"I am looking forward to serving with people from all over (the world)"

          

This email was sent by Elder Harrison on  9/7/2012:

This week marks the halfway point of my time at the MTC, It's weird to think that I've been here for almost five weeks and I have less than five weeks till I go to Nebraska. The food is still good, it's keeping me full and healthy, I haven't gotten sick yet, everybody cross your fingers for me. During lunch one day I started talking to a senior couple and it turns out the sister was born and raised in Nebraska, she gave me all sorts of advice on how to deal with tornadoes and other extreme weather I'll be dealing with while I'm there. She told me to get inside when i hear tornado sirens but i think I'll take some pictures really quick before I do. 

She gave me the scoop on all the cities that have rough parts and stuff like that. She said the members are really strong and will be good to work with, I'm looking forward to that, members make missionary work way more effective.

 My Spanish is coming along pretty well, I can hardly remember before i came here and could hardly hear or say anything I wanted to. I can't wait to learn more Spanish so I can not just talk but really communicate with the people. The spirit will help a lot with the communication i know but studying Spanish helps too.

 I'm pretty used to sitting around all day now except my butt gets sore sometimes. The gym times are good even though they don't allow Ultimate Frisbee, they are keeping me in shape and my clothes still fit which can't be said about some missionaries here. 

Fast Sunday here was good, the spirit was really strong with all the 2500 or so people here all trying to get closer to Christ, Dinner that day was a mess though worse than most days. I look around during meals and see tons and tons of missionaries and although the lines are long it means that there are a whole lot of people about to go out all over the world and bring even more people to Christ.

 There are so many people here from all over, there are elders next door to my classroom one from Brazil and a redhead from Spain. I went down a level in my residence hall and spent like five minutes and met a Frenchman with a Mexican companion and a Chinaman speaking Spanish and countless other foreigners with cool stories behind them. I'm looking forward to serving with people from all over when I get to the field. Maybe I'll even pick up a little of their different kinds of spanish accents and sound like I learned Spanish all over.

 Even though it's hard here sometimes I gotta enjoy the little things and stay excited about this great work I will be doing. Missionaries always face disappointment in one way or another but discouragement is a choice that I will not make. The scriptures have been really helpful, i keep finding stories about missionary work and love for the people you teach. Even more about patience and enduring to the end which is great for missionaries. The scriptures in Spanish are so cool, I really am learning to love the language, I'm sure I'll love it more as I get better at it. 

Thanks everybody for sending me letters and emails and stuff, it really perks me up to hear my name called when my district leader is handing out letters. I've been trying to find really exciting things to write home about but all we do here is spend 9 weeks changing from regular 19 year olds into bilingual men with more powerful testimonies. I'm sure the field will bring some more interesting news. Until next week, keep praying, Elder Jacob Harrison.