Andrew Has Arrived!

No email from Andrew this week as he was traveling on his P-day! His group met up at the MTC travel office at 4:30 a.m. yesterday to depart for the airport. He received his visa that morning with his paperwork (my sigh of relief was heard 'round the world!). He has been issued a 3 year visa but will still be required to leave the country every so often to keep it valid. He left Salt Lake City at 8:55 a.m. and arrived safely in St. Petersburg at about 2 p.m. local time Wednesday (about 4 a.m. here in Utah). He traveled with four other missionaries (2 elders and 2 sisters) through Washington D. C. and Frankfurt before reaching his final destination. We were able to talk with him a couple of times and he sounds wonderful! He spoke a little bit of Russian for me and I was amazed. He shared part of what he might say when bearing his testimony. He was ready to head out and begin his work. He wanted me to thank everyone for all the love he felt while he was in the MTC with letters, emails, and packages. He would love to continue to hear from all of you. Letters can be sent to the Mission Home address at the top of this blog; packages, however have a different set of instructions. Please email me if you need to know how and where to send a package at sarah.gwilliam.7@gmail.com .
We haven't heard anything from him yet, but the mission secretary sent us a picture of him with his MTC companion, Elder Jaynes, and a short note letting us know that he arrived safely. He looks hammered! I guess traveling for 24 hours will do that to a person. Anyway, we are so excited for this next leg of his adventure. We can't wait to hear from him again!

PICS!

The view from our classroom

Our Classroom

Elder T-Pac!

Temple with tha district

Silly Picture

Last temple trip for two years!

Ukrainian temple name

Cool mountain--I don't know what it's called

Missionary Cut

LAST WEEK HERE

So... it's my last week at the MTC. We had a pretty interesting week. Which is good. On Tuesday night we had a devotional given by Elder Oaks! Elder Jaynes and I have waited in line for the past few devotionals... a few hours early. We don't have much to do on Sundays or Tuesday nights. So we have waited in line. And no apostles. I guess the weeks before we got here was a freNzy of apostles, so we were hoping to hear from one. So Elder Jaynes was not wanting to wait in line so much... then I finally convinced him to come with me. We were the fifth row! It was awesome. I've never seen him smile so much. He kept calling us his fellow servants, that was pretty sweet. He speaks so simply about things that might be really confusing. I really liked it. On Wednesday Elder Jaynes continued his streak of spitting out Russian cusses during lessons. This week it was the s-bomb. Haha. Funny Funny. On Thursday we got our TRAVEL PLANS! So guess where I'm going before you look.

I'm going to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. Sweet. I've been there before in the air museum. Then I'm off to the Fatherland, good ole GERMANY! I'm flying from D.C. to Frankfurt. That'll be great. I was thinking that Dad passed through there 20-something years ago, and now 20 years later I will also pass through the airport. What a great moment that will be. We'll spend about two hours in both places. Then we'll arrive in Pete about 3 p.m. local time. I'm so excited, in exactly a week from now I'll be sleeping in Russia. Not much else this week. We did get to hear from a former mission president from Kiev. He told us a little about the culture there in Eastern Europe. He showed us a video that totally smashed the stereotype that Russians are a cold, harsh people. It's on youtube somewhere. I'm not sure what it's called. It's got a bunch of little acts of service by Russians. If you can find it, sweet. If not, that's ok too. I'll be in good hands. On Friday I saw Elder Mat Butterfield. That's about it for the week. I'm excited to go to Russia, but I'll miss my teachers and my time here at the MTC. To those who will be here sometime in the future: Eat it up. The MTC is a great place that maybe has a negative reputation. It's an awesome place if you will just dedicate yourself to the work that is done here. It may be tedious at times, but it's awesome. 

 A funny quote from Elder Oaks:

     "No good deed goes unpunished"

Love you all. In a week, I'll be emailing you from Mother Russia!

13 DAYS!!

I've got thirteen days left. I'm so excited. So we moved up to the Main Campus today, that's pretty exciting. Not too much else happened. Just another week. I've noticed that my emails have been getting shorter and shorter. I'm sorry. I just don't have much to tell. We're at the MTC. So some funny things did happen here this week. On Friday we were teaching a lesson about the Plan of Salvation to one of our investigators, and we used one of my cool San Francisco gloves to describe the how our spirits are different than our bodies. I took off the glove to show death, and Elder Jaynes grabbed the glove and said something like "Our bodies feel like... #%&@" but in Russian. He used a normal English filler, but in Russian it was the F bomb. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH we laughed so hard when he told us that after the lesson. Oh man it was fun. A bad thing about having a ton of sisters in my district is that the teachers won't tell us scary stories or words that we shouldn't say, but sometimes they'll tell us during a lesson or when we're the only ones there. So that was pretty funny. On Sunday night it rained really really hard here, and we had to run across the street from Wyview to grab something from our class. We decided to run back despite the rain. As we were going to our class, we found some elders who wanted help giving a blessing. One of them was sick, and the other wanted somebody to help him do the blessing. So we helped em. It was nice that we decided to go back to class, they were pretty desperate. That was cool. So yesterday was our last day at west campus, that was nice. And here I am, sitting at Main Campus, now as a resident. Nothing much else this week. I saw Elder Merrill within a few minutes of being here, that'll be nice to see him more often. He said his branch is moving to west campus after he leaves. Yes. Love ya all, you rock. In thirteen days I will be on my way to Russia, living the life.

Andrew

Epic Mount Timp

Our new room

Pictures of the Week

Thanks from my district

Elder Buonocore (Drummer from Wyatt's band. We hung out once, that time I went longboarding, and now we're buds)

SNOW!

Three MTC Pals

Three Ward/MTC Pals

Elder Merrill and me with Samuel Smith, first missionary (Joseph's little brother) 

My roomies like these.. I had to lock them away. I share everything else.

Hey dad, I stole one of your prank ideas. It used to say Elder Gardner, now it says Sister! Hah!

Early Morning Laundry

20 More Days....

Hello y'all! I'm getting to the end of my MTC stay and I'm so excited to get out into the real world! So, not much has happened here since last week. More class. More devotionals. More fun. So, here's some cool news. THEY'RE MOVING ALL THE RUSSIAN SPEAKERS BACK TO MAIN CAMPUS!! Most likely next week. This is strange, because the day before I got here they moved Russians from Main Campus to West. So most likely, next p-day, I will be packing up all my belongings and heading up to Main Campus. I guess they want to make West Campus a haven for Spanish speakers. So I'll get to do two intense packing sessions in the next three weeks. It'll be good practice. On Saturday, for General Conference, all of the missionaries went up to Main Campus. We all watched it together, it was awesome. I got to see my pal of a few weeks Elder Buonocore! That was cool, he just sat down right next to me without looking at me and then we noticed each other at the same time. Super cool. Same deal for Sunday conference, all of us together feasting on the words. I met a Sister from Latvia at lunch there. She started spitting Russian at me, and I was able to understand a lot of it. Our teacher served in her area, and he knew who she was. He said "She's the short, blonde, pretty one, right?". He was really excited that she's here now. She's serving on Temple Square. On Sunday Night, our devotional was by none other than Vocal Point of BYU! It was pretty crazy. I rolled my eyes when the sisters in my district ran to the front to get seats, but it was actually a really good meeting. Speaking of devotionals, tonight is a special devotional. Our Branch President (President Peer) married the sister of the MTC President's wife, so he usually knows what's up here at the MTC. He knows the cool stuff, the dirty deets of the MTC. So a few zones from the West Campus get to walk up to Main Campus to watch the devotionals live, and it's usually every few months. There are lots of West Campus missionaries. So we went up a few weeks ago, and it was awesome. Our Branch President told us that he pulled some strings to let us come up to the devotional tonight, and he said it would be super awesome. So I'm excited for that. It's gonna be awesome. General Conference was awesome. It was insane how everything applied to missionary work. EVERYTHING. I'll never watch another session of conference the same again! I'll be paying more attention, taking better notes, and hopefully learning more. General Conference is such a blessing and I'm glad I was able to experience it here in the MTC. An experience I will never forget.

Well, until next week,

Elder Gwilliam

PiCS yO

HALFWAY THERE!!

Old zone leaders. (Elder Rawlings going to the Baltics, Elder Greenburg (the tall Nate Kelley) going to Samara)

Elder Jaynes enjoying his Martinelli's

This is the Famed Elder Jorgenson

That's Elder Hale

Our District + Samara District

Elder Sant + Elder Davis. Good Elders, I miss them already.

Another Week

Hello all! It's been a fantastic week here at the good ole MTC. Here's the weekly update. Tuesday we sang in the devotional choir at the Marriott Center, and it was so sweet. It was the last MTC devotional in the Marriott Center until next summer, so we lucked out there. As we were walking over, we heard the BYU marching band playing some TOTO and I couldn't help but sing along. It was awesome. On Thursday, we challenged one of our "investigators" to get baptized and he said yes! Even though it's fake it is still an awesome feeling. On Friday I saw Elder Francis Bernard. That was pretty sweet. I also saw Elder Bryan Cluff. On Saturday Elder Jaynes and I were all alone for the entire day because all the sisters in our district were in the choir that sang in the Relief Society meeting. We had some fun times with our teachers. On Sunday I woke up with the dreaded MTC cold. I'm glad that it's happening now and not when I'm getting ready to leave. I saw Elder Ammon Rassmussen at the devotional Sunday night... we talked a bit and that was it. Monday was tough. The district with our old zone leaders left to Samara, and we said goodbye last night to Elder Davis and his district. The good thing is, almost all of us are going to BYU and we all want to hang together so that's awesome. So here's a little spiritual thought/word of advice for the week. A week ago my companion showed me a Mormon Message called "My Brother Hyrum". I don't know how he knew that movies like that make me all emotional, but he got me good. I was reminded of the time I spent with the special needs kids and how I love and miss them so much. I was reminded of their sweet spirits and powerful testimonies. I was reminded of how they love everybody no matter what, but they usually aren't given too much attention. Sadly, sometimes they are treated poorly. So it reminded me that everybody has feelings and I should be more sensitive to the feelings of those around me. I was reminded of this again on Sunday morning during Mission Conference (our fast Sunday meeting, kinda like a devotional) when a woman stood up to speak. She had lost her voice singing with the choir the previous evening, but was determined to give her talk. When she started to speak, her voice caught me off guard. It was really bad. But I was appalled when missionaries all around me started laughing. It was so bad. It was happening at main campus as well, she started to cry and had her husband finish her talk. I felt so awful. My gosh. I was reminded again that I should be sensitive to everybody's feelings, no matter what. Even if they appear to be ok with it, just be careful. So that's what I'd like you to do this week. Just be sensitive. And watch that mormon message, it'll give you some good ideas. Love you all! I'll be back before you know it.

Andrew