Elder Austin Whiting

Week 8 (Last week in MTC) To start things off this is MY LAST MTC EMAIL. Seriously this completely flew by. I can't believe I'm already almost out of here. A lot happened this week so I'll try to remember what I can.  First of all, we got FLIGHT PLANS this last friday. So crazy. I was almost more excited for flight plans than I was getting my call (not really. not even close actually but I was excited to say the least). So we (Elder Martindale, Elder Dumbrell, and I) leave the Mtc at  4:45 AM   on monday . We fly from Slc to Minnesota where we'll have a 5 hour layover, then Minnesota to Amsterdam. Yes. Amsterdam. And yes kate I will be singing Amsterdam by ID the whole time. We sadly only have a 1 hour layover there and then we go to Romania. We'll get to Romania around  1:00 PM  their time. It's about 13 hours of straight flying. I've never been more excited. Second important thing of the week was that we took a language assessment a week ago a...

Week 7 Alright alright alright. Another week has flown by here in the MTC and I'm going to be honest with you. Not much really happened this week. Well at lot happened but it's pretty much the same stuff that we do every week so I'll try to remember as much as I can. We got 47 new people this week and as ZLs we're in charge of helping all of them. During wednesday night I just gave a speech to them on why we have to change our language here and that we can't say 'guys' or 'dude' anymore, then literally all of the ZLs said 'guys' probably 50 times over the next hour. It was so embarrassing haha. Then we got to meet them all and there are some really cool Missionaries that came in. We got the Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, and more Russians. One of the Lithuanians is an Elder that I played lacrosse with at BYU lax camp and he's one of the best goalies I've seen so that was really cool. Another Russian is the youn...

Week 6 Six weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye. Wow. This has been a wild week. A lot happened this week. I'll try to remember what I can but again I'm probably going to forget stuff. So I was able to give the newest missionaries a tour this past week (we now have like 9 armenian missionaries and 3 georgian missionaries) and it was pretty fun. It's been fun getting to know them. We are now super tight with the 3 weekers that are speaking Russian. They're so sick and we have a lot of fun. Recently we've been obsessed with outdoor volleyball. Like we used to go inside on hot days but literally every day we play volleyball and it's a blast. We have a lot of solid volleyball players so it's wild.  The older group left this week and they sang Homeward Bound which wasn't fair because it's one of my favorite gospel songs and it definitely put me in tears. I already miss all of them. They will all be amazing in Russia though. I guess this ...

Week 5 Alright so if you're wondering why it's livin' on a prayer it's because WOAH we're halfway there. 5 weeks has just flown by here. And also every day in the MTC you're living on a prayer. So the beginning of the week started off the best way possible, with In-n-out. My best buddies snuck some in-n-out over the fence and so a major major shoutout to them. It was so fun to see them again and to actually eat real food. I really can't thank everyone enough for the love I've felt while I've been here. Shouts out Core Four / Core Foreign. The days here in the MTC are slowly started to mesh together so at this point I barely remember what happens on certain days. The new Elders and Sisters have finally started talking to us and they're so sick. We were all sharing stories of girls and adventures back home until like 11:30 last night which isn't the best thing to do but it was cool bonding will a lot of t...

Week 4 Okay so first and foremost I had to give a couple shouts out. Shout out to my boy Ty D'arc for getting called to the Philippines!! I'm super stoked for you. Also another shout out to my lil sis for turning 14 yesterday! Love ya kately locks. Alright now to explain hands up stands up. So I have some super random stories that are kinda funny. So I was doing a hand stand in the hallway for fun and when I came back down My foot hit the wall and MY PINKY TOE NAIL FELL OFF. I was seriously laughing so hard but also in a lot of pain. So my toe has been like super raw all week and so that was funny, I no longer have a pinky toe nail. fun fun. Also another random thing. We decided to watch one of my favorite talks of all time, Safety For The Soul by Elder Holland. (AMAZING talk if you haven't heard it yet). So i was feeling the spirit super strong and then after the talk was over my voice was gone. like I sound like a smoker now. Literally I don't even und...