Six Hours Plus!

Hello from the MTC, one last time, friends and family!

It has quite the ride, but sadly my MTC stay is coming to a close.  In t-minus 6 days from now, I will be saying goodbye to all of the good friends I have made here and hello to France (with about 24 hours of travelling somewhere in between).  So, immediate family, apparently I am allowed to call you all from the airport and talk to you for a minute or two!  In order to do this though, I'm going to need to know how to get ahold of you, so if you could get that to me as soon as possible, that would be awesome!

This past week has been a most excellent one here at the MTC.  Elder Wilson and I had many new experiences together.  I would like to share a few of them with you.  So, I believe that I've mentioned that I the missionary companionships get the opportunity to teach other companionships the lessons in French, as well as play the part of an investigator.  This is one of my favorite things about the MTC...1. because I love acting and getting inside the head of someone completely different and 2. because I get to receive so much revelation on things that I can do to be a better teacher!  Our teaching skills have really improved as we've listened to and obeyed the things we learn by the Spirit in each lesson.

I don't know if I've told you all about the kinds of things that I do on a regular/weekly basis here at the MTC... So here's kind of a run down.  I wake at 6:30, get ready, and go to breakfast.  After breakfast we have morning class at 8:00 in which we have these lessons companionship-companionship as well as companionship-instructor.  We also spend class time learning French, mostly grammar principles and such, as well as missionary fundamentals.  All of my classes are all in French, so I'm pretty immersed in the language (not nearly as much as I will be next week, however).  After class, I have personal study time and then lunch.  After lunch is personal language study time, during which I usually get on a computer and work on a program called TALL.  TALL is a little bit geeky.  You sit there and watch robots teach gospel lessons in French.  But it's super helpful and I've learned to really appreciate it, because it teaches me new vocab as well as how to pronounce the words.  We also have a designated TALL time sometime later on in the day.  I also have gym hour, during which I usually work out with Elder Wynn, a UofU/olympic swimmer.  I don't mean to boast but I can keep up with this guy.  Rofl.  I won the diaper derby.  The rest of the day consists of dinner and then another classroom block, which is basically a repetition of the morning, only with a different teacher (and we're doing different stuff).

In the first six weeks, a lot of time was spent preparing and delivering lessons/learning how to teach/getting comfortable with the language.  Of late, they've been stacking on other stuff to get us prepared for the field.  One of my favorite things we do now is practice contacting, door-to-door as well as street.  It is way fun, because you have to think (or rather receive revelation and then act) QUICKLY.  It super fun though.  I have a feeling that it's probably going to be one of my favorite things out in the field.  Apparently they do a lot of metro contacting out in France.  YES.

Another radical thing we got to be a part of this week, being MTC veterans and all, was hosting new missionaries.  This means that we get to wear a cool sticker that says "HOST" and we pick the missionaries up off the curb, awkwardly stand with their luggage as their family says goodbye, and then take them through the MTC, give 'em a lil tour and take 'em to their classroom.  It involves a lot of consoling!  A lot of them are pretty nervous/shaken up and we try our best to calm their nerves.  We were in the EXACT same boat as them 8 weeks ago.  It's kind of funny how that works.

Well, I'm out of time, but I will write you all in France, I promise!  I'm more than excited to be there and for the experiences that await.  I look forward to sharing the thing I love the most: the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with those men in berets.  I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind and that He lives!  What joy that sentence truly gives!

L'amour,

Elder Kunzler

PS  Shout out to Jacob and Hannah Mortensen!  May your life together be full of wonder, joy, happiness, bliss and all that you hope and desire!  I love you two and I was at your beautiful wedding, in spirit and thought.