Laughing problems and a strange P-day restoration lesson

I enjoy the pictures you guys sent me. So awesome to see what everyone is up to! Thank you Mom for putting my name on the temple roll. Sorry to hear that Mom is stressed out about school! That is a lot of stuff to worry about. My days are pretty repetitive. Lots of teaching. Lots of learning. I haven't had to speak in sacrament yet, but I know one of these days I'll have to. It honestly doesn't seem that bad. Lot's of people here freak out over that. Singing in Chinese is a bit interesting. Funny story, me and my companion were singing with our district in Chinese and there was a certain part in the song that said, "ching chong." Me and my companion started laughing. We got some disappointing looks from some of the others. Me and my companion have a laughing problem. We laugh at stuff all the time and in prayers. We're not sure why. The MTC will do that to you I guess. Sometimes it's hard to read the music because you don't use tones when you sing and it's hard to figure out exactly where the words go in the song. I sit in one classroom basically for 13 hours every day and the class is entirely in Chinese. It's kinda weird because sometimes there's no teacher, so we have to be our own. Some of the people in our district struggle with that........ I did play some four square.. I'm really bad at it. So I just run. I'm also pretty bad at running as well. The only thing that's been bugging me lately is the way I speak. It's kinda different now. I think I've mentioned in previous emails that I speak in a Chinese sentence structure. It bugs me, because I'm like..."Why am I talking like a Chinese Panda Express cook?" Things here at the MTC are pretty much the same old same old. Glad to hear everything is going well back home. I'm genuinely happy to be serving a mission, but the MTC sucks. One thing I really like to do is to talk to the Cantonese speakers. I LOVE the Cantonese speakers. They're all so cool and I really get along with a Cantonese speaker called Elder Farr. We talk every night. We talk about South Park and stuff. He's a cool guy. He leaves for Hong Kong in 6(?) days now. I'm definitely going to miss him. We get new Mandarin speakers and Cantonese speakers soon. So that'll be fun. We use slang around here, so we call them Mandos and Cantos. There's lots of lingo around here for some reason. Especially with the Chinese Asian languages. Teaching is always really hard, but I've just come to terms that I will suck and I will suck even more when I get to Taiwan. I talked to Elder Tyson Mckeon about it, and he made me feel better. I LOVE getting the Dear Elders and it lifts my spirits so much. On P-Day we spend a lot of time using Google street-view to look around Taiwan. That gets us really excited and motivated to go. I talked to one of my teachers who got back about 2 years ago, and his mission president was Blickenstaff. He says Blickenstaff's really cool. He was telling me all about Taiwan and told me that shark fin tastes good...... He also told me that he loved going to the beach on P-Day and they even let you dip your feet in the water. Ugh, I can't wait to leave this place. So about an hour ago me and my companion were doing laundry. We had to get off the computer and go down some stairs. When we were going down the stairs this man starts talking to us. He starts asking about where we're going and stuff. Then he started to ask why we weren't dressed up and was asking questions like, "are you only allowed to teach in church clothes." We explained why we were dressed. Then he started asking questions like why we're serving missions and we kinda got the feeling like he wasn't a member. Then it progressed into like a full on lesson about the restoration. It was weird. He wasn't like a fake investigator. He just works at the MTC and had some questions. We taught him in English about the restoration and why the Church is true. It was kind of intimidating but the Spirit was so strong. Near the end of our 45 minute lesson he said that he meets with the missionaries and is taking the lessons, but he was still confused about Joseph Smith and the Restoration (still kind of is.) Then he started to cry and tell us that our testimonies of the Gospel touched his heart and that the missionaries had told him that he could be with his deceased mother again through the Plan of Salvation. He bore a short testimony and told us that he was so thankful to talk with us... The MTC is a weird place.... I feel like we really helped him and answered his questions. It was just kinda weird, because there were so many missionaries passing us on the stairs and for some reason he decided to choose us. It was weird. I saw Mark Huelett and that was kinda weird, but fun. The food has gotten a little better. My stomach has adjusted a little more. I don't really get sick anymore. As for the snack stash we're slowly working on it. We found some time to eat it. We really want Cup of Noodles. Emphasis on cup because we don't/can't find any bowls. There is hot water available in our residence building. The MTC store is pretty alright. There's a "missionary discount" on everything which is cool. But that being said, everything in that store is over priced. Today my companion bought two double A batteries for $2. They never really give you enough time to do anything either. So going to the store is hard. Plus the workers at the store kind of have an attitude about everything or something, so the experience is not very pleasant. I haven't really bought anything besides Q-tips from the store. A lot of missionaries are giving me a hard time because I have all this money saved up on my MTC card. I have like $23 or something. I'm thinking of getting a hoodie with the mission logo on it. Everybody else has them and they're pretty nice. I have the top bunk. One of the springs in the bed is broken so it sticks into my back if I sleep a certain way. But I'm sleeping fine don't worry. I haven't even worn my other suit at all (the black one.) I rarely use my gray suit (only for like meetings/sacrament/stupid stuff). Elder Dube and Elder Rasband have come to speak to us. I have to go to the temple. We're doing sealings, and I get to pretend to be a little kid. Love you bye!

Silas