MTC week 1

Bonjour tout le monde!  So I've been in the MTC for 2 days now, and it has been an amazing experience!  For those who don't know, the MTC is the Missionary Training Center in Utah where all the missionaries come for a few weeks of training on teaching, language, etc.  So far I've been having a blast and loving everything about it!  My companion is Elder Cameron, and he's from American Fork, UT (he also just graduated high school yesterday, too!  Haha).  Because we both already speak French, we're are on the accelerated track.  Most of the other elders in my class are native speakers from wherever they are.  In my zone, we have French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, German, and some other Micronesean language that I didn't recognize.  The weird thing is that everything is in English, so Elder Cameron and I have to help each other out with the language training. 

Yesterday was a very busy day as it was the first full day here in the MTC.  We were going from meeting to meeting learning about just about everything you can think of.  So yesterday, when I found out that everything was going to be in english, I got a little discouraged because I thought that we were going to be learning everything in French to help us be more comfortable with it.  That along with the fact that I was tired already lend me to be in a little bit of a bad mood.  I knew that I didn't want to be in that kind of [place, so I prayed to my Heavenly Father that I would be able to have my heart softened and lifted.  I didn't feel an immediate change, but I knew that I just needed to put my trust in the Lord.  After we got lunch, Elder Cameron and I decided to go and find the other missionaries that will be speaking French on their misisons.  Since they have to learn it here in the MTC, they've been here for four weeks longer than us.  We ended up missing some of them, but their teacher told us where to find the other Benin missionaries.  We found thier classroom, and there they were!  Elder Lynch and Elder Haggard were in there just doing companion study!  That lifted my spirit soooo much!  We talked for a few minutes before we had to get to class, but just seeing them and being able to talk with them helped me so much, and I knew that that was an answer to my prayer earlier.  The rest of my day was so much better because of that experience.

Later that evening, we met with our Branch Presidency which is just three older men that are in charge of our group.  They did a little bit of an orientation and then had a great meeting after that.  After doing interviews with our whole zone, they assigned two zone leaders, and then one district leader per district.  And guess what!  I was assinged as District Leader!!!  Basically I just go and get the mail for my district and make sure that they're progressing the way they should in the MTC.  It's going to take some extra work, but I know that the Lord called me to this position for a reason!

That's all I have time to write today.  There's so much going on, and I wish that I could share all of it, but I'll write you guys again next week!

Avec amour,

Elder Jenkins

P.S.  Keep the letters coming!  Thank you everyone that has written me, and I'll get a response to you as soon as I can!  Probably next P-day.