I now only have a few days before I head to the Provo MTC—the big city, the city of life and light where all my hopes and dreams of becoming a real boy come true! 😂

Lol, I’m actually mostly just excited to fly out to Utah and start the MTC in person. The hardest part is leaving my family behind, but I know they’re excited for me to leave and grow as a person. I legit can’t wait to meet up with my district. We’ve all grown super close with each other, and meeting them in person is going to be so much better than only seeing everyone on Zoom. I think, realistically, the hardest part for me is not having any music. That’s gonna suck. (But I feel the Spirit while listening to Jack Johnson 🤷‍♂️.)

This week had a lot of ups and downs. At times I felt like I understood the language to a decent extent, then other times I had absafreakinglutely no idea what was going on. And as the title describes, my Spanish has been crossing paths with my French. So whenever I don’t know a word in French, my brain immediately jumps to Spanish thinking, "Spanish and French are similar enough." I wish that were the case... but they really aren’t. I feel like French is a crossover between Spanish, Portuguese, and Old English, if that makes any sense.

It sounds really basic, but when I actually put in the effort, that's when I see the most growth. Going to bed a little later to study the language, or really locking in during personal study, makes all the difference. I know the gift of tongues is real. I’ve felt it happen to me at times, and I just need to keep putting in the work.

On Thursday, my companion, Elder Evensen, and I got to teach our first lesson! It actually went so well. So basically, Grace, our investigator (she actually works for the Church, but they keep that on the DL 😂), wants to learn more about God as she's getting ready for grad school and feels like He could help her with this next chapter of her life. So Elder Evensen and I taught her a bunch of different things, but we really emphasized prayer and how it's the way we speak directly to God. We talked about how she can feel His love as she reaches out to Him. Our invitation for her was to pray every day, and we have a follow up lesson scheduled for this Friday. I’m so excited because it'll be in person this time!

Also, my own prayers have become much more thoughtful. I feel like I’m actually able to say what I really want to say now. (So... you're welcome for randomly being blessed throughout your day. :)

And finally, Happy 4th of July!

We live in such a blessed, free country where we're able to worship God, preach our religion, and serve others. I'm proud to be an American, and I'm proud to be a missionary.

I’ll see y’all next week from the Provo MTC.

Michael ✌️