Week 1 - First Week in the MTC

Reese's friends and family: his dad here. Some of you have asked for his MTC address, so here it is:

Elder Reese Hansen
DEC09  CRA-SJO
2007 N 900 E Unit  30
Provo UT 84602

Click on the Contact Me tab if you ever need to find his address. DearElder is a really good way to communicate with him, especially in the MTC. I'm sure he would love to hear from you. 

His p-day is Thursday, and his scheduled departure date for Costa Rica is December 9. Here's his first email from the MTC.

Hola familia!!

Well I did it. I honestly am having so much fun. I love this place, I love my district, my zone, my companion, my branch president, and the spirit here. It's just amazing. It's incredibly hard, but I've learned so much already. 

So I'll start from the beginning. After I said goodbye, I dropped off my stuff, picked my bed (I got bottom bunk farthest away from the door, which is perfect), and then went to class to meet my teacher. I walked in and he gave me the biggest smile and hug. He's a little shorter than me so it was a little awkward, but it was a great start. His name is Hermano Chambers and he immediately started speaking Spanish to me and it took a few seconds to realize that I needed to reply and then I realized I had no idea what to say so I stood there for a few seconds before stammering out "bien", which seemed the best guess. I was the first one to get there so we just talked for a little and then my companion walked in. His name is Elder Kiel and he's frooommm.........you guessed it!! Corvallis, Oregon!!! How crazy is that?? He's going to Georgia, Atlanta North mission. Anyway, we got along really well from the start. Then we met the third and final member of our district, Hermana Bradshaw. She's super nice and reallly good at Spanish so that helps whenever we're stuck on something. They separate us into districts by class level, so there's only 3 of us in the intermediate class. There are 3 other Elders in the other class and 4 Hermanas and they're really easy to get along with and I wish we could have class with all of us together because I don't always like being so separated. But está bien. We just had class and got to know each other and then we went to teach these volunteer investigators and that was really interesting. The first 2 were good, they were pretty easy to teach and it was fun to see how well we could teach, but then the last one was really special. He clearly didn't speak English all that well, but he did his best to answer our questions. Then a native speaker starts to talk to him and she talks for like five minutes all in Spanish and halfway through, he starts to cry and it made me realize that if I can learn to speak like that, I can be that effective, and touch people like that Sister did. Then we went back to our rooms and met the rest of our zone and I really like them and I've made some really good friends with a lot of them already. I slept really well that night which was awesome.

The next day was reaaallllyyy long. We had our first day of classes and it felt like forever. That night we met our branch president, President Doman. The elders in our zone ranted and raved about him and he didn't disappoint, he's an amazing man with an amazing spirit around him. We talked for a while and I wish we could have talked all night because he's that great to listen to. He's like Jeffery Holland powerful, with a President Monson smile. He's the greatest I love him. He asked me to be district leader which was really surprising, but he said he just had a good feeling about me and knew I could do it. Basically I just get the mail, but it was still nice to hear haha.

On Friday, we taught our first lesson. His name is Marcello and he's kinda hard to understand, but he seems interested. My Spanish came pretty well to me and it felt good to speak it again, but it was still kinda hard. He accepted our Book of Mormon though!

Saturday was pretty ordinary, we taught another lesson that went pretty well, but then Sunday was just amazing from start to finish. We had a meeting at the start of the day and President Doman taught us to have revelatory experiences and not meetings, something I really want to apply. He called on an elder to read a scripture and Pres. Doman said that it would be the theme of the day and sure enough, in the Mission Conference we had next, the very first speaker, shared that exact scripture. Then we had a little review after with him and our districts, the 10 of us new missionaries, and he asked us all to share our favorite scriptures and we all shared on that related to that same topic of being willing and cheerfully submissive to the Lord. Really cool. Then we had testimony meeting and I bore my testimony and I managed to get through it without crying. To this point, I still have not cried, so proud of myself haha. That night, we had a personal interview with President Doman and he told me he really loved me and that he was proud of me and that if my dad were here, he would be proud of me too. I almost cried again, but I held it in. Then we had a temple walk and the lake was beautiful and then sun was bursting behind the clouds over the lake. I could just hear the bells from BYU and that was really nice to hear. It was amazing. Best day so far.

Gotta go but I'm doing great. I'm so happy and I'm so grateful to be here. I love you all and thank you for all your support.

I ran out of time for personal letters, but thank you for sending those!

Talk to you in a week!

Elder Hansen