Our First Letter from Elder Schenk emailed June 9, 2010

So there is some good news. You can email me at dearelder.com and they will print it out and put it in my mailbox every day. That way I get to read it that day! And I only have half an hour to email before it kicks me off so I wont be spending my time reading emails. You can give that address to everyone. That way everyone can email me in the mtc. It wont work in the mission field tho.

So news. I am district leader! My district has 5 Elders and one Sister. I have two companions, Elder Allen, my senior companion, and Elder Seupule from Samoa. He speaks English, Samoan, Tongan, and is learning Cebuano! The language is comming well. We learn really fast! On saturday in two hours we learned how to conjegate verbs. That would take anyone else in the world days, if not weeks to understand! The gift of toungs is real! Learning by the spirit is real. We are encouraged to SYL speak your language. So we try substituting cebuano words for english words when we learn them. There is an older cebuano group that has 3 Elders and 4 Sisters in it. They have been here for 7 weeks and know a lot of Cebuano. One of them speaks it all of the time. and when we dont understand (all of the time) he translates for us. It is really fun to learn so fast!
Sundays we have firesides. they had members of the facutly give talks. And then tuesday nights we have devotionals. Last night Robert D. Hales spoke! It was really good. It was really neat to have a General Authority speak specifically to you as missionaries instead of a world wide church. After we had a district discussion on it. The Jensons, one of the members of the branch presidency and his wife, led the discussion. It was really good. The spirit was so strong. Almost noting can beat that, except the temple. The teachers are so good here. We only have two, but one is on vacation in the Philippines until thursday. So we have been having subs. In the six teachers we have, 5 of them are my favorite! they bring the spirit so strong. I love it here so much. I have grown so much already. If I went home now after just one week, I would come home a changed man. Tell everyone about the Gospel! It is to amazing to keep to ourselves! Everyone wants to be more happy. They would love to live with their family together. They would be so much happier if they had someithing good to work towards. The Gospel can bring them all of that. It will change anyone who sincerely tries. I cannot wait to get to the Philippines so that I can help the missionary work there. Because of the temple open house alone, 1400 people have reffered themselves to the missonaries to learn about the Church. I want to help them. I just cant talk to them yet. But I will!
I love you all! I hope you are all doing well. Write often. I love hearing from you!
Love,
Elder Schenk