Letters Home- First week at the MTC

The England MTC crew, April 15, 2015

The saying, you'll never understand until you walk a mile in someones shoes, became crystal clear on Elder Summers first P-Day.  I waited and waited, watched and refreshed my email, then watched and refreshed some more, looking for the gem of all gems.... The first Letter Home!  I sympathized with my missionary mom friends, felt their pain of missing their sons, but did not fully understand until it was my  turn to wait and wait... and wait some more.  Pretty sure I have each 6 1/2 lines of that first email embedded to my heart and I could care less that it was pretty much one very large, enormous Run On Sentence.  But as Ben would say, "I didn't go to school to learn no English!"  :)

Enough of my idle prattle here's the good stuff, well I think it's golden, his letters home. (p.s. I fixed the grammar and punctuation for the blog but am saving the real McCoy for posterity's sake)

"Hey mom,

 England is super cool.  I  started German lessons the 2nd day at the MTC! My companions name is Elder Lingen and he is cool. I have gotten used to the English area, its not too cold plus I'm inside all day. There is a French elder here and a bunch of English 2nd language people here as well, We went through the Preston Temple today and the French elder took a bunch of names from his family and I got to go through with one of those names, The food is good but yours is better,  I just feel the spirit all around me like I'm not afraid to be a missionary.  Tell everyone that they can call me Ben if they want, and they don't have to end it with anything special.  But yeah its like trying to drink from a fire hose, learning German but that's OK!   Honestly I don't think I'll be able to go into Switzerland.  All I can say right now is the England MTC is super cool, the elders here are great people, most of them from Utah though.  Hope that everything goes well with Katie's friend coming to church and give everyone my love."

And then later that afternoon.. BAM! another letter!  It was Christmas people, no lie.

"I love the pictures you send of pug!  Haha. Also, side note, does everyone know my email address?  But yeah, p-day was really fun.  We went shopping at the local market because I forgot my scripture marking things.  So I had to buy crayons instead, but that's about it.  The left side of the road thing is kinda weird but honestly England is not so bad, maybe cause I'm just around American elders all day at the MTC.  Oh!  The temple is like 45 seconds from the MTC and I can see it from my room!  I can't take a lot of pictures in the MTC but I have some of the temple and that arch we saw on that one sisters blog, I took a pic with me in that so its really cool.  How have the storms been?  It's only rained like 3 times but its been a wimpy rain, so its nothing.  Tell Jacob to email me and others to email me too!  I can't believe that I have around 5 weeks left in the MTC.  It's weird, I can understand what they are saying in German but when I try and speak I can't speak.  I know the words but when I try and use them in a sentence, I can't process them as fast.  But yeah, other than that it's going great, but it is weird having someone with you always.  I'll try and send some more pictures when I take some more.  Talk to you next Wednesday.

Love,

Elder Summers" 

And because I love what he wrote to my mom, I'm including her letter this week too.

"Hey Grammy,

Thank you so much for everything.  I love the pictures you have sent me and I will never stop working until the very end, but first I have to learn the language and that has been my struggle, trying to speak.  I know that as I put my trust in the Lord he will make weak things strong and I know that.  I can feel Papa and Dad around me when i get frustrated at times.  I hope everything goes well.

Love,

Ben"

Well there we have it folks.  Week one, in the books, only roughly 103 more to go.