cold town

7/21/17

you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear that kennadie is running and exercising haha thats amazing. and im so glad to hear that diet is still going. i gave up on my diet sadly, but im working out more so i think it cancels out. but everything sounds so great over there!! just a few more weeks until school, thats crazy!! im so excited for the girls! 

the MTC is still great as usual! we did a language evaluation last week and the lady talked to me for evaluation and she said im ready for the field! the discussions and everything in french have been so awesome!! we've been able to go into deeper discussions in French and that has been so cool! we've had so many crazy spiritual experiences while teaching. we practiced teaching less active members and that was real different and kinda scary, the lady rolled her eyes when we first started talking to her and made it very clear she didnt want our message which made it hard to teach but it still turned out okay. even though it was a teacher acting i could feel the biggest pit in my stomach when she expressed her lack of care in the role she was playing. but it was a good experience to prepare us for all kinds of situations like that. also the difference between the French we're speaking and the French in Europe is so crazy. the accent is actually super distinct and confusing. it really is similar to someone in the U.S. listening to someone with an Australian accent. haha its weird. but yeah everything has been going fantastic!! the district is doing great! im still district leader for some reason, our branch president told me hed change up the leadership after two weeks but yeah i dont know. im grateful for the opportunity! its allowed me to get to know better each member of our district and zone and thats been awesome! the zone is so cool, dont know if ive shared anything about them yet, but in our zone we have a huge group going to Tahiti learning french and tahitian, then we have some groups going to France, and we've got a few going to Madagascar and other parts of Africa. its an awesome group. a lot of them feel like brothers to me, especially the Tahitian guys and the ones that have been here since i got here. a lot of the new missionaries that came into the zone these last two weeks are hard to be around though. its like a group of 35 deacons just popped out of nowhere into our residency. but its cool theyll get the MTC figured out soon! they'll be awesome missionaries. 

they started doing the open house of the MTC and thats been fun being guides and everything on the tour and getting to meet all sorts of people! it was weird seeing little kids, i feel like i havent seen a toddler in years, theyre so teeny. but yeah im glad everyone gets to come see how amazing these new buildings are, we are seriously so lucky here to have them. 

Elder Hatch and i have been meeting up a lot! hes seriously killing it here! im so stoked for him! and i ran into Elder Alva when he came in, along with Elder Heywood and Elder Cox and some other buddies. super awesome to see them!! theyre all going to kill it in the field. Elder Hatch and i head out the same day which is super awesome and kinda weird cause it feels like he just got here. im so stoked to head out though! i keep hearing more about the mission there and it sounds incredible! the food and the people and SO many different nationalities and cultures ah its killing me. we get our flight plans today! then this next week is all some last bits of training and we head out. we got a bit of a Canada experience yesterday during our service project, we go work in the back of the kitchen moving pallets and things like that. but the manager guy likes us and told us we could have a competition in the freezer to see who could stay in the longest. this thing was actually huge and it was a freezer in another freezer so it was legit cold town. Elders Kunzler and Arnold and Brough and i were the only ones that did it and we found a giant tub of ice cream in there that the manager said we could enjoy so we got spoons and downed it which didnt help with the cold. the tub was like the size of a human child it was insane. but yeah we only made it like 35 minutes and came out together and apparently our mission is like 42 degrees less than it was in the freezer haha so that was fun. our teacher showed us a video of him and his companion throwing a pot of boiling water out the window of their mission home and it turned to ice before hitting the ground. so spooky... but yeah im so stoked to get out there!! 

the MTC is an amazing place, i dont worry about any of you guys coming up here because in know you guys know how to work hard and apply that ethic to anything. thatll be an amazing help with the language. but yeah, things couldnt be better here! i love it here and im so excited to go serve! this gospel is soooo awesome and im so grateful for it and everything im so blessed with! i love all of you!! 

-Elder Halliday

it was Elder Durgante's birthday tuesday so we got a bunch of decorations from one of the moms and decorated his desk and celebrated. hes from Brazil and his english isnt great but he did a good job showing how happy he was to have a little birthday party. oh and here are some sick portraits i took from across the room of Elder Moreno and Elder Durgante, this camera is pretty fantastic.