Jacoby's first letter

Hello family and friends :)

Elder Remington pointing to Ecuador

WOW!! The mtc is amazing! I absolutely love it here! It was such a surreal experience coming in on the first day and getting a name tag that said Elder Remington. I had a HUGE grin on my face and could not stop smiling the entire day and I've been super happy this entire week. This truly has been the best and happiest week of my life :) I love learning the doctrine of Jesus Christ and I love learning Spanish so its the perfect place to be for me. And dad you are totally right that there is no feeling like knowing that I'm at the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. It is such a peaceful and assuring feeling that I love. On the first day we sang "We'll bring the World His Truth" (the Army of Helaman one) and they changed the lyrics to say "and we are NOW the Lord's missionaries." I loved singing that and of course after that we sang "Called to serve" and we sang it like 10 times faster than we did in Sacrament meeting it was awesome! For all you future missionaries out there reading this, don't believe anyone if they tell you that the mtc is boring. The mtc is what you make of it. I've heard elders say that this place is awful and the worst place they've ever been stuck in and there are other elders who just love it and are having an incredible experience. YOU get to decide what you want the mtc to be for YOU. If you work hard, pray hard, and trust in the Lord you will love it :)

I'm so so grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing me with wonderful spanish teachers in high school. Mom and dad thank you for encouraging me to do IB and supporting me while in it. Although it was very challenging it was totally worth it because I'm kicking some serious butt here with the spanish and with studying hard because I'm used to it. I can understand everything my teacher says aside from one or two words here and there and then I just figure it out based on the context or politely ask "Que significa esa palabra?" and she tells me so its awesome. I feel bad for the other elders here because a lot of them are really struggling so I'm doing my best to help them out :) Jessica please do me a favor and go tell Senora Hallack and Lacasta that I said muchas gracias for being such great teachers. Tell them both that they did a fantastic job preparing me and that I'm far ahead of all the other elders here in the intermediate class in large part thanks to them but above all thanks to the Lord for blessing me. I just want to reemphasize what I said in my talk that whenever you work your hardest, obey the rules, and trust in the Lord you will be blessed and you can't go wrong :)

Elder Remington & Elder Jacobsen

Okay so my companion is Elder Jacobsen. He is a wonderful missionary and a great friend. He's really easy going, funny, works hard, likes basketball, and we have a great relationship. When he was praying today he thanked the Lord for our companionship that we could each emulate one another strengths and help each other with our weaknesses. He truly is a great missionary and I'm blessed to have him as a companion. I know that companionships are inspired of God because we really work well together. He isn't very good at spanish... at all frankly. The poor elder just struggles with it and he barely understands anything that teacher says so he's constantly asking me whats going on. But you know what, I'm okay with that :) I'm happy to help him out and he's definitely come a long way these past couple days becasue he works really hard and he has great faith that the Lord will help him. I'd much rather have a companion that can't speak spanish but works hard than one who knows spanish but is arrogant or lazy. So I'm grateful to the Lord for putting him in my life. The other two elders in our room are Elder Baker and Elder Jarvis. Those two are complete opposites. Elder Jarvis is buff, loves sports, loves to joke, and is a really chill guy but he doesn't know spanish well either. Elder Baker loves to sing, plays every instrument known to man, and he knows spanish really well. However, the wonderful thing about those two is that despite their differences, they get along great because they both work hard and they're both committed to serving the Lord. Their companionship has taught me that as long as you have that in common (you both love the Lord and have a strong desire to serve) then you can get along great with any companion :) Last member of our district is Hermana Harbison. She is super nice, very spiritual, works hard, has a good sense of humor, so its easy to be just friends and work well with her :) Well I gotta go but I sure love you all and mom I really appreciated your letter and email :) They meant a lot to me!

Love,
Elder Remington