In Cebu for Two: August 3, 2018: Kamusta man ka?

I just want you all to know that I am completely fluent in Cebuano, if "fluent" means that I can introduce myself, tell you where I'm from, and ask you how you are doing. So yeah, fluent. The MTC is a party except they don't want you to wear skinny ties or socks with anything on them. I ran into my homie, Elder Stuart within 20 minutes of arriving on the campus here and ran into Elder Olsen later that night. I loved that. It was pretty awesome. Our first day of language class was NUTS. I got here a little earlier than everyone else so I was the first one there and they refused to speak to me in English. The only thing that kind of got me by there was that the basics of Cebuano are somewhat similar to Spanish. The missionaries who have been here a little longer call the first day of class "language smack" and what a smack it was. There wasn't a lot of learning that first day but the second day was great. We go back tonight and I've heard that's really hard too so wish me luck.

My companion is Elder Flake. He's from Snowflake, Arizona and he's a good guy. Sort of a cowboy so we don't have a lot in common but we get along really well. He's got the strongest testimony let me tell ya. My district has 10 elders and 2 sisters. The sisters are both from Samoa but for some reason we don't seem to see them a ton. Like they missed a whole class yesterday. I don't know. Everyone in my room gets along really really well and we hang out all the time. Elder Williams is from San Antonio and Elder Malan is from Fresno. Everyone else in our district is from Utah. Super cool guys though. We work hard and joke around a ton. Our zone leaders are cool too. It's funny because they seem so old yet they're the exact same age as the rest of us.

I am also a part of the biggest MTC zone in the world. Kind of a big deal. It's 4 districts of Cebuanos and 3 of Higlos. We all eat lunch together and then this morning everyone got up at 5:15 so that we could get to the temple before anyone else. We were in the temple before the sun even came up. I love the temple by the way. It's cool because it's always the same everywhere just like the church is always the same everywhere. Our Cebuano teacher, Brother Hampton, is a super cool guy. He served in the Cebu mission from 2014-2016 and was straight out of high school so it feels good to have someone who understands that just a bit. It's crazy to see how much better people can get in just a little bit of time. I'm excited to get to that point.

I just want all of you to know how excited I am to be here. I will say that this is the hardest thing that I've ever done but I do know that it's also the right thing for me to do. I love this gospel and I love the Savior so much. I'm excited to learn more here so that I can more effectively bring people in Cebu the knowledge that I have and love so much. I have lots of work to do and tons to learn.

Love you all
- Elder Aldrich

1. Mirror selfie in the room on the first night

2. The guys in the room

3. Our classroom

4. Elder Flake and I

5. Out in front of the temple this morning