Less Than a Week to GO!

Ninth Email from the MTC

Date: 29 October, 2009 1:00 PM

Hi family!

Well it’s finally here! It’s so exciting… I’m ready to do the real thing! I just finished going through my last session in the Buenos Aires temple and it was great! The place is hopping as they are trying to get as many people through the temple as fast as they can before it closes! I met a lot of people from Utah who are volunteering to help out!

Tonight I have a special opportunity to be interviewed by a group from Provo and members of the Quorum of the Twelve. They are evaluating the difference in progress between North Americans that go through the Provo MTC compared to the missionaries that come out of the native land MTC’s. So all I know is I’m supposed to sit in front of a camera and answer about forty questions in Spanish. I’m pretty excited! Besides all of that, this weekend sister Julie Beck, general Relief Society President and Sister Vicki Matsumori (she spoke in General Conference) are staying with us. So that’s pretty cool too!

Well the swine flu hasn’t hit hard here yet. I’m so sorry to hear about it in Utah! I don’t know if they gave me that strain of flu shot, but I know I got a bunch of shots and I know that one of them was some type of flu shot.

Dad, I did receive your package and your letter today right when I had to go to the temple, but I haven’t had the chance to read the letter yet because I have been so busy. But I’m so excited to read it; thanks so much! Thanks for the package, I loved it and the CTR rings were so awesome. I can’t wait to give them out! It was so perfect and appropriate!

Well I’m getting pretty darn fluent at Spanish and I just love this culture! I have really come to love these people and I really do love this work! I really love the Book of Mormon! I feel that for the past nineteen years I have taken for granted this wonderful piece of literature! I love to share this with people! And recently have really studied it and in doing so have gained a great testimony of it! I’m so excited to go to Montevideo this upcoming week to share this with more people, it’s so awesome!

Thanks for supporting me in all the many things that I have done in life. I love you all! May God bless you and look after you.

Love, Elder John P. Sluder

P.S. Congrats Mom on you new job… that’s so cool and dad congrats on you new truck if you get it. That’s so cool… what a blessing this crazy company that we all have worked for has been in all our lives!