Hola familia y amigos!
This week's got so much to tell, hopefully I can get to all of it! So first, this past Sunday we had a special Sacrament meeting for Easter where the whole MTC was served Sacrament at the same time. Bishop Causse was there and they had about 2400 people in the auditorium and another 600 or so in the three large overflow sections. The cool thing was that Elder White and I were selected to help either pass or bless/break the Sacrament, and it ended working out that we not only got to break the bread, but I got to be the one to bless the water in the auditorium for the whole auditorium and Bishop Causse! It was such an amazing opportunity to serve and see something like that happen. It was such a neat experience.
Even though that's awesome, there's still better things to share. I'm in the Santa Rosa mission right now!!! Like we were supposed to, we met at 5:00 in the morning at the Travel Office and loaded our luggage and got on a bus to the airport and drove about an hour to the airport. After unloading our luggage the other 100 missionaries or so and I all got checked in and went to our separate terminals and waited for a bit for the plane, and made our phone calls home. I guess y'all know how flying works, so I'll just go to when we landed in the Oakland airport. So we landed and got off and passed the "point of no return" and saw President and Sister Alba waiting for us. They were so excited and happy to see us and were so warm and friendly it was amazing. We then got our luggage, loaded vans and drove to the mission home which took us about an hour. There we had dinner and a kind of devotional by President Alba. So the mission home has the absolute prettiest backyard; it's all super wooded with cool moss covered oaks. It was really cool because there was a deer in the backyard behind some brush that just sat there chilling. It was laying down and didn't leave the whole time we were there. We were even out on the deck talking and stuff and the deer wasn't more than 50-60 feet away. Anyways, then we went to the mission office (which is also a chapel) for a brief transfer devotional and then went to the hotel where we spent that night. While at the hotel that night we did an activity with all the trainers (we didn't know who was our trainer yet, though) and then went to bed pretty early (thank goodness!).
Then this morning we woke up and went back to the mission office for orientation and to see who our companions were. I ended up with Elder Rawson from Ontario, Canada. He's super cool and really nice, and I'm so excited to be with him. So today we went and took care of some mundane things so far, like groceries, and e-mails (ie this), and we also had dinner with a member family, the Escamilla's. It was a yummy chicken broth soup with beans that we ate with tortilla chips.
Real quick, cause I've got to go, Santa Rosa is AWESOME! It's sooo beautiful both weather and landscape wise. I know this is where I'm supposed to be, and I can't wait to actually get to missionary work! Love you all!
-Elder Whitaker
This week's got so much to tell, hopefully I can get to all of it! So first, this past Sunday we had a special Sacrament meeting for Easter where the whole MTC was served Sacrament at the same time. Bishop Causse was there and they had about 2400 people in the auditorium and another 600 or so in the three large overflow sections. The cool thing was that Elder White and I were selected to help either pass or bless/break the Sacrament, and it ended working out that we not only got to break the bread, but I got to be the one to bless the water in the auditorium for the whole auditorium and Bishop Causse! It was such an amazing opportunity to serve and see something like that happen. It was such a neat experience.
Even though that's awesome, there's still better things to share. I'm in the Santa Rosa mission right now!!! Like we were supposed to, we met at 5:00 in the morning at the Travel Office and loaded our luggage and got on a bus to the airport and drove about an hour to the airport. After unloading our luggage the other 100 missionaries or so and I all got checked in and went to our separate terminals and waited for a bit for the plane, and made our phone calls home. I guess y'all know how flying works, so I'll just go to when we landed in the Oakland airport. So we landed and got off and passed the "point of no return" and saw President and Sister Alba waiting for us. They were so excited and happy to see us and were so warm and friendly it was amazing. We then got our luggage, loaded vans and drove to the mission home which took us about an hour. There we had dinner and a kind of devotional by President Alba. So the mission home has the absolute prettiest backyard; it's all super wooded with cool moss covered oaks. It was really cool because there was a deer in the backyard behind some brush that just sat there chilling. It was laying down and didn't leave the whole time we were there. We were even out on the deck talking and stuff and the deer wasn't more than 50-60 feet away. Anyways, then we went to the mission office (which is also a chapel) for a brief transfer devotional and then went to the hotel where we spent that night. While at the hotel that night we did an activity with all the trainers (we didn't know who was our trainer yet, though) and then went to bed pretty early (thank goodness!).
Then this morning we woke up and went back to the mission office for orientation and to see who our companions were. I ended up with Elder Rawson from Ontario, Canada. He's super cool and really nice, and I'm so excited to be with him. So today we went and took care of some mundane things so far, like groceries, and e-mails (ie this), and we also had dinner with a member family, the Escamilla's. It was a yummy chicken broth soup with beans that we ate with tortilla chips.
Real quick, cause I've got to go, Santa Rosa is AWESOME! It's sooo beautiful both weather and landscape wise. I know this is where I'm supposed to be, and I can't wait to actually get to missionary work! Love you all!
-Elder Whitaker