Until I figure out how I want to do this for two years, here's Andrew's first real letter. He called this morning at 7:05 from the SLC airport on his way to Oakland, Ca. He'd been up since 4 am and had his suit bag ripped to shreds and all his stuff emptied out of it. Somehow he found duct tape and got it back together enough to put on the plane and then he called with just a few minutes to talk. He sounded nervous and excited and I was so glad there was no seminary this morning or I would have missed his call! He said he's never learned so much so fast. He had a wonderful experience in the MTC. We got this letter Friday Jan. 28th.

Dear Mom and Dad and Ella,

Life is great. I love it here. Hands down the greatest choice in my life, but also the hardest thing I have ever done and it has only been two weeks. So I am in for the long haul. My first day went great meeting my district was fun and my companion is from Alabama and he has the coolest accent, it is always fun to listen to him talk. But everything went great that day. The food here is amazing, but gives you a lot of gas so it stinks all the time in the rooms. My teachers are amazing as well. One of them went to South Africa and knows the Juchau’s really well, so tell them Elder Bradshaw says hi. He is now married so he is Bother not Elder. Sorry. Three of the Elders in my district are from Washington and the new district that came in are all going to Kennewick. The workshops we have are really helpful and make learning more interesting and it is a break from sitting in the class room all day long. So the day before I came into the MTC, guess who spoke in the Tuesday night devotional? Jeffrey R. Holland. I missed the greatest talk ever by one day. But at our Tuesday devotional, Brother Garrit W. Gong of the first quorum of the Seventy spoke. He gave a good talk and was really interesting. Every day is just about the same, we get up, go to class, have a workshop, have lunch, go to class, and then to bed. That’s mostly our day! But since we are in the pilot program we get different privileges. The program is mostly teaching by the spirit and learning the needs of the person and teaching to their needs. Instead of teaching someone the same lesson as another person. Or we teach people, not lessons. And we get to teach 26 times compared to the normal 4 times. So we get a lot more practice with teaching before we go into the field, which is really nice. I love this program cause the old program is mostly sitting in class all day long. We get lots more personal study time. We are in class for maybe 6 hours a day instead of 10-12 hours, so it’s really nice. I already love teaching from when I started to now. I have gotten 10 times better. And I will only get better as the time goes on. We practice teaching with our teachers who act as people from their missions. It is a lot of fun and a great learning experience. And we get to do TRC where volunteers come in and act as investigators, that is way fun too. So last Sunday, the 23^rd, I got to sing in the fireside with other elders from our district and one of his friend’s district. We a song his friend’s mom wrote. It sounded great. I did not know the words as well as it is needed to sing in front of the whole MTC, but I did fine and we sounded great. Those are most of the most exciting things that have happened since I arrived. Now on to the shirt issue: I don’t like the wearing pinstripe shirts. They make my neck and wrists red so that is why I could go for more long sleeve shirts and a few short sleeve shirts would be great. And I can’t think of anything else at the moment but I will send you another list of things that I will need soon. Love you. Tell everyone life is good here and I miss everyone. Send pictures please.

Love from Elder Pelton