Elder Mecham in Guatemala: I think the food here is great, but a lot of others don’t agree with that. We are the sub campus so we get the scraps from main campus.

I love the MTC and my companion. His name is Elder Hill and he is from Idaho Falls. He is our district leader and has a sister named Millie too. He is my age but two months younger. I am doing alright at the language; is definitely helpful that I had taken two years of Spanish. On the first day here they had us teaching fake and/or real investigators. By the third day they had us teaching a fake investigator in ONLY Spanish. I am picking up the language pretty quickly I can tell it is only because the Lord is with me at all times. It is weird; I just remember stuff that I normally wouldn't. My companion is going to the same mission as me and everyone else is going to the Meridad, Mexico mission in our district. I was supposed to fly to Guatemala yesterday (at least that was my estimated time to go) , but I haven’t even gotten my flight plans yet. I think they are just going to ship me off at the same time my companion is and he turned in his back ground check this last Friday. His estimated departure day is August 19. A missionary in our district is leaving today, he super doesn't want to be her so now there is only going to be 11 of us in our district but I think we are getting more on Wednesday. They have given us so much to do here there doesn’t seem to be enough time to do it (they have us watch stress relieving videos), but since the Lord is with me I seem to be more efficient and don’t have a problem doing what they ask us to do. The real problem is that everything they ask us to do (which seems to be everything they had to do and everything they thing we should do) we have to do in Spanish too. I love my campus (west campus) because it is the Spanish speaking campus. Everyone speaks Spanish to us all the time. Class is in Spanish, talks in church for the most part are in Spanish. I haven’t gotten any real news on my departure date though besides a small piece of paper saying my estimated time to leave is August 11th. I met someone from my lacrosse team but for the life of my I can’t think of his name (he was the one that went out with Millie for Sadie’s junior year. I like my teachers, but they can only teach for three hours a day and the other three hours is for teaching a fake investigator (and preparing the lesson), and the last three hours is us doing personal, companion, and language study. I think we are going to get another teacher this week so we will have six hours of language study instead of only three. (I have heard rumors that our fake investigator is going to be our new teacher. I think the food here is great, but a lot of others don’t agree with that. We are the sub campus so we get the scraps from main campus. In other words, they get an all you can eat and they make a lot more stuff for them and we will get sometimes an option between two meals and only get one of each plate, but I really don’t care about that at all. I do need a watch and an alarm clock of some sort. I usually wake up when my companions do but they feel like they have to wake me up and they don’t like to do that (they have alarm clocks), and I have no idea what time it is ever. I just kind of do whatever other people are doing and some people have a watch and i can ask them. There are no clocks on the walls here except on the TV. in the cafeteria. My P-days are Tuesdays and yes I have gotten your letters. I am not sure how well hand written mail is working but I get dear elder mail the day you guys send them. I love my life here and don’t miss my life back at home but I do miss the people I had back at home.

By the way- It was super cool to see Millie before I went into the MTC. I loved that picture of us and it was good I got to see her one more time.
Yo amoro tu. Adios. (Christine's note: His Spanish is a little rusty. I think that is supposed to say- I love you, Bye!)

Here are some MTC photos Bret sent: