Still no visa

Querido Familia,

Greetings from the MTC, not as cool as a postcard from California, haha.  But I hope everything is going well and that you all had fun on your vacation.  Tell Evan for me, if you can, that I say Hi and tell him that his mission will be awesome.  It's cool that he'll go to the Brazil MTC, it'll probably be very helpful for his Language.  I'm doing good here, but being surrounded by English makes it hard.  We haven't always been the greatest with HSI.  We met an Elder who arrived on Wednesday and he lives in Oaxaca!  We didn't have a lot of time to talk with him, but he was going to be serving in the English speaking Provo Utah mission.  His English was already good though.  He also said his mom said to send pictures of any Elders he met at the MTC headed to Oaxaca so his Mom could feed us a meal.  He didn't have his camera but he said he'd try to remember sometime if we meet again.  His mom sounded really nice and he said he lived in Oaxaca City, he gave us his ward and stake name, but it was long and hard to remember or pronounce, so I have no idea.  Anyway, I can't wait to get down there.

1.  So about the Visa, not yet.  No news or anything.  Like I said, no news until right before they take us to the consulate.  The other Elders got their travel itineraries yesterday.  So they have all their flights and everything set up.  The whole district shares the same "expected" departure date.  So our expected date was always April 18.  And so half the Elders will be heading out then.  But I guess the only thing I can say for now is, "Maybe next time."  But we talked to a few other Elders about a week ago that were headed to Oaxaca, but they are a week behind us and said they didn't have theirs yet either.

2.  I can't think of anything really that I will need, I have no idea what anything will be like when I head out for the field, Mexico or otherwise.  I hope the phone card works, and doesn't jip me of any time, cause it sounds like the minutes are taken off at a certain rate, so hopefully it lasts for a good call.  I'll probably send home my older suit, and also the tupperware you sent the cookies in, But I'll send it after I get my suit back from dry cleaning, I'm putting it in today and it takes about a week.  Seems slow to me.

3.  I haven't had the chance to weigh myself, I feel like I'm constantly stuffed though.  I never am hungry.  I may have gained some, but I don't think it's been too much.  I'll probably lose anything when I get to Mexico.

4.  I'm not going to lie, I wasn't looking forward to General Conference.  6 hours sitting on a hard plastic chair in an extremely stuffy hot room with a suitcoat on didn't sound fun.  Both days we ended up spending 6 hours in the gym transformed into the auditorium like you saw on the show.  And we did see the MTC show during the movie time right after Sunday devotional.  But there was only one session on Sunday where we were allowed to take our coats off, and we also had to keep our coats on for the fireside.  It still didn't help the heat and uncomfort, but thanks to some good seat saving tactics our district used, we managed to grab some of the slightly better seats.  And so it ended up not being as bad as it could have been.  And I actually managed to pay attention despite the uncomfort and lack of sleep.  It was a really good experience.  All of the talks were really good.  As missionaries, all of the marriage talks were really funny.  But I had a bunch of good talks that I really thought were meant for me in the mission field.  Even though they weren't directly directed at missionaries.

I couldn't quite tell if I was in the MTC video or not.  Tell me if you find me.  We did wave at the helicopter as it filmed from the sky, but I don't know if it was us that they showed.  also, there is a chance that I was in it when they show the missionaries walking up the stairs on both sides of the camera, i walked by it when they were filming it right before Kealer talked.  And I know I'm in it when they show the choir singing, but the view may be too far back to make me out.  But I'm sitting behind the choir (above the choir).

So I guess keep your eyes open, I couldn't tell if there was any other part where I would be.

Anyway, I love all of you and hope you all had fun at California.  Everything is going well here, although I wont lie that I'm kinda upset that we don't have our Visas yet and that the other Elders got theirs way early and now have all their travel plans.  But its okay, the Lord knows what is going on with our Visas and it's in His hands.  So maybe I'm supposed to stay here for a while, or maybe even be reassigned for some reason I don't know.  Or maybe It might come on time, I'll never know until it happens, but I can't do anything about it.  Love you!  Thanks for the postcards!  Brianna, like always, pet pepper for me.  Talk to you next week!

Jordan