Arrival in the MTC


On September 16, 2015, after many months of waiting, Connely embarked upon a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,  and an adventure of the highest sort. This blog is the story of his adventures.


The thumbs up with Coleton

Coleton flew to the MTC in Provo, Utah, with one of his childhood friends Coleton, (who will hereafter be referred to as Elder Paolacci)


I am on the left. The next two elders are Danish.Elder Brown, Elder Kennedy, Elder Gemmell, Elder Mackay, Elder Steele.



























Upon arrival, Connely was paired with a companion, Elder Gemmell. Elder Gemmell is from New Zealand.
From here on out, the blog will be written in Connely's own words.

How is it going? P-day is Wednesday but they let us send an email today to let you know that we are alive. There are 3 other Elders. Elder Steele and Elder Mackay are both from Utah and are huge. They both play basketball. One is 6'5" and 230 lbs and the other 6'7" and 250 lbs. My companion is Elder Gemmel from New Zealand. He got his call 9 months ago but they were experimenting on how long it takes his country to get his visa, so his call was delayed 3 times. There are two sisters going to the same mission in my zone, and one going to Trinidad/Suriname. Her father is from Holland and mother from Curacao. She looks like the twins. It took me a couple of hours to adjust here but then it was all good. I see Coleton everywhere, and I have also seen Junior and Rachel. The other missionaries in out district are going to Denmark. They have all been here about 2 weeks, and there are about 5 of them. 
Every elder in the district is a basketball played except for me. I guess I will just have to learn. The shortest of us is 6'1". I think we have the tallest district here. We got about 4 inches of snow on Wednesday, and it is supper dry here. My lips are always chapped, but I have chapstick. It is funny that there are a lot of Elders here who seem to never have had any teaching experience. We were in a room with about 30 of us and one possibly real or fake investigator and we got to try to talk to them and teach them a lesson. I remembered what you told me about those missionaries that look the onderzoeker in the eye and say "I know you feel the spirit right now." The onderzoeker  (investigator) was interested in some other topic and these guys were trying to force feed the all six lessons and then some . They only cared to say what they actually wanted to say, not what seemed to be the actual right follow up. I am glad I went out with the missionaries so much. 

 The food here is not very good. It tastes alright but makes you feel awful. The worst part is that there is so much of it. 

 I am scheduled to leave here on January 26, so 6 weeks instead of 9. I do not know when I will get my visa. Hopefully before I leave here, but I might have to go somewhere else to wait it out. It is only supposed to take 15 days for it to be processed but this is a different situation with me being a missionary. All of us Elders are pretty down to earth, so I don't have to be worried about any weirdoes. We are learning lots of Dutch.




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