It's Friday!

Hi mom and dad :) .  To start off I guess I'll just answer your questions.  Yes, my shoes got here the second day I was here.  I have no idea about my visa, I haven't heard anything as of yet.  I thought you might like to know that I met a guy off of So You Think You Can Dance.  He's actually one of my zone leaders, and he's pretty cool.  His name is Elder De Saint Jeor (I think I spelled his name wrong), and I guess he made it to the first round at Vegas.

You wanted to know what my daily schedule is like, which is fairly consistent except for the times which I do things at.  The times vary from day to day, but I have time set aside for personal study, where I usually read my Book of Mormon unless I need to study something specific for a lesson with an investigator or do assigned reading from class.  I have about 6 hours of the day set aside for classroom teaching in 3 hour blocks, where my teacher, Brat Bodily (Brat means brother), instructs us on the language, teaches us ways to teach, etc.  He very rarely uses an English word, and it's been that way from the second I got there.  I had no idea what he was saying the first day, except that he kept saying dobre (there's an accent over the e, but my computer can't include that) and giving me a thumbs up and a questioning look.  I figured out pretty quickly that it meant good, and so I always just said dobre whenever he asked me anything, even if I had no idea what he was saying or what I was supposed to do.  It turned out all right, so it's all good.  I also have during my day time allotted for language study, where I have been making and studying flash cards to help me memorize verbs and such.  We also have time to exercise every day except Sunday, but it isn't always in the gym.  Only like half of the days can we go in the gym, where I usually play basketball.  I've also played volleyball and four square while I've been here.  It's kind of weird because we're not allowed to keep score in any of the games.  They don't want us to be competitive, I guess to help prevent injury or something.  

Our investigator, Martin, agreed to prepare to be baptized the other day, which was great.  He's actually our other teacher (I can't remember if I told you that), and he taught class for the first time yesterday.  His real name is Brat Fish, and he's a really good guy.  He definitely has a different teaching style than Brat Bodily, but he's great nonetheless.  We now will be teaching him as a different investigator, as well as Brat Bodily.  They play their roles with perfect diligence when they are being our investigators, and we are expected to treat them as such.  We also will soon begin having real people to teach in a program called TRC.  Brat Fish said that mostly the investigators there will be return missionary volunteers, but sometimes they are members or even nonmember volunteers.  We still will teach in Slovak with these people (I guess there are people in Utah that come from Slovakia--who knew!).  It's still pretty hard to do this, and we still have to rely on our notes, but we're getting better every day.  I have some pictures, but I'll probably have to send them next week because I forgot the cord for the camera to plug into the computer with.  Anyway, that's a summary of what's been going on lately, I hope you are all doing well back at home.  Thanks for the Dear Elders and letters every day, I love having something to read every day from you.  It's really good for giving me another lift during the day.   I love you very much, and miss you all.  

Love,

Elder Zachary Brown