Hey! I'm doing great! Everything has been pretty awesome. Everything felt like it was all happening at once when we first got into the MTC but now we at least have a schedule so we at least know all that is actually happening all at once. We have already started learning cebuano and we actually have a first lesson with an investigator tonight... all in cebuano... It's going to be hard but we'll get through it. The language seems pretty ridiculous. We have a full page front and back of words and phrases that we are suppose to have memorized by next saturday in cebuano, including the first vision.
My companion is great, we get along really well. His name is Elder King and he is from Kansas City, Kansas. Apparently on the day we all came into the MTC there were around 150 missionaries coming in that are going to serve in the Philippines. I am in the largest zone in the world at the moment. We had 49 new missionaries come in on Wednesday so our zone consists of over 60 missionaries. The 49 of us that all came in on the same day all are learning cebuano so there's a lot of us. An elder who has been here for three weeks was telling me that right now the MTC is just full of missionaries going to the Philippines. He said that there is almost as many missionaries learning Tagalog as there are missionaries learning Spanish and Cebuano is the fifth most language being learned in the MTC at the moment.
There is apparently a lot of traditions in the zone. Every Pday (friday) we get up at 5:30am so that we can head for the temple at 6:00am and all of us will be a part of the missionary choir. I heard that there is going to be a bunch of new mission presidents or something so members of the first presidency are suppose to be coming sometime.
I'm sure I'm missing a lot and I know that I'm not sending you a whole lot of pictures but we've been kinda busy so hopefully next week I'll have some more to send you.
Sincerely,
Elder Shirley
(FIRST email :) sent Friday June 22, 2018)