The first week is complete at the Missionary Training Center!

First Letter Home Dated Feb 5

For those of you who may not know, I am serving an LDS mission in South Korea, Seoul South mission. I leave for Korea March 30 (if my visa comes in time, but that's a different story) and I am currently in Provo Utah for the next 8 weeks. 

I will be sending out weekly updates about my experiences here and so forth therefore, if you don't care for these emails let me know and I'll take you off the list or simply just tag my email as spam! haha.

Eight days ago I entered the MTC at 12:30. Before that, I did an LDS temple session and I guarantee I was the youngest one there... times three... After that my cousin Sophia took me to an equivalent to Cafe Rio and then we were off to get dropped off. 

Right off the bat, you come in get your 20 pound bag of language learning supplies (no joke, twenty pounds), your name tag and drop off your luggage. Then it's straight to the classroom where the teacher speaks nothing but Korean. I fortunately was forewarned about this but what I didn't realize is they never stop speaking constant Korean to you, in fact the teacher wont stop this whole time that I am here. Let's just say i have gotten really good at charades. :) 

The first three days were rough, each day we as a class spent 11+ hours in the classroom trying to learn this  ridiculously hard language. The little Korean I learned in three months before coming here, i re-learned in the first day, then it was on to new material. That shocked me... 

As far as my dorm goes, it is sooooo much nicer then my BYU-Hawaii dorm where I could literally stretch my arms the width of the room. And the food.......all you can eat GLORIOUS food. Yesterday I did a service project for the dining facility and all the food is fresh with quality meat and products. I was very impressed unlike BYU-Hawaii where I literally saw a cockroach climb out of the peanut butter jar...YUCK.

My mission president, President Perritton is a "Kiwi" aka a new zealander who speaks very good Korean. He oversees our zone which now consists of over 70 women and men. He is an amazing leader. We refer to him as the Chuck Norris of the MTC because there is nothing he cant do. Can't is not even in his vocabulary!

Saturday I was assigned Senior companion, which means I say what should be done as far as planning and responsibility. MY companion is Elder Chad Huckvale who is a 5'6 redhead from Camis, Washington State. He is a great guy and we get along well. We have this sixth sense where we know when one of us is struggling or stressed and knows to tread lightly with what we say and do. 

President Perriton has also asked me to take the responsibility of District Leader which means I will oversee my district which consists of eight other Sisters and Elders- ones from Canada lol. Interesting enough I have some connection to each of the Elders in my district. Elder Stapp went to the same church as my Aunt Becky, Elder Schilling was in my church ward at BYU-Hawaii and we were friends and Elder Huckvale is good friends Alan Yates who is a basketball player from BYU-Hawaii who I knew very well. Such a small world in the Mormon community. 

In closing to this long email (i promise they will be shorter in the future), I want to say that there is some amazing things that go on here. People learning Spanish or Portuguese become fluent within six weeks of being here. I have never been this stressed in my life but I have also never wanted to learn something so great in my life either. This place is really special. 

I promise if you send me a letter of some sort I will respond. There is a great system called Dear Elder where you can send a email, they will print it out and put it in my district mail box and i will be able to read it the day of!!! I love hearing from anyone and everyone. DearElder.com i think it is. 

The information you'll need for it is

Elder Joseph Eads

Provo MTC Mission

Unit #42 Departure Date: March 30

Mission Code: Korea Seoul South

2005 North 900 East 

Provo, UT 84604-1793

The address you could also use to send snail mail to me :) is:

Elder Joseph David Eads
Provo Missionary Training Center *

Mar30-KorSeoS
2005 N 900 E #42
Provo, UT 84602
United States

Thank you all so much for your support! See ya next week!