Calling the MTC!

So, an entire week has passed since we dropped Jared off. I of course have been praying for him every single minute, wondering how things are going, hoping he is adjusting and that he is happy and I have been worrying. His friend told me that in the MTC, they just have one big community shower, a "tree of life", I believe he called it. The first night I couldn't stop worrying about that. How would he handle it? He's really modest and usually never even goes swimming without a t-shirt on. Finally, Thursday morning I couldn't take it anymore and I did the unthinkable. I called the MTC. I asked the lady at the front desk about the shower situation. She totally put me at ease. It is not true. They DO have private showers. All that worry for nothing.

Last night I went to a school event and ran into my friend, Tammy, whose son went into the MTC the same day as Jared. She has revived two letters and an E-mail from Bridger since last week. She asked me how Jared was doing. Boy, I wish I knew. I have heard nothing from him. I sent him an e-mail on Sunday and it came back with an error and couldn't be delivered. He might as well be in Zimbabwe. I couldn't take not knowing any more and I called the MTC again. This time to find out why my e-mail wouldn't go through and to find out when his P-day was. It's Wednesday. TODAY! I checked my e-mail every ten minutes all morning until Mikayla finally said, "Mom, it's only 7:35, give him some time". I headed off to work, anxious to have something to to to get my mind off of it. But before I left, I dropped off a box of freshly baked cookies to be delivered to him today, just so he knows that I love him.

The first thing that I did when I walked in the door this afternoon was check to see if I had a letter, and lucky for the lady at the front desk at the MTC, I did.

Here it is, short, but oh so sweet:

Dear Mom,

I've still got one up on Taylor. It's not how fast you were going when you got pulled over, it's about how fast you were going WITHOUT being pulled over. Good thing he didn't get a ticket, because he still owes me $50, and I expect to recieve it.

Anyways, Things are going great here. I've met a ton of friends from highschool as well as a lot of new friends. I've got a really great companion that reminds me a lot of Tim. This guy's huge. He's 6'5" and 290 lbs of muscle. He's a really nice guy and we're getting along great. We had our first "investigator" and the lesson went way better than planned. We had planned for almost three hours for this guy's needs and ten minutes before we got there, they said he didn't show up so we had a new investigator. We quickly planned a lesson for the new investigator, and when we went to teach, it ended up being a completely different guy. Things went great though. I'm really learning a lot here and it's amazing. The MTC is way better than anyone said, you just have to have the right attitude coming into here.

Love,

Jared

PS There are no group showers.

PPS Taylor, I want my $50