MTC:  Week 5

Hello again!

It was so great talking to you all yesterday, and the Christmas experience at the MTC was pretty cool.  My favorite parts were playing ping pong that my companions got set up in the hall, watching It's a Wonderful Life, and going to an evening devotional with David Archuleta. I didn't know much about him before last night, but he's a great singer and we all got to shake his hand.

Thank you so much for the Christmas gifts! I love all of them, and it was fun reading the scriptures attached to each one and guessing what would be inside.  I really hope you all had a fantastic remainder of your Christmas day.  

Yesterday there was a devotional(?) where the Mission presidency brought in a bunch of their kids and performed a nativity scene thing.  It was pretty funny. At one point the camera panned to the angel (4-5 year old kid) and she was just holding a shining star in her hand and crying and screaming. Then there was this adorable little boy in a camel costume who almost fell off the stage and was rolling around on his back and biting the camel's foot and such.  Overall it was cool, really cute and funny.

Besides that, things are still going well here. It's hard to believe I'm halfway through the MTC already!  

My talk on Sunday went pretty well.  It was short, but not worth stressing about it as much as I did.  

That's awesome that Nathan got his mission call! And insane that he enters right before Erick gets back, wow.

Also, I think I've finally reached the point where when I read the Book of Mormon in Armenian, I'm able to understand more than half.  So that's awesome, cause I remember trying to read it a couple weeks ago and I was totally lost, only picking up individual words every once in a while. 

Anyway, I'll talk to you again next week around New Years! (I think New Years is on my P day, so maybe it'll be changed)

Love you,

Elder Clayton

MTC:  Week 4

Hello!

Thanks for all the little emails throughout the week, it's so fun to read them :)

Mom, that's super cool that you joined a Facebook group for missionary moms!  Is it for Armenians specifically or no? I wonder if I'm allowed to share first and last names of the missionaries I know... I bet that would help you find their parents, but idk if I'm allowed to..

In that email where you sent a lot of pictures, it looks like I still don't have access to most of them. But I got the more recent ones you shared, thanks so much for sending them! 

I got the package you sent, and I love it so much! It's perfect. I have yet to write back letters to you all, but I hope to do that today! 

Classes are going well.  Armenian is still a struggle, conference talks and Book of Mormon are both a little too hard for me to read well.  But! On gospel library I found a section of like 150 children's stories about the scriptures, and they use very simple language so I can understand a solid 80-90% of the words! So I'm happy about that, baby steps. 

Every week everyone prepares a talk, and a few people are selected at random to give them during sacrament meeting.  But this upcoming Sunday is a special Christmas one apparently, and they asked me to give a short talk on the birth of Christ.  Preparing talks every week is rough, I can't say it's my favorite thing.  But it's good for me, I need all the practice I can get.  

Even though I'm learning Armenian super fast, I still can't imagine being prepared by the time I leave here. We practice teaching Armenian lessons in class all the time but it's about the level of a 5 year old bearing their testimony.  Haha well maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

I'm still having a ton of fun though, this place is awesome.  Most people start to get sick of it by now, and are really looking forward to getting out.  Not me though, I bet by the end of week 10 I'll be sad to leave.  But what I've heard and seen from Walter makes me excited to get into the field as well! 

Elder Bergeson in my district said he has a friend who was serving in Arcadia recently, and while he didn't speak Armenian, he got to live with the Armenian elders for a while.  He said there are 4 of them over there, and they like to play soccer every Saturday. And my teachers taught 3 out of the 4 of them, and said they are "total studs."  Can't wait to meet them.

My companions are awesome.  Last night at the weekly Tuesday devotional, the speaker spoke about companionships and it reminded me of how blessed I am to have the 2 best companions in the world.  We're all really different, but we don't fight about stuff, we're all really open and willing to talk about what we're doing well or not so well.  It's working out great, and I can't imagine being with anyone else.  Elder Clark is the senior companion and he's very good at keeping us organized and on track.  And Elder Schaumann is basically an MTC celebrity at this point.  He's played the piano in about 6 or 7 devotionals by now, and he must've received at least 100 compliments from people.  Lots of senior couples, random people in the elevator, walking by while we're studying or in the cafeteria will just come up to him and thank him for his beautiful music.  And he's really humble about it too, he says he doesn't want to be famous at the MTC for his music, but he honestly deserves to be.

On Monday 2 of the districts in our branch left, the English speakers who arrived the same day we did, and some Japanese speakers who've been here for a while.  So now our branch is down to us and the Koreans, and we're supposed to get 21 more English speakers arriving today.  We're all sad to see the other English district go, we became pretty close to them.  But we're excited to meet all the greenies coming in today :)

In exercise time, the main sports are volleyball, basketball, and 4 square.  I play a lot of 4 square (Or, since the Armenian word 4 is pronounced like "chorse", we sometimes call it chorse square).  My companions are both really good at it too, and occasionally we get the whole district playing, that's always fun.  There's also a track on the 2nd floor, so I sometimes go join Elder Springer and run up there. 

I've been kind of pushing it off, but I'd like to start sending out some group emails every once in a while.  Could you please send me the names of anyone who wants to receive my emails? 

There's so much more I could talk about but I've got to go.  I can't seem to get Duo working on my phone, it's requiring a phone number.  But I will try to figure out something to video call you today.

Thanks for listening, and I'll of course keep you posted on any more cool things that happen! If anyone's wondering about how I'm doing, feel free to share anything from these emails with them.

Love you all,

Elder Clayton


Also, I would like to invite all of you to go to church this Sunday and think about the birth of Jesus Christ.  I know you will be able to feel the spirit, and I will be thinking about all of you as I give my talk this Sunday.

I love you all and can't wait to talk to you next week on Christmas! (Still not sure when my P day will be, but I'm guessing Thursday the day after Christmas.)

MTC:  Week 3

Hey Mom (and family)!

Thanks for sending the pictures, although I had some trouble getting them.  When I try to open them on my phone it doesn't work, and now on the computer it says they're not shared with me.  I requested access so I think if you accept that then I'll be able to get them.

Haha so about the picture that said 0 days with no accidents.  There was an elder who broke his toe running into a doorway, so someone put that sign up the next day.  It was pretty funny, pretty unfortunate for the elder though.

The MTC is really beautiful with all the Christmas decorations! I'm really happy to be here during this time, it's been fun.

Guess what? Yesterday Elder Schaumann played the piano along with a sister who sang, and we were all told to go back to this little room.  And only when we got there did we find out they'd be doing their performance at a little dinner, where the MTC presidency would meet with Elder Oaks (and his wife) and Elder Ballard.  So we got to meet both of them and shake their hands and everything as they walked in.  That was probably the coolest thing from this week.

We also had our first TRC on Thursday of last week (In other words, we'd only been here 2 weeks!).  I forget what TRC stands for, but it's where we meet for 20 minutes with a returned missionary who speaks Armenian (usually we'd meet with a regular member, but let's be real, there are no Armenian speaking members around here).  And we have to teach them a lesson in only Armenian.  That's rough after 2 weeks, but it worked out alright.  They were all really nice and one guy we met with had served in Arcadia.

Yep, I got to watch the Christmas devotional on Sunday, I really liked it.  And it's been pretty wet here too.  It's been raining instead of snowing, and I wish it would go back to snowing because it's warmer than rain honestly.

Let me know if there's a time within the next half hour or so (including right now) that you'd be able to video chat on google hangouts!  I've got a bit of free time to talk.

Love you all and talk to you next week,

Elder Clayton

* I did get to chat with him today!  The video/sound wasn't working well so I only saw him for a few minutes and then he called and we talked that way.  That was still fantastic!  He sounds so good!  He does have a little cold, but hopefully that won't turn into anything more.  I guess everyone in his district has been sick so he is the last to get it.  I offered to send him some Elderberry syrup, but he declined.  😂  Bryce and Annalise were super excited to see him for a few minutes as well.  

MTC: Week 2

It's P-day once again and things are still going great!

Thanksgiving was fun, and insanely busy.  There were 3 devotionals, a service project (very similar to Feed my Starving Children) and we got to watch The Other Side of Heaven.  And there was a big Thanksgiving lunch.  Great stuff overall.

Armenian just keeps getting harder and harder.  But it's still super fun.  Last P-day and Thanksgiving I was really excited for the day to end so that we could get back to doing classes.  

I am so so blessed to be part of such an awesome companionship and district.  These Elders are so awesome.  

There's been quite a bit of snow, at one point there was 4 or 5 inches.  For some weird reason it's not as cold as I would've thought.  Still cold though.  I have some more pictures to send that I'll put in the google drive shortly

Either tonight or some other P-day hopefully I'll have time to call in the evening so I can video chat with the whole family.  

Anyways goodbye for now, and talk to you soon!

Elder Clayton

MTC: Week 1

Hey mom (and rest of family), 

Things are honestly awesome here at the MTC.  It's super busy, but in the best way.  It doesn't even feel like hard work, because it's all so much fun.  We've done so much it's hard to believe it's only been a week.  Gosh, there's so much to talk about I literally can't get it all.  So there are 5 elders (no sisters) in the Armenian-learning group, all of which are going to Armenia except me.  So I'm in a trio with Elders Clark and Schaumann, who are both awesome.  Elder Schaumann came to the MTC already speaking a ton of Armenian, apparently he already put hundreds of hours into it.  So he's been super helpful in learning the language.  Actually, he's a master at basically everything, he was a piano major at BYU and he's been playing the piano beautifully at devotionals.  Then there are two other Elders in my district, who are the only Georgian speakers (going to Georgia).  They're really cool too

I'm shocked at how huge it is here!  There were over 600 new missionaries that came in on the Wednesday that I arrived. I've seen Elder Smith, Elder Cluff, and an Elder who I worked with at the Gilbert Temple.  I still don't know my way around everything, but I'll get it eventually, and thankfully Elder Clark really knows his way around.  

Classes have been fantastic!  Armenian is so fun (and I'm finally starting to realize just how hard it is.  They conjugate their nouns into like 6 different cases depending on whether it's the subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive, etc. of the sentence. Like what the heck).  But it's been great, and I can tell you for sure that the gift of tongues is real.  Considering I've been here only a week I'm shocked at how much I can say.  I'm slow at it still, but I can introduce myself, pray, testify, share a scripture, extend an invitation, and just talk about a bunch of random things.  Our classes are in the building for all the eastern-ish languages. It's so cool, you'll just be walking down the hall and meet people speaking Russion, German, going to Ukraine, etc. So cool

Anyway, there's tons of stuff I'm leaving out, but hopefully I can share it with you eventually.  Maybe there'll be a time later today that I can call you.  And I'll get pictures over to you too

Bye for now,

Elder Clayton

(Email 1 Cont.)

So that big map picture has all the district members in it.

From left to right: Me, Schaumann, Clark, Gervasi, Price, Bergeson (Georgian speaking), and Springer (Georgian speaking)

Also I am the district technology specialist.  Elder Springer was the district leader, but now he's the zone leader and Elder Gervasi is the district leader.

And it snowed a little bit! It's not too terribly cold yet but I can tell it will be soon.

The food is fantastic.  Lots of unique options every day

I'll keep telling you things as I think of them! Happy Thanksgiving!

MTC:  Arrival Email 

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William Clayton	Wed, Nov 20, 2:30 PM
to me

Hello! Just emailing to let you know I am in the mtc.

Talk to you soon, 

Elder Clayton