Jeremy's first email from the MTC

Hello mom and dad,

I'm just sending this one email to both of you because I'm very limited on the time I have here. As soon as we sign in on our email accounts we have a timer counting down from 30 min and I lost 10 of those min registering for an email account today. Well mom thanks for all of the letters and pictures you sent me. You are by far the best mom here as I have received the most mail out of the entire district! My daily routine consists of me waking up at 6:30 am, showering, then going to the classroom for personal study for an hour (I usually study the language a little but mostly gospel doctrine in English), then breakfast, then companion study where we share what we did in personal study and also study mandarin together, then we usually have a teacher come soon after that. That's just the morning the rest of the day follows the same kind of pattern. We have 2 different teachers, a guy and a girl who both served in Taiwan. The MTC is not how I expected it to be at all. We are literally in the classroom from 6:30 am to 9:30 pm (long days). I didn’t expect so much independent study either.  My companion is from Sandy, Utah and he's serving in Vancouver (mandarin speaking obviously), he's a little shy but nice. My other roommates are from Utah and California and they’re both going on the same mission as me. I was actually called as district leader yesterday which puts a lot of responsibility in my hands! It’s a little difficult because I have to lead by example, go to a lot of extra meetings with the branch presidency and stuff but I'm trying my best. I can now pray and bear my testimony in mandarin, that's about it. The language is soooooooo much harder than I expected. I think I was a little too prideful before coming here because it's very tough. Most of these kids studied chinese for like 4 years in high school and know so much more than me which can be discouraging at times. I'm a little envious of the English speaking stateside missionaries, or even Spanish speaking. I naturally always want to respond or speak Spanish for some reason when we have mandarin convos. However, not to sound cocky or anything but I feel I'm stronger when it comes to the doctrine, asking/answering questions, and teaching but they definitely have me beat when it comes to mandarin. Today is my p-day, every monday is p-day. On mondays we go to the temple. The provo temple is much different than the Manhattan temple but it's still an awesome experience. Well I have now run out of time, 30 min is up. I miss and love you guys so much. Write me back with lots of questions for me to answer. oh and it will probably be better if you just send me a letter through dear elder, because I receive those daily instead of me having to wait a week to check your email because I can only check that on p-days. 

Love.

Jeremy (elder bray)