I think that was the bridesroom - May 6, 2026

The Altos

 

Chess

Thanks, mom

Servus,

This last week was by far the most eventful we have had at the MTC so far, and conveniently I can't remember much of anything.

But, the biggest change is I got two new companions this week. To cut a rather long and prolonged story short, my original companion, Elder Biesinger, decided that he had had quite enough of us, and last Friday met with the first counselor in the MTC presidency and switched companions, rooms, residence halls, districts, branch, everything. The most interesting part however, is that we honestly don't know what compelled him to do so. This is because we would simply not communicate with me or the district leader ever. All that I knew was that he was struggling, and that often his disdain was directed towards me. Even so, I tried my best every day to carry a cheery disposition, as these last two weeks he only ever spoke to me to chastise me, contradict me, or yell at me to be somewhere. Furthermore, I did my absolute best to endure these assailing blows and keep my joy up. I can honestly say that for the last two weeks there are only two occasions I think of where I reacted to his, for lack of a better term, rage bait. All other times I just took it with a smile. Also, I must add that we planned our entire study schedule to accommodate him, we were never late to class once, and I joined the choir so he could sing. But, one night, when he was being particularly rude, as I was going to bring this up to him, I looked in his eyes, and I just couldn't. The only thing I could say was, "We love you man, we're all going through it, we're here for you." Then shortly after he left.

Alright, elephant addressed, my new companions, Elders Pfifer and Price are super awesome and we've been having a great time. 

Now for some highlights:

Wednesday: After my last email, I taught elder Pfifer how to shoot a basketball correctly. It was tons of fun to coach, and he was in all truth looking a lot better when we were done.

Thursday: We had a super awesome meeting with brother Kohler (like in charge of all European missions), where he told us about planning. Sounds super boring, I know, but for the first time in my life, after listening to him, planning sounded super awesome. He talked about how if you really plan everything out, it's never a question of what to do, and everything goes by so much faster. Our biggest takeaway was, don't be a lunch and P-day elder.

Friday: A particularly tough day because the aforementioned story with Elder Biesinger happened, but I was encouraged by the love and support from my family and our friends at the MTC.

Saturday: Ok, I didn't write down anything of what happened on Saturday. Only thing I know is that we had a cool personal study where we read the verse Mormon 7:9 which said that the Book of Mormon's purpose was to help us believe on the bible, and as a result believe on Christ.

Sunday: Had an awesome testimony meeting where I bore my core four of things that I did  know. I also thought of this cool nugget, "be of good cheer, for the darkness will certainly circle you round about, but the light will never again be extinguished."

Monday: Honestly very terrible day. We taught one of the German actors at the MTC, and boy do I wish I couldn't have understood what he was saying. He was bagging on us, disappointed that we were leaving for Germany next week and couldn't even tell him what our church believed. So our hour and a half of planning didn't really help much. It happens though.

Tuesday: Interesting day. I had another PT appointment, and a service project, so we kept rather busy. It was another day full of drama (who is surprised atp) but it ended with a pretty good devotional by Elder Basset of the 70. I had the following cool insight, "The strait and narrow path can be imagined not just as a straight tunnel, but a strait, as in body of water connected two larger bodies of water. When we think of it that way, we realize that our spiritual journey is not a straight tunnel, but unpredictable waters. Also, we see that it is ok if someone's journey is different from ours, because it never will, and never was supposed to be. The path, although like a strait, is rather narrow, it is anything but linear." Something to think about.

And that's that. We went to the temple today, and I suppose I explain the title of this email. We were in the Provo city center temple, and absolutely lost on where the bathroom is. Anyway, we're searching for it and end up in an empty room with three doors, Gurt (Elder Price) opened one

and it just so happened to be the bridesroom. Quite an embarrassing moment for us you could imagine. But all is well that ends well, we promptly left, found the bathroom, and ran to the endowment, making it at literally the last second.

Next email will be from Germany I guess, super anxious and scared but what else is new, always fun to be around for the ride.

-M.J. Smith (The Elder)

Elder Price

Elder Smith, Elder Pfifer, Elder Price