Chapter 2 : Shenanigans

Well here I am at the final p-day of my brief but valuable MTC experience. We had our final class with Sister Urey yesterday and our last one with Brother Baker this morning, and boy did they hit hard. There's continually SO much to process each evening, between personal goals, teaching skills, and gospel questions. I can hardly close my study journal without immediately opening it again to write another quote or principle. Probably makes me a bit of a burden to my companion cause I try to spend breaks catching up on writing rather than using the restroom or getting water. I seriously have to be dragged away from my journal. After today all I have left is a busy Sunday, a final teaching opportunity and some packing time on Monday, and then I check out of the MTC early Tuesday morning and head up to the airport for my flight to San Diego! Thankfully my companion and I don't have a 3 AM checkout time or a 4-hour layover like some other members of my district. I'm excited to gain real experience teaching and to practice finding service opportunities, but I've been pretty stressed about developing my social skills as that's already been a struggle in my district alone (one that's gone up and down, granted). Here's a list of tidbits and shenanigans, cause there have been many:

• I think I'll firstly address what earned the shock-factor award in my last email. Grasshoppers. Yes, another has been consumed by our dear friend, Elder Hunter. It was pretty funny seeing Sister Urey's reaction when we first mentioned to her his new dietary choices, but in this past week before class she took it to the next level by using her neurobiology education to explain to us all, with diagrams on the board, exactly why eating grasshoppers is not, strictly speaking, a good idea. More specifically, she told us about the chemicals within grasshoppers that, to a tiny extent, can shut down your nervous system. This gave Elder Hunter an excuse to pretend to be brain-dead for the beginning of class.
• They offer haircuts at the MTC, and a lot of my district signed up to get one. However, only my companion and I turned up. The others, as it turns out, had new plans of their own. They had been enthusiastically discussing getting buzz cuts for a while, and I soon learned they had decided to give themselves the honor of bestowing said buzz cuts on each other. It began with 3 Elders, assisted by another district. Then 2 more fell to temptation, including my companion. A couple days later, yet another one did. Each newly buzzed casualty would go through a moment of remorse afterward before being consoled by someone shouting "Ya look good!" My whole attitude toward this was one of exasperated amusement, but I do have a confession to make: I leant them the very razor that did the deed. The horrified reaction of the sisters in our district was pretty priceless. One evening we had a post-devotional review with our branch president, and we turned up with an unexpected number of fuzzy heads. President Ingersoll gave us a lighthearted smack on the back of the hand, telling us that this is not the first time this has happened, and he's had to explain before the MTC president and other branch presidents why like 30 elders across multiple districts suddenly have a lot less hair. I guess buzz cuts spread like the plague among elders.

• There's this thick, sprawling tree we always pass by on the way to the cafeteria, and for whatever reason it just makes me smile. It's just a good lookin' tree, very climbable (though I dare not), and it brings memories of large, open parks to mind. Elder Hansen named it Floyd, and I can hardly pass by it without offering it a compliment.

• I forgot to mention last week, but I ran into one of my trek brothers as well as Elder Wood from my ward. Always cool to see who's serving a mission at the same time.
• One of the elders in my district has a birthday next week, so his grandma sent him tiny cardboard Sombreros and those party horn kazoo things. These were enthusiastically distributed in our residence hall, and what followed was a spontaneous and bizarre rave of sorts, during which you could hear nothing but the shrill blast of party horns.

• At one point our entire district (14 people) crowded into an elevator with Sister Urey as our class switched rooms, and whenever the doors would open on a new floor to more missionaries waiting for the elevator, one of us would shout "Come on in!" to which they obliged, joining the crowd. What added to this was the fact that someone pressed every single floor button. We've kept Sister Urey on her toes, literally.
• I've been doing my best to keep to the MTC standards, and one of these is that you're not allowed to listen to any music, spiritual or not, headphones or out loud. Needless to say, I've missed it SO much, and this has been one little extra thing that's made me excited to head out into the field. Hearing the choir in General Conference was a relief though, and my companion is a human MP3 player (from hymns to sea shanties to Phineas and Ferb songs).
• Elder Hansen and I joined choir practice to sing in our Tuesday devotional, and the choir happened to be directed by Brother Eggett who directed my brother in the UVU institute choir. He has a great sense of humor and we were all blown away by his ability to turn choir practice into something of a devotional itself, sharing the history and spirit behind our hymn, Sweet Hour of Prayer. This was also my first time singing tenor instead of bass.
• The MTC has a cat who just hangs out on the campus! She strikes that hilarious feline balance between being super friendly and wanting space. I think her collar says "Luna" but we affectionately know her as "Sister Mittens".

• It gets so cold at night in the residence halls, and the blankets here are pretty thin. My room's request for extra blankets didn't really go anywhere, so I spent the first several nights waking up a few hundred times till morning. In a conversation with the sisters in our district I asked if they were freezing each night too, and they said they were until they turned up the thermostat....yup. When we next returned to our rooms, I looked at the wall and there it was....in a pretty obvious place. Kind of reminds me of Elder Uchtdorf's tragic story about the man who saved up for a cruise ticket but didn't realize all of its services were free. So I turned it up a bit and finally got a continuous night's sleep. The next night I settled into bed, looking forward to getting the same rest, and just as I began to close my eyes, another elder arrived for bed, and said "You guys mind if I turn the air down?" Before I could respond, the others in the room replied "go for it," and he turned it back down...all the way down. *sigh* Oh well.

And with that, I had better start to put a stop to my unrelenting ravings. I've mostly shared entertaining highlights, but the reality is that this week has been filled with a lot of stumbling my way through teaching lessons, pondering on faith, and realizing just how central charity is to the gospel of Jesus Christ. All blessings are given to us with the hope that we will use them to help others, and I have a lot to learn when it comes to staying constantly aware of those around me and finding ways to improve their days. I hope that on my mission, this can become the focus of my life, and remain that way afterward. An insecurity of mine is that I'll find myself having to help people with the same struggles and questions that even I haven't overcome. I have a long way to go in my discipleship, and many questions have gone unanswered for years, despite my best efforts. Through faith I believe many things, but I know very little. How, then, can I help someone who is also seeking the truth but is equally unsure?

The comfort that I can offer them, though small, is that I have hope, and a love for the gospel, and a direction in which to strive. I can hold onto these things as long as it takes, for as long as God needs me to, because I believe Christ is at my side. Though that may not be all I want, I'm willing to accept that it's all I need. I'm grateful to Brother Baker and Sister Urey for helping me see that.

God be with you,

Elder Tolman