Orientation

Hey there,

First off I need to get some particulars out of the way.  I'm leaving Tuesday morning so I won't be able to receive any more mail here at the MTC.  Thanks to all who sent me their love and support while I was here.  My new mailing address will be posted here on the blog and on my Facebook page. 

Great job Mom on the swimming!  Sounds like when I get back we'll be an all triathlete family, assuming Grace wants to join as well.  Thank you Oshitas for your letter.  I certainly wasn't expecting it and it's good to know Roseburg will have a Baja Fresh when I get back, I love that place with a passion!  Mom, the ties arrived and Elder Mickel and I both love them, thanks for the gift.  Also, thank you Papa for going out of your way to write about your youth, I really appreciate it.

This week I received a letter from my mission president giving me a heads up before I get into the field.  It turns out I’ll arrive and then have two days of training and orientation before I receive my actual companion.  My president had some homework for me to do before arriving.  He wanted me to write a letter to myself at the end of the mission; they'll keep it at the mission home and give it back at the end of two years.  It was weird at first writing myself but it'll be cool to get it back after all that time and see how my perspective changed. 

I figured out that I’ll be two hours behind when I enter the field.  With daylight savings and a new time zone I’m going to be pretty tired when I first get there, no big deal.  Yesterday I had workshops all day long in preparation for the field.  There I found out that the church has come up with a new training program for greenies called something like ‘the first 12 weeks’.  It gives my trainer and me an extra hour of study a day on top of what we already have for the first twelve weeks and is designed to prepare me to be a trainer or senior companion in that amount of time.  Also, with the rise of social media and communication technology it’s been mentioned several times to us that by the end of the two years some missions may have the opportunity to work with iPads, fingers crossed. 

I had a great devotional last Sunday.  We had Alex Boye as the speaker.  He's a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a recording artist.  A short film of him is on mormon.org if any of you are interested.  He was absolutely hysterical!  He's a black man from London and I never thought I'd hear black jokes from the pulpit of the MTC but he was just loosing them left and right.  His main message was mostly about positivity in the field and life.

Love y’all,

Elder Harker

P.S.  David I love that you had a lucky jersey for the Lookingglass run, but please use another lucky jersey.  That’s the only lucky jersey I have and if you use it for two years in your competitions I may lose all the luck I once had (same concept as the trail shoes, sorry bro for being a stickler)