First MTC week-

Dear Family,

The first week here has been pretty crazy. The food is good and plentiful, but it's doing some not so nice things to my digestive system. Despite the quite varied dishes served each meal, my body is reacting as though all I eat are tacos and burritos. I am told that I will adjust.

I forgot to bring my address to the computer lab so you will have to wait for a real letter to arrive to get it. Either that or wait until next week's email. I also forgot my list of family emails so there are a few that won't get this email such as america, cookie, neal, sarah, bonnie, and josh. And maybe a few others depending on how accurate my memory of your emails is.

So far it has been very busy. I feel like every waking moment has something planned for me. I don't have enough time to do all the things that I want/need to accomplish. I think part of it is due to the nature of the first week. This being that they schedule a lot more for you in the way of meetings and orientations than normal. I also won't be able to attend the temple this week which is a bummer but I plan on taking every future opportunity to go as there is not a temple in my mission.

They split the companionships into senior and Junior companion. They chose Senior companions arbitrarily and we'll be switching roles in 4 weeks. The reason for this is so that we can have a tree of leadership. I am the senior companion as well as our District Leader. That is a lot to take on your first 3 days. I feel like I haven't had time to really learn my calling, but there will be training sessions and time to adjust in the future I suppose. My sunday is jam packed with meetings though.

My district is really cool though. My companion is Elder Teilor. His parents are from Brazil so he's pretty fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, but there are many differences so sometimes he is learning just as much as I am.

Another Elder in my mission, Elder Braithwaite, is also fairly fluent in Brazilian Portuguese becauase he lived there for a few years. Elders Nunez and Del Aguila are fluent in Spanish. The others in my district Elders Bretzing, Brown, and Paulsen all took a year or two of spanish in high school, so we have a pretty good background for the language. Es ist schade das ich vier jahren Deutsch gesprochen hätte.

It is interesting how much of my German has come back since I got to the MTC. I was able to speak a little with some of the German speaking missionaries, but not much. I just hope my German and Portuguese don't start mixing, as that would be a bit of a problem.

Anyways, this is probably going to be the longest email I send, depending on how many emails I begin to recieve. The more emails I get, the shorter my emails will be. But that doesn't mean I will still write long emails if you don't write, so write me. or else. Oh, and post this email and my email address on my blog. I gave you the information so you have no excuse not to.

Center your lives on Christ. Follow his example. Love your neighbors as yourself and serve them as Jesus would. I know that as you seek to follow the words of the prophets, you will be blessed.

Elder Canute Peterson

p.s. It's kind of cool to preface my name with elder.

p.p.s. When you address anyone merely as 'Elder,' everyone else checks to see if you mean them. and that's hilarious.