Heiligen Luftball (aka Holy Airball)- April 15, 2026 Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC)

Gruss Gott Freunde! Ich habe jetzt eine Woche in MTC gebliebt. Viele interessant dinge haben passieren. 

 

Not sure how to structure this email, so I suppose I will share a highlight from every day, and then leave you with the general state of things. (Thursday is a must read)

We arrived Wednesday and after a quick greeting, being shown to our room in the dungeon, and a very lackluster class, we heard two awesome conversion stories from people in the evening devotional. One guy, Ed, from New York told us how the Elders knocked on his door one day while he was hung over. He said he was a bit of a kleptomaniac, and that as he kept progressing in the lessons he brought a stereo he stole to the police station, and broke back into some place to return a statue he stole, with a note attached. Anyway, I thought that was a cool story that he changed so much.

Thursday was the day that I became a German television star. For our first real class, a camera crew and the host of the popular German discovery channel, Gallileo, observed our class. We did an activity where we walked around the room introducing ourselves in German to each other. However, during the activity I simply talked with the show host Jan, a 40 year old guy from Germany. He asked about where I was from, if I had ever been to Germany, what I was studying in college and much more. I did pretty well keeping up in German. All of this happened while the camera man filmed us intensely. Importantly, he asked me what I was scared and excited for. I said living alone, and Doner Kebab respectively. 

The weekend was probably the slowest part of our week. We ate a bunch of decent food, lifted weights, had devotionals and lots of classes. On Saturday we had a particularly awesome class, where while teaching the third lesson in PMG on the fly it felt almost like I was given what words I should say.

Sunday was super boring, we had a million meetings, I gave a terrible talk in sacrament, and then we had to study for like two hours. However, there was a silver lining. We went to choir practice, and I was surrounded by two huge Polynesian guys, a big white guy and this kid from Brazil and they were all hilarious. Honestly an unforgettable time. Also, that night we met a Samoan district that was just leaving for Samoa. They were all super nice, and after we took their picture they taught us a little bit of Samoan and were surprised that I could do the yell. If you know you know. 

On Monday we went to classes, taught a lesson to some dude named Cal about the plan of Salvation and had Ramen night. Meaning Elders Pfiffer and Price bought a whole bunch of spicy ramen at the MTC store, that we made in the basement microwave and ate in our room. I ended up coughing all over the table multiple times as the spice hit my throat, as we all died laughing. Some things never change I guess. 

Finally yesterday was quite terrible. It was in the middle of our German tutoring that I felt a sharp pain in my back like I had thrown it out. There was also a huge unseemly bump on my back from which the pain radiated. After a visit to the sassiest doctor of all time and a field trip to the BYU health center, we found out I'll probably have to go back on Friday and get a wicked scar on my lat. C'est le Vie I suppose.

Anyway, although a lot of times this week have been less than ideal, the Elders in my district have been great and we've made lots of friends including Hungarian, Finnish, and Khmer speaking sisters, all of whom have already been here six weeks. Finally, about the title. Elder Pfiffer and I have been saying holy airball whenever something remotely funny or awkward has happened. Yesterday we learned how to say it in German, so I leave you with it.

Heilegen Luftball

Serial coming next week,

-Elder M.J. Smith