The Adventures of Elder Barlow: MTC Life........

Austin's time at the MTC went by quickly! He really enjoyed it there but was ready to move on by the end of his time!
One of his first e-mails was mostly of his experience as he first came:

Hey Famila!!!

This will be one of the big emails that you can share! when i first arrived in

mexico

and all the missionary got on the mtc busses it was so crazy. the traffic here is nuts there is no rules at all. most of the local busses just stop in the middle of the road just to cram more peolple on them. then we were driving by a pretty good sized wall for a while and then realized that on the other side of the 10 ft. wall was the mtc!! we got to the main gate and all of the guards that protect the main gate of the the mtc came out to make sure that everyone on the bus were missionarys. so basiclly the mtc is locked surrounded by a 10 ft. wall with barbed wire at the top. and nobody is allowed out of the mtc! But the cool thing is the mtc is pretty big it is about 93 acers of land because it used to be a school here. it is pretty nice to have so much room. but as soon as i got off the bus in the mtc the first person i saw outside was my friend from high school Elder cory fowers. it was so awesome to see someone that i could talk too! Then we got our compainions and went to lunchroom and my first mexican meal in the mtc was a cold peice of pizza from costco.. it was pretty sweet i guess. Then we went to go try and find our casa we finally did and it is really getto!! haha but i love it still. all of my roomates are really cool and awesome to hang out with we all get along so well. the nights in mexico are really scary actually me and the elders in our room the first night were trying to fall asleep but we couldnt because of the gunshots and abulences going around the mtc most of the night!!! but now it does not even bother us. it actually puts me to sleep. i will tell you the rest of my story tonight when i get on!!

Love you guys!!

Elder Barlow

He also told us that his very first lesson on his very first day was 100% Spanish. And everyone was supposed to speak in Spanish all the time. At the end of his first week he was praying in Spanish and sharing his testimony.

After 2 weeks he told us he blessed the sacrament in Spanish without any mistakes! He was pretty happy about that.

After a couple of weeks there, he was made district leader which he said meant he was in charge of about 10 missionaries.

Some other high-lights at the MTC were:

~Being able to attend the Mexico City Temple 2 times.

~Teaching a member investigator and realizing they had talked with her for 20 minutes in complete Spanish with-out any notes or help.

~Leading all the Missionaries in the mission purpose at one of the last devotionals.

~Being able to speak and understand Spanish so quickly.

~Seeing old friends from home around campus, and making new friends there!

~Standing with all the other Missionaries that were leaving the same day as him and singing 'God be with you 'til we meet again' in Spanish to the rest of the missionaries.

~And of course all of the Soccer playing he got in during gym time, and p-day!

There are many more, but these were some of the ones he was most excited about!