Pictures from the MTC

Cody made it to DC!!

Dear Parents,

Just a quick note to let you know your missionary arrived safe and sound on Wednesday,

October 26, 2011. They were met at the airport by President Albright and his Assistants. From there they met for a lovely dinner followed by a missionary orientation. They stayed the night at the Mission Home and then attended the Transfer Meeting where they met their new companions.

 The Missionaries Preparation Day (P-day) is generally every Monday from 10am to 6pm at which time they are allowed to email (family only) using only the authorized email assigned to them at the MTC. P-days can change at the last minute and communication that week may occur on a different day. On rare occasions your missionary may not have access to a computer on his P-Day and a week may go by before you receive an email. 

As a reminder, all mail should be addressed with first and last names to the Washington DC South Mission Office at 5242 Lyngate Court, Burke, VA 22015, via USPS Priority Mail which we then forward to their actual apartment.  In this manner they receive their mail within 24 hours, and the mail doesn't end up following them from apartment to apartment through emergency moves and transfers, etc. If sent by UPS, USPS Parcel Post or FED EX they are not likely to receive them for a period of time because they cannot be forwarded.

Thank you for sending them to us. We love our missionaries and are committed to ensuring that they get everything they need to be safe and effective. 

Packages to Cody!

In our family, it is no secret that the best missionary packages are sent from the Ashworth house. So far Cody has been sent a package every week from Michelle and her family. Box full of junk food, Great Harvest bread(tribute to Melissa) and Krispy Kreme donuts. Michelle has made it known that she is going for Aunt of the year!!

Last Letter From The MTC

Woo hoo almost done here at the MTC!!!! I'm so ready to be out of this place haha. I've learned tons here though. I have quite a bit of new favorite scriptures and I know lots of good scriptures for specific topics and stuff now. There's no doubt we've got the Lords help as we learn here though because there's no way a bunch of just 19 year old kids could learn this much stuff and remember it all just by themselves. There's no doubt that we're having quite a bit of help. As I get closer to leaving this wednesday though I get more and more nervous about actually teaching a real investigator. Theres no recovering from a real mistake and acidentally offending somebody or something when I'm out in the field so I've really got to just rely on the spirit and then I know for sure whatever happens is just how things are supposed to go. We did a solid 13 hours of "in field training" that was so boring!!!! And so confusing! I was really hoping I got it all in and was pretty stressed out about it but then we had our weekly meeting with our mission district president and he's such a cool guy haha he said "I'm guessing what's got you worried about the infield is that it was a lot of information and you're not sure if you can remember it all right?" and so I said wow yea thats actually exactly it haha and he said "My advice, and I'm being completely honest here, is don't worry about it for one minute. Even if you dodn't get one thing out of that entire training and you forgot the whole thing, just dont worry about it. You will have a trainer for your first while out there that will help you along and just keep doing what youre supposed to and the Lord will help you along the way no matter what." It was exactly what I needed to hear haha it helped so much. But man it's been such a busy weekend for our district with us leaving soon. We had 3 back to back firesides last night that I though were never going to end haha. But things are slowing down now so thats good. Having a P-day always helps with that. I got the untrasound pictures for Mitch and Sonyas newest girl. Man three girls in a row!! Haha that'll be awesome though and I can't wait to meet her when I get home. It also looks like Mitch shot a pretty nice elk too, the picture was pretty small on my screen so I couldnt tell for sure but it looked pretty nice. I can't wait to here about my dad and mat's hunt up in Idaho. You guys will have to send me some stories for sure. I miss all of you guys tons.

Happy Halloween Elder Gronning!

Time to send Elder Gronning's Halloween goodie box! I am going to send it to the mission home so it is waiting for him there at the end of next week. He will get to Washington DC late next Wednesday evening.

Week 2 email from MTC

Another week has gone by here at the MTC and things are starting to speed up so thats good. I'm learning tons every day and we've changed almost everything about how we've taught since the first day we were here. We've really been learning to ask questions nore when teaching to we can teach the person more, not just a lesson. The more we care about the people we've been teaching and the more we've been looking at their personal needs, the more effective and smooth our teaching has been. Like I said we're more than halfway done with things here in the MTC now so thats good. I'm ready to get out in the field and teach real people where we can really make a difference in people's lives. The food here has gotten better too, it turns out they just always have great stuff on Sundays. I'd like to wish a happy birthday to my mom from this weekend. For those of you who didn't know, my mom turned 22 this Saturday and it sounds like they had some pretty fun stuff planned. The provo temple here is very very pretty and I can't wait to go through the one over in DC. I've only heard awesome stuff about it. Oh and it turns out four-square gets played after elementary school by people sometimes because the elders here play it quite a bit. It probably sounds super lame but it's actually pretty fun. The games get pretty hardcore and intense more often than not. A lot of dives, jumps, behind the back tosses, and slides. So far I seem to be pretty good at it. We also had the relief society general president come speak to us all on tuesday about missionary work, that was kinda cool. Besides that though this hasn't been a super eventful week by any means. I'm glad it's monday though, P-day's are awesome. I got my flight Itenerary (probably not how you spell that) for my flight to DC and things should be pretty straightforward and easy. I will be leaving next wednesday from the SLC airport and fly directly to the airport in DC on a 5 or 6 hour flight. Getting out into the field should be pretty sweet. I hope everything is going well back home and wherever everyone is. I miss everyone of you lots. I should have enough time to respond to letters today so hopefully they get there later this week. I'm really excited to hear about Granny and Pa's release date. It feels like its coming up nice and fast. Can't wait to see them. Well hope everythings going well and thanks to everyone for the letters this week and to michelle and dane for the package. Stuff like that always makes my day and keeps me going.

Awesome experience

Melissa got a letter from Cody and shared with us an experience he had. He said that they have investigators that come in so the man they had to teach was a man named Alexandre Paul. "he's an ambassador from Haiti so he's a pretty big deal. But as soon as he let us in the door he just started firing off really tough questions back to back and tried making us trip over our words but I answered almost every question he had right away and by the end of it he was telling me how impressed he was that someone as young as me knew so much about the gospel hahaha but I just told him it's not us that does the teaching, we just follow the promptings of the spirit. That really made him want to learn about baptism and getting the holy ghost for himself. It was so awesome to hear! But then our time ran out and we had to go :( but we can cone back next week He said. He wrote down all the stuff he wanted to know about so we can talk about that next time. So that should be sweet :)"

MTC Pictures

First trip to the Provo temple. 630am session on Pday.

Elder Gronning and Elder Rasmussen

Cody has the top bunk of course. 
You can see the blanket Melissa made him. So cute!

Cody's first email from the MTC

Dear family and friends,
Man 30 minutes is all they give me to do emails on P-Day, Crazy!! I'm going to have to type pretty fast I suppose haha. Thanks to everyone for the awesome emails, I wish they gave me more time so I could respond to all of them, but for now I'm just going to have to get this one out first and then start replying from there haha. The MTC is an overwhelming place simply put. The first 2 days felt like a week each and I couldn't help but think I might have bit off a little more than I could chew to have to do this for the next 2 years but I stuck it out and boy has it gotten lots better and I've gotten very excited to spread the gospel to the people of DC. My companion and I get along great, his name is elder Rasmussen and he's from Salt Lake (I think a good 90% of the MTC is guys from UT). Really we don't have a lot in common but for whatever reason our personalities have clicked from day one. He is going to my same mission, same time, but he wants to get transferred to Spanish speaking because he knows the first couple of discussions in Spanish already so I've been doing what I can to teach him some more. The food here tastes great but is exactly as everyone describes it. Alot of the elders here think its the orange juice but everybody avoids the OJ and still things are bad. Everybody here is happy though. I'm in a district of 10 guys who all got here on the same day as me. We are all going to the same mission except for two guys that are going to Australia. We all get along great and are already a big group of friends so that's pretty cool. the teachers here say districts like ours are rare because literally everyone of us gets along with every one else. We went through the Provo temple this morning at the 6:30 AM session and man was it early. I was so dang tired. But that is a really pretty temple. The MTC is alot bigger than I thought it would be and I really enjoy the lessons we have but man I'm struggling with all of our personal study time where we have to stay in the class and just read scriptures or preach my gospel. I've found some awesome scriptures and the time is really helpful but man after a solid 5-6 hours of it every day it gets really really hard to focus. I feel alot more prepared to serve now though and after those first two days the time has started to fly by really fast. Man just like the time on this email!!! I'm already about to be kicked off because I'm out of time again. I miss all of you guys though, homesickness is abundant here at the MTC but it serves as a motivation to do our friends and family back home proud by serving our best here. Thanks to Michelle and Dane for their awesome care package, i've never seem so much food in a box that size. Thanks to everyone back at the office too for the package as well. Things like that make my day every time just like the letters do so always feel free to write me any time. While I am here at the MTC it's best to use DearElder.com to write me. They basically print out an email and give it to me same day so it's great. I've still got to write back by US mail though so it'll take 2-3 days to get back. Thanks for everyones support though. I love all of you guys.

-Cody or Elder Gronning