November 28, 2006 (MTC)

Greetings!
First and foremost I have a few items of a congratulatory nature to take care of:
CONGRATULATIONS to Kaley “I Just Got Called to the Argentina Buenos Aires West Mission.” This is the best thing to happen to the church (and the worst thing to happen to the Single Guys Association of America) since, well, I don’t know what. Kaley, I’m so excited for you, which means a lot coming from a current sister missionary. If it really wasn’t awesome, I’d be telling you to run, but I’m not. It is awesome.

CONGRATULATIONS to Alan “I’m Cheryl’s cousin” Sheffield who just got engaged! I’ve met Kristen, the lucky girl, and I can’t decide who’s luckier, her or Alan. Oh, and it was really sweet of them to decide of them to decide to get married in Ulaanbaatar, just so I could be there. Your the best, Alan, or at least you will be once you write me. Zing!

Soooooo, Thanksgiving at the MMTC? Not as depressing as you might think. First of all, we didn’t have any class. If all we had done was sit around all day, not in a classroom, it would have been enough of a holiday for me. We started off the day with a devotional. For the first part we had 5 converts come up and tell their conversion stories, which were just amazing. For one of them, two elders came up to the pulpit and one of them introduced the other as the man who had baptized him. They reminded me of Elder Clarke and Elder Anderson, which was kind of sad because Elder Clarke just left the other week. It was so reassuring to see someone from home every once in a while, but I know he was excited to get to Italy.

A number of the other converts talked about their family’s opposition to their joining the church. One of them said he hadn’t seen anyone from his family since his brother stormed into his work a year ago and told him they didn’t want to have anything to do with him after he got baptized. Talk about counting your blessings. I’ve never been more grateful for the full support of all my family members.

Anyway, after the converts, we heard from this great man named Richard G. Scott. The apostle. On Thanksgiving! That makes four apostles I’ve seen in person here at the MTC. For a lot of his talk, he had microphones passed around and had missionaries say what they were grateful for. Then he told us he was coming back to speak to us for our Tuesday night devotional and he said to get ready for a long wait because afterwards he’s going to stay and shake every single missionary’s hand. I can’t wait.

Next we had our Thanksgiving dinner in the MTC cafeteria. Let me just say I think I found the true meaning of Thanksgiving. I wasn’t with my family, I had mediocre processed turkey with cold apple pie, none of my favorite rolls, no corn, no yams, and soggy stuffing, and yet it still felt like Thanksgiving. Sisters Balli, Larson, Mwatieta, and I sat together at one end of a table, and we went around at least five times saying what we were grateful for. We said “each other” more than once. It was great.

After dinner we had another devotional with Gary R. Flake, head of Humanitarian Services for the church. He talked about service, naturally, and about a number of projects the church has helped with in recent years. It was a great segue to our next activity, which was putting together 10,000 first aid kits. It was so much fun being cramped in the cafeteria with thousands of other missionaries with gauze and moist towelettes flying this way and that. Everyone was really excited and periodically broke out into song, from “Redeemer of Israel” to “Faith of Our Fathers” to Popcorn Popping.” It was a lot of fun.

After that we had a sing-a-long devotional, then 15 minutes of an annoying cowboy man leading us in countrified versions of primary songs, which was really in bad taste [in Cheryl’s humber opinion]. Thankfully, right after that we heard from Ron Guttel, who has the assignment of booking the famous guests who perform with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir every year. He told some awesome behind-the-scenes stories about the guests and their experiences in Salt Lake. He told Walter Cronkite’s secretary on the spur of the moment that Mr. Cronkite could conduct the choir himself if he would come. That it would make up for the fact that guest performers are not paid. He hadn’t even checked with Craig Jessup to see if they could do that. Luckily they made it happen because that was the only reason Walter Cronkite agreed to come.

When they brought Walter Cronkite to meet Pres. Hinckley before the concerts, the first thing the prophet did was ask him what brand of hearing aid he had in his ear. Mr. Cronkite didn’t know so he pulled it out. Then Pres. Hinckley pulled his out and said, “Hey! We’ve got the same kind!” Then he asked Mr. Cronkite how old he was, and when Mr. Cronkite said 89, Pres. Hinckley quipped, “Oh, you’re just a baby.”

Finally, after all that, we had our main Thanksgiving devotional speaker. Now, Sister Balli and I had found out a few days beforehand who the speaker was, and I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t all that excited. If it had been ten years ago, if Michael McLean and his mullet hadn’t become annoying and kind of creepy yet, if Janice Kapp Perry was still in her heyday, if Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites had just come out—then maybe I would have been excited to hear John Bytheway. As it was, I wasn’t excited, but I was also wrong. Yes, he did make the same old, old, OLD joke that if his children’s middle names were verbs, it would make a sentence, but the rest of his talk was amazing.

It was really inspiring and after it let out, the Christmas lights had finally been turned on. They have been putting them up for weeks. They even had one of those cheesy, light-up, plastic nativity scenes. All the missionaries were running around, cheering and singing Christmas songs, and all the international missionaries were furiously taking pictures. I can’t imagine a better start to the holiday season. It was better than being on temple square.

Yesterday the Indonesians [missionaries going to Indonesians] left. We were really sad so our teacher let us Mongolians go out to the curb and watch them drive off. Sister Mwatieta was crying and as we stood there, it thundered a couple of times and started hailing. Kinda ominous, but then the hail turned to fluffy white snow, and it snowed all last night and into today. There’s finally snow on the ground, and I got to wear my scarf, hat and mittens. Hey, I gotta enjoy the cold while it is still fun and not life threatening.

Well, I’ve been here almost two months, and I feel like I’m never leaving. Someone told me I was going on a mission to Mongolia, but then they tricked me into staying in Provo for another semester. I’ve found out that it is guaranteed that I won’t feel comfortable speaking Mongolian until I’ve bee there at least 5 months, and that there’s an 80% chance that I will acquire some sort of stomach parasite while I’m there. Guess what? I still want to go! Really badly!

Don’t worry though. I’ll make it through these next few weeks. I’m Mongolian. I eat sheep face. I run around in –40 degree weather like it’s nothing. I can handle MTC cabin fever.

I love you all.