First Email from the Mission Training Centre, ("MTC") South Africa

Sent at 1:18 PM (SAT)
Received at 4:18 AM (MST)

Hello from the Outstanding South African Missionary Training Centre!!

Hello Everyone! 

The MTC experience has been crazy and awesome and I have so much to say in about 20 minutes! So, I'll start with the flight here..... It was one of the worst leg room experiences of my life, but I and the other elders and sister managed the whole 18-20 hours pretty well. OH! I apologize for this, but you won't be seeing any photos from me for a while due to the internet here.

Anyways, there has been a lot of things to get used to, and all of them were things I didn't plan for.

1) The Metric System. What on earth! I went to lift weights and had no idea what was what, and talking about distances and mph has been really hard to do with the local elders here. 

2) South African time (S.A.T.). As you may know I am writing this at 1pm here, but that is about 4am where you are. So I probably won't respond to your emails until next Tuesday. Thanks for your patience  with that.

Now, on to the MTC. It has been great here! Our Mission President is the son of the Apostle Marvin Ashton. So that's pretty cool! He and Sister Ashton are wonderful people and I love them a lot! The second day was when we got companions, and I was put into a trio with Elder Mtolo and Elder Barnum, who are both really neat people. Elder Mtolo is from Durban and used to box in school. Elder Barnum is from Las Vegas and he likes to get things done. Sadly, however, we had a missionary leave the MTC for family matters and so Elder Mtolo is with a new companion. So now it is elder Barnum and I with our own room! 

As for classes and investigators, we have been doing pretty well! Being in a trio made it difficult at first, but now I am confidently teaching and I'm sure that I might have a baptism soon! (Granted it's with a teacher as an investigator, but that's all tiny details) 

I am now realizing that I'll need a new format for my letters because I'm almost out of time, but expect next week's to have more details about people I've met here and experiences I've had day by day. 

The gospel is always true brothers and sisters!!

May the Spirit and its love and comfort be with you always,

Elder O'Hagan