Tomas Update: Week 3 at the MTC

Here’s Tomas with another update and more pictures:

Hi everyone! Feels like only a few days ago that I wrote the last one of these, but I guess it’s already been a week! The days are kind of slow here, but the weeks are honestly so fast. To give you an idea, here is our usual schedule:

6:30 wake up

7:00-7:15 plan the day a little bit

7:15-7:45 breakfast

8:00-8:30 study language a little bit before class

8:30-11:30 morning language and teaching class (both how to be a missionary and teach people and practice and learning in Slovak)

11:45-12:30 lunch

12:45-1:15 study the scriptures with my companions

1:15-1:45 another half hour of language study

1:50-2:40 volleyball, spikeball etc

3:30-4:30 personal scripture study time

4:45-5:30 dinner

6:00-9:00 evening class

10:00-10:30 journal

10:30 go to sleep

And that’s a regular day here. As I’m sure you can see, it is pretty packed and we really don’t have much time at all outside of everything, but that’s probably for the best so that we stay focused. Some days it gets to be a lot, but most days it’s actually kind of nice to always be doing something. It will be very different in Slovakia though – no more classes to go to since we are technically the teachers.

It snowed here for the first time! The mountains are so pretty when the tops have snow, and I am loving the colder weather here – 70 degrees in October is unreasonable. However, we can’t play sand volleyball anymore really, or spikeball for that matter. Indoor isn’t quite as fun because you can’t dive like you can on grass or sand. 

Slovak is coming along so well! We teach a practice lesson with a returned missionary in an actual teaching setting (she pretends to not know anything and we teach her as if she was a real investigator) in Slovak. Then we kinda go over the recording and see what we could have done better. Just a few days ago we compared our first and third attempts with her, and I have come so far since I got here that I was surprised. I’m much more confident speaking, know more words, and can listen and respond so much better. The other day I even went an entire 3 hour class without speaking any English outside of a few words and an accidental sentence – and I spoke the whole time. I love how much I get to speak here and I am so excited to serve in Slovakia in just a few short weeks.

Finally, I managed to find someone else who played fiddle music! He left this Monday, but we managed to get in a little time to play together on Sunday. We actually only had one tune in common – Swallowtail Jig – since he was from Missouri, but it was so nice to play with someone else again. I also continued the tradition of Miata Spotting so I guess I will try and do that now, although I can’t make any promises on how many I’ll see in Slovakia. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.