really worried about weight, because we can have the 2 checked bags, a 40 lb. carry-on, and a backpack. So we should be pretty set. I am still sending home all of my letters and stuff, because I don’t really want to carry them around for the whole mission.

So this week has been kind of hectic. We have been getting ready for departure, and there is a lot of stuff going on. The instructors have been teaching us a lot of review/stuff we need help on. I feel pretty confident about the language, but it will definitely be hard when we get to the country. One of our 2 teachers took a promotion, so he left us. We got a different teacher, who is from Spain. She is a native speaker, and literally can’t speak English. So it’s pretty interesting, because class is 100% in Español, para siempre. It is good practice though, because it’s pretty hard to understand her. Anyways, that is a bit of the run-down. Because I'm the district leader, I got to conduct 2 of the baptismal interviews for our district. It was pretty cool.

Oh this week we got to do the "Hosting" for the new missionaries coming in. We would sit on the curb, they would pull up, and we would pull their luggage out and help get them situated. It was a lot of crying moms. Anyways, it was pretty cool. The new missionaries always have the "deer in the headlights" look, and they are kind of freaking out. That is pretty normal though, and after the first week, everything is normal. Anyways, so that was pretty cool. Tomorrow, we have infield orientation. That is where they teach us how to contact in the airport, how to do good door contacts, and how to work with ward councils. It goes on for the whole day, and I'm not really excited. They always have a devotional though for the departing missionaries, and last time we heard that President Monson was the speaker at the devotional. Anyways, we will see what will happen.

So thanks for sending a package to Nicaragua. Hopefully I can get it. I also today got the pictures of the Boise Idaho temple. It looks really different, and it looks really pretty. That was pretty cool. Also thanks for the shirt this week. It was really crazy, because I sent the email, and literally like 7 hours later, I had a new shirt. I was pretty confused, but then I read the dearelder thing in the night. That was pretty good luck. You'll have to tell me if the shirt arrived at home. It was really lousy, because I was leaning against the whiteboard, and the shirt got caught between my chair and the whiteboard. When I stood up, it just ripped. No Bueno.

Well anyways, I’m really excited to get to Nicaragua, and I’m excited to talk to you all in the airport. Sorry I haven’t been capitalizing much, the shift button on this computer is broken. Anyways, have fun, and I miss you and love you.

Elder Stark