This week hasn't been as eventful. Probably because I'm more adjusted to MTC life. The food is now getting old and less appetizing. I'm getting into a better exercise routine. We're now teaching two "investigators" (our teachers acting like real people that they taught during their missions) as a time, so we often have two lessons a day in French, in addition to all the classes and other study time. We also started with TRC (teaching real converts), which is when we meet with members of the church and share a message, talk to them, and work on basic conversational stuff in French. Pretty soon we'll be doing that with native French members in France over skype. We're getting better each time at teaching, and at focusing on the needs and desires of the individual, rather than the doctrine, or actual lessons.
The language is coming, it's not as miraculous as I thought it might have been, but I am learning. I had a cool experience when my companion and I, Elder Wallace, were doing a mock-lesson (a role-play they say here at the MTC), and I was the "investigator." He asked me to read a scripture, Ether 12:6 in the Book of Mormon, in the French book of Mormon, out loud. Normally trying to read the scriptures out loud is a long ugly mess of "uuuhhhs" and horrible pronunciation, and then reading it in English to actually understand what it said. This time, however, I read the entire verse smoothly, no awkward pauses, with good pronunciation, good flow and phrasing, and I understood everything that it said. They talk a lot about "The Gift of Tongues" here at the MTC, and that was probably the first time I experienced it. I needed to hear the message of that verse at that time, and experiencing it in the beautiful French language was very cool.
In case I might sound too good and spiritual, I'm getting my haircut today by the infamous MTC barber. I started cutting my hair myself and some evil satan-worshipper worker shell of a human robot thing told me I couldn't. I almost just did anyways, but I'm doing my best to be humble and follow the MTC rules while at the MTC. France will be a different story. Anyhow, at the MTC barbershop, they give everyone the same lifeless, soul-destroying haircut. I call it the MTC never-touched-a-girl cut. It's pretty bad. So I have that to look forward to.
Always tons of French hilarity going on in the classroom. Elder Wallace kills me sometimes. Some of the misunderstandings that happen are so gold, I'm literally red in the face, trying not to burst out laughing. Part of the reason is that our district (6 missionaries in the class) have started to understand eachother, even when we're speaking horrible Franglais (french-english), but the teachers haven't spent at much time with us so they don't, honestly sometimes it gets out of hand. I wish I could accurately describe some of the situations, but it's difficult if you weren't there.
Otherwise, my days here are pretty much the same, class, study, eat, class class, teach, class, eat, class, class. But I'm grateful for my time here, I'm trying to learn as much as I can (they give us an optional French textbook to work from, and I'm started doing it a bit in the evenings, because I feel in class we're moving slowly with the language). We almost had an epic soccer game, match de foot I should say, during exercise time between the French missionaries and the Italian missionaries (at the MTC and you're going to France, people refer to you as a French missionary, it's very confusing when they call the missionaries who are going Montreal Canadian, anyhow, that's an MTCism). But the Italians wimped out and didn't show. It's probably because a French elders doesn't like one of the Italians and wanted to challange him in some way. It's pretty great. The MTC is a weird place, and some people do weird things because they don't know what to do, or aren't stable in who they are, so they try to be someone else, and then that is received weird...lots of fun stuff. So many another time we'll have the showdown between France and Italy.
Here's a picture of me posing and trying to look all missionary like (pre-haircut)
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