Out of the MTC

Note from mom:  We received a couple of really short e-mails from Casey last week.  But when we got home from Philmont, there was a 6 page letter from him as well.  Because he wasn't going to be able to e-mail on Wednesday.  I will give a quick update this morning and share more from his letter next week, once I get caught up with everything else!

  The missionaries here are awesome.  We have an Elder from the Phillipines, one from Germany, two from India (Both new converts that gave up a lot to be here) a couple Elders from Northern England and one from Norway.  And sisters from Australia, Brazil and South Africa.    

We are to leave at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, they are shipping us out on buses.  It's a 5 hour bus ride to the Mission Home. [mom- I didn't realize that Preston was that fair away from London.]  Because of transfers on Wednesday, I probably won't be able to e-mail until next Monday, so I wrote a letter and it should be there when you get home.   My allergies are acting up and the medicine doesn't seem to be working, I'm hoping they will get better.

We had a pretty need experience at the local Walmart type store.  We were there doing a little shopping and ran into a lady.  She stopped us and said, "now you can't be missionaries."  I said, "I may have the face of a baby, but I have the spiritual strength of a bear."  She got quite a laugh out of it.  Turned out to be a lady in charge of our temple session actually.  The people here are so nice.  

We were able to go to the temple on Wednesday.  It was a great experience.  The inside of the temple is not as pretty at the Twin Falls one, but the grounds are gorgeous. They have lily pads growing in the tile ponds outside.  They have sections of dirt, so they will grow.  Also neatly trimmed bushes just everywhere, it's so awesome.  Inside the temple is just not bland, just white walls in the telestial and terrestrial rooms.  The person over the temple session today was the first counselor in the MTC Presidency, so it was way awesome.  But when I got the celestial room it didn't matter what it looked like, its just the feeling inside. The most peaceful feeling you can imagine.   

The temple there is the closest temple for Scotland and Ireland, so this week we had numerous charter buses coming up dropping them off at the temple.  I didn't realize it really was that hard to get to the temple- silly me.

We celebrated the 4th of July with shredded paper for fireworks. Yay- I missed it a lot.

We had a devotional with Elder Charles from the 3rd quorum of the Seventy. It was mostly a prep talk for our mission and I took 3 pages of notes.  I love love loved it!  [he told a lot about it, but that will be in the next post]

Look up page 121 in Preach My Gospel- the quote by Ezra Taft Benson in the red box.  It says, "I have often said one of the greatest secrets of missionary work is work!  If a missionary works, he will get the Spirit; if he gets the Spirit, he will teach by the Spirit; and if he teaches by the Spirit, he will touch hearts of the people and he will be happy. There will be no homesickness, no worrying about families, for all time and talents and interests are centered on the work of the ministry.  Work, work, work- there is no satisfactory substitute, especially in missionary work."  - Love, Elder Stevenson

His Mission President's wife dropped us a quick note indicating he had made it safely to London and was in the care of his companion.

Look for another post coming on the devotional (possibly tomorrow), and he should be able to e-mail on Mondays now.  So I will try to get them posted to the blog on Monday evenings or Tuesday mornings!
Thanks to everyone for supporting Casey in this endeavor!