Week 2 - Missionary Training Center, Provo, UT and San Francisco, CA

Dear Family and Friends,

They say that in the MTC days become weeks and weeks become days. It is so true! This week has been Genial! First off, on Thursday we went to San Francisco for the day to pick up our French visas. We had to leave at 2:00 in the morning and were there all day. It was really fun because it was the first time being out in the real world as a missionary. I had a fun conversation with the security guard at the French consulate and I gave him a Mormon.org card. After, we got to look around the waterfront in downtown San Francisco. It was cool to be in all of the places that we went for vacation last year. I had clam chowder in a bread bowl for lunch which was super good. We had a driver who was paid to take us wherever we wanted. We were going to go to the Golden Gate Bridge but then everyone fell asleep so we just went back to the airport ha ha. It was really funny trying to explain to everyone what we were doing and that we were in San Francisco for the day only and that we had already been to the MTC for a week and were going back. We tried explaining this to a lot of people but no one seemed to understand. In the airport I met someone who just got back from a mission in Vancouver and another guy who went to the Portland Oregon Mission 10 years ago.

In the Airport waiting to fly to San Francisco

My French has gotten a lot better in the last week. I have found that the best way for me to learn phrases is to put them on flash cards and carry them around all day. It is funny because I walk around all day with a big stack of flash cards and a billion other things stuffed in my front pocket. I have gotten pretty good at saying prayers in French and I've memorized the Missionary purpose in French. So we've had a pretend investigator that we meet with everyday named Nicholas. On Friday Nicholas surprised us and told us that he was our new teacher. I already sort of knew this would happen because a guy I used to work with at BYU told me about it but I thought it would have happen the first day, not after a week! Now we have two teachers that each come for about 3 hours every day. Our first teacher, Freir Headrick, is super awesome and has really cool mission stories. I am still having a hard time comprehending that Nicholas is now teaching us but he is also an amazing teacher and has made French really fun. Both of our teachers are very loving and have been the best teachers I could have asked for. I have decided that when I get back from my mission I would love to be a French teacher at the MTC but I am trying not to think about that now. It is cool because our teachers are not just teaching us French but spend a lot of the time teaching us the gospel and how we can be better missionaries.

The food here is really good. It's pretty much the same stuff they have at the Cannon Center at BYU but there is a little more variety. Today we had Navajo tacos which reminded me of home. I see a lot of my friends from school around during the day and it is really fun to see them. I have also made a lot of friends here. There are some really cool people in my zone but a lot of them are leaving for Tahiti next week. It's really funny because they taught us that the word for repent in Tahitian is Tatarahapa and we use it as a way of saying hello and goodbye to each other. There are three people in my zone from France which is really cool because they can tell us what France is really like and they know all the words that our teachers don't. It was funny this morning because one of them, Soeur Anzi, was asking me if my ankle was OK because I was limping a little bit, but I thought she was complimenting me on my shoes! ha ha. Speaking of language problems, Nicholas told me that in my first lesson I told him that "God is our heavenly stone." ( I meant to say Heavenly Father).

Last night we had a cinnamon roll party in my room with all my Zone thanks to the Painter family. It was super fun to hear from them. Tell them Thank You for me. 

One thing I have learned this week is that we all need Christ in our lives. I was reading in Ether and in one of the chapters Mormon commands us to follow Christ and then he bears his testimony. I was thinking how he ended his words the same way all of the General Authorities do which is with their testimony of Jesus Christ and that He lives.

My awesome zone at the temple

I got a hair cut today. It is very short.

Love Elder Bake.