Week 1 -Home MTC

What's up it's Elder Trane! This first week in the online MTC has been great! Earlier in the week I got my reassignment to Columbus, Ohio!!! Super stoked about that I can't wait to get out to Columbia and serve the people there! My companion, Elder Elliot, is from Boise Idaho and he's awesome! We're both at about the same level of Spanish so that's been super helpful to be able to help each other out with learning the language. My district is super cool, they're all from either Utah or Idaho. I've also been able to play basketball with some of my buddies who are also elders in the MTC. This first week and a half of being a missionary has been awesome!

One thing that I really liked this week was from a talk given by Elder Bednar called "Character of Christ" it was given in a BYU-Idaho devotional but I loved it because it talked about Christ's loving character and how without it the atonement wouldn't have been possible. One example it gave was from Matthew 4:11, in the footnotes there is a Joseph Smith translation that really changes the meaning of the verse and it tells us that after Christ was finished fasting for 40 days and then after that tempted by Satan 3 times, instead of looking inward and having angels come and minister unto him, he actually was looking outward and sent angels to John in prison to comfort him and minister to him. This is just one of many examples that show how loving and caring Christ is for each and every one of us. It shows us that even when we are physically and spiritually down the best thing that we can do is look outward, like the Savior did in this story. We need to do the best we can to focus on others instead of ourselves and in turn this will cause us to be happy as well. 

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

1. Front door of the MTC

2. Balling with the Elders

3. Mi distrito!

4. Throwing down on Bobby in between classes