Hello everyone! Yes, I do get to email (obviously), it's pretty nice. Except I always have to do it in the laundry room and it's hot and sweaty down here. So much so that my fingers are just slipping all over the keyboard because they are drenched in sweat. But not really. But seriously, it's really hot. Wow, so our house is that much closer to keeping up with the times now! Mom, my shoes are the orange saucony's and they were in the garage by the garbage cans on that mat, so I hope those are the ones you sent me. I guess I will find out. I'm sorry things didn't work out with Rachel and everything, I'm glad you all still go to go to the playmill. I'm glad everything is going well with the fam. Lara says it is quiet. Damon, Miriam, Hannah, Myah, and Elie, thank you so much for your package you sent me! The cookies taste great, a little crunchy, but tasty :) The shirt is nice too, I can never have too many T-shirts! And Hannahs picture really brightens up my desk space! I hope everything goes well for you guys moving into your new house! This past week has flown by, all the days seem to mesh together when you do basically the same thing everyday, which is class, studying, eating, and just being my goofy weird self. In answer to Lara's question about what we do on sundays, yes we do have a fireside and learn about gospel things. Basically it's like every other day here except we don't exercise, and we have more meetings. First we have priesthood meeting, then district meeting, (Elder Heywood and I had to teach the lesson for district meeting yesterday and did really well) sacrament meeting, and then we get to go up to the temple grounds and just relax and take pictures or whatever for 3 hours. Then we have dinner, and then the fireside. Yesterday the speaker was the guy that is in charge of all the church T.V. commercials, and her showed us a bunch, mostly really old ones from like the 70's, and 80's. They were pretty funny. After that they show 4 different movies we can watch. After our movie we just go back to our residence halls and write in our journals, plan, etc... It's weird to be writing in a journal everyday and I kinda feel like I write the same things everyday. We took some pictures yesterday at the temple so I'll try to send you some. The Provo temple opened back up today so we got to go and do a session, it was really neat. Well I gotta get back to my laundry so I'll write more next week. Love, Elder Andersen

Hey Family! It's your favorite elder, Elder Andersen! The MTC is pretty great, and things have been going pretty good. I'm just doing my laundry right now, they have computers we can email on in here. My companion is Elder Heywood from Gilbert, Arizona. He's pretty awesome and goofy like me, and we get along really well together. There are 10 of us in our district, 8 elders, 2 sisters. All but three of us are going to Bacolod. And there are I think 6 elders in the other zone that are going to Bacolod as well. We were talking to them and they said the district before them that just left before we got here had 6 or 8 elders and sisters going to Bacolod too, so apparently they are sending an army there. Everyday we just go to class and either learn language, or how to use Preach my Gospel. Tagalog is coming along ok, the elders that have been here a while always say stuff to us and we can't understand them so we just smile and say "Mabuti!" The days are long but they are starting to go faster. Sometimes when I'm writing in my journal at night I can't remember what I did all day because we are always busy doing something. The food is pretty decent, but it was hard to get used to getting fed so much and so often when you just sit here and don't really do anything. We have gym time everyday, but it's not like you get a good hardcore workout playing sand volleyball or whatever. I can see how people gain weight here. Especially since you can eat as much as you want. How is the family? Rexburg? Everything? I don't have Andrea's email address so I can't send her this for my blog, so if you would send that to me when you write me back I would appreciate it. Could you also send me my running shoes and another T-shirt? Just one of those Nike ones. Yesterday it was really nice because we just got to go up to the temple grounds and relax and stuff for three hours or so. I forgot my camera to take pictures, but I will try to send you some next week.

Love,

Elder Andersen