The MTC

Hi guys! This is my first mission email! I got set apart as a full time missionary Sunday night, and I began my mission service Monday, March 7th. It's weird to think that it's finally time. It seems like I got my call so long ago. Ever since I got set apart I've been in a whirlwind of emotions. It's kinda amazing how much the human body is capable of feeling, especially with the added capacity of the spirit. I've felt it so much over the past several days! I've met all my teachers and my HMTC (home-mtc) companion! My teachers are Brother Bytheway, Brother Hill, and Sister Mecham. Both of the brothers served in Iceland like I'm preparing to do, which is really cool because they can provide me a closer insight to what I'm about to go through (at least physically). Sister Mecham was born and raised in Iceland, so she has a really good grasp of the language. I'm the only missionary in the MTC learning Icelandic, so I'm in my own district (guess that makes me district leader from day one?). This means I'm in most of my classes one on one with the teachers, which is really nice because we can communicate and share and ask questions better than if it were a whole group of people! They all seem to like me, and are excited for me. These first few weeks at home are focussed on learning how to missionary, and the 7 weeks in Provo will be focused on learning Icelandic! My companion's name is Elder Greer, and he's super nice. He was actually at BYU this past fall semester while I was there, and he saw my name on my apartment door, which is pretty cool considering there's 33k people at BYU. We have our first Helping Others meeting tonight, which is where we teach someone who could be an investigator, or could be an actor, we don't know. We've been preparing during our companion study and are excited to have our first teaching experience! Elder and Sister Anderson (of the Quorum of the 12) gave a missionary devotional and they challenged us to remember several scriptures that would allow Christ to penetrate ourselves. Anyways, I don't have too much to share on day 3 but there's much more to come! I'm nervous, a little scared, and a whole bunch of other things, but I"m really excited to serve the people of Iceland! Öldungur Rasmussen