Week 6

Dear Family,

Hello! Yes, another week down. I'm not even sure what week it is. All I know is that I'm super excited to go to Belgium! The Danish Elders in our zone left this last week. It was sad to see them leave. We were all really close with them. So excited for them to begin teaching the people of Denmark though! It did snow the other day. The Day before it was 79 degrees and the day it snowed it was 30. Quite a change in weather, haha. This week was definitely a special one. Conference was incredible! The talks from each of the speakers were so insightful. Mom you would be proud, I took 25 pages of notes :D. It makes me sad though to think how I never really paid too much attention before. This time around I learned so much. I really enjoyed the talks from Lynn G Robbins, Kent F Richards, and as always President Uchtdorf. We also had a wonderful fireside from Vai Sikahema, the running back from the 1984 National championship team and player for the Philly Eagles. Each week I feel as though my knowledge of the gospel continues to grow by leaps and bounds. At the same time, however, I realize how much there is to learn and how much harder I need to work. Having the Ambassador come was a great experience. He is not a member of the church.  He was invited to speak at BYU and was interested in seeing the MTC. Apprently BYU is the only college that offers courses in Dutch and he was very impressed that young men and women were interested in learning Dutch out of all the different languages. I love Dutch. I may have said that 100 times before but it's the truth! It's very easy to understand if you know English and German. I have a great April Fools Day experience to tell you. The only problem is that it wasn't a joke. So I have had this weird pain in my calf for the past 6 weeks. It was a few days after I arrived in Utah that I awoke one morning at Grandma and Grandpa's house to find this burning feeling in my leg. I figured it wasn't a big deal so I let it go. A few weeks into the MTC, it was still there. Luckily, my branch president is a chiropractor and he said it may be my arches in my feet. I had never had arch problems before so I went another week before I went to the doctor. When I finally made it to the doctor, he looked at my leg and with a stern look on his face said "This may be a bigger problem than you think it is. I think you might have a blood clot in your leg." I was thinking "Well that's just awesome!" So I went to the emergency room, where I pranced around in a hospital gown while wearing my dress shoes with no socks (quite the sight). I had an ultrasound and everything. Three hours later, they tell me "Oh, everything is fine! You just need to take some Ibuprofen." I have been taking it for quite sometime now. I love doctors! A really great thing came from this experience however! While my companion and I were in the hospital, we talked with a lot of people and it made me so excited to teach. Great story right?  What a wonderful place. I have been super busy today so I apologize if I can't send someone a letter until next week, sorry!  I appreciate the updates on what's going on. Elder Mark Frost I think comes next week? I'm super excited for that! It will be neat to have both the Frost's and Elder Fairclough here at the same time. They are awesome and great examples to everyone. That's great to hear that James is making progress with his Eagle project!  I'm so excited for him to have that done! Our class has reached the point where we only speak Dutch inside the room no matter what. We have English "fasts" twice a week and all try really hard to use it as much as we can otherwise. I get so confused with my english sometimes after being in Dutch mode for long periods of time. Hope all is going well! I love you and continue to keep you in my prayers. We have a new group of Danish, Dutch, and Icelandic elders coming into our zone tonnight. Super excited to meet all of them! Love you!

-Elder Schulte