Family, this past week has been pretty good.  Besides the fact that our building still continues to have the WORST showers in the entire MTC, life is going good.  The water heater has been messed up. For example, I tried to take a shower one morning and it wouldn’t even attempt to shoot hot water at me.  So, I took an ice cold shower.  Equally as bad was yesterday when the water would be nothing but scorching.  My companion calls it the "Gollum".  It requires you to get as low as possible to avoid the hottest part of the water and splash water on yourself as fast as you can.  Due to the hot water, sometimes you let out shouts or noises that sound like Gollum too.  

We had a really good fireside from a brother and sister who served a mission in Bolivia.  They told a story of an elder who was interviewed by Sports Illustrated while on his mission because he had left the BYU football team to serve, and it was the year that BYU did really.  SI wanted to know why he gave up being a part of that really good team to go on a mission.  They told us that he told the reporter, "I love Jesus Christ more than I love Football".  I really liked that story and thought it was a great reminder on what is really important in life.  No matter how great the worldly reward is of not teaching about Jesus Christ, teaching about Christ is more important.

 Garrett and Emma on the day he was set apart as a full-time missionary.

Another great talk we heard was by Elder Bednar from a few years back.  He gave it on "becoming a missionary", not just being a missionary.  I really liked it, and the best part was when he said that we don't want to have any regrets when we look back on our mission.  That really hit me and made me focus more.  I have been working really hard and studying a ton, but when I heard that, I knew that I could study harder and focus more so that I truly won’t have any regrets.  I've made it my goal to work even harder and be focused as much as I can.