Dropping Destin off at the MTC, and his first letter!!!

Nervous? You wouldn't know it by looking at him!

Now you can see his nervous smile.

Look, an answer to his prayers! It's his old room mate, Elder Hughes!

Thank heavens for a familiar face!

Last hug goodbye!

(for two years at least)

He's off! Hurrah For Israel!

Destin's 1st Letter: July 6th, 2011

Hey Cemya! My first few days at the MTC have been great!! Wow, I sure have a lot of questions to answer... thanks mom. haha! I´ve been doing well, not really homesick at all. I guess I´ll just start answering your questions. First off, my companion is great. Obedient, spiritual, really nice guy. His name is Elder Peterson and he´s from New Mexico. We are NOT trying to speak 100% Russian yet, but we do use a lot of Russian in our vocab. He´s going to Samara Russia as well, leaving at the same time. I see Elder Allred (The kid we saw at missionary mall) all the time. Some other faces I see all the time are Robbie Olsen (Massages all the time!!) Andrew Wadsworth, Ryan Welch, Daniel Riech, Takami Kowalski, and Mike Biggs. (Ashley... He's in my building! haha!) There's twelve kids in our district and they are all amazing!! I love my district! Our district leader is okay, but he could work on a few things. He's trying though. Our classes are taught in 100% Russian, Ochien Sloshna, but Harasho. It's insane. We've already taught four lessons to an investigator. The lessons are thirty minutes long and completely in Russian. Our investigator doesn't understand any English whatsoever, so it's really pushing us to get better. Agh! The gift of tongues is so real! I can feel your prayers everyday! Really, I would not be doing as well as I'm doing without divine help!
My P-day is on Wednesday. I can only check and write emails on P-days, but I can read and write letters anytime I have time...which isn't often. I can at least read them though. I've seen Clay once which was great! And I see Elder Hughes and Ba Jung Lai (Elder Braithwaite) pretty often. For those who don't know, Elder Hughes was actually my host/escort at the MTC my first day. It was SOOO awesome! We got to just talk and catch up and he taught me how to tie a way sweet tie!! Out of however many thousand elders there are at the MTC, it was an obvious blessing to have him as my host! I kept praying for the Lord to settle my nerves on the first day and to bring me comfort, and I even had a vain hope that Elder Hughes would be my host, but I didn't think that it would actually happen! The Lord truly blesses us and is looking out for us! I am so grateful to Him. I met President Brown and his wife. They knew me as soon as I walked up and they saw my name tag. They were really sweet and asked me how the family was. We haven't really had any general authorities come but Jenny Oaks Baker came!! I love her! She's the best! Her family came too! Her daughters played a wonderful little ensemble with the piano, violin, and cello. It was adorable. I swear, Jenny knows that I'm her biggest fan. She just happens to show up everywhere! As a special treat we got to watch fireworks on Saturday and stay up till like, midnight... sounds great, but on Monday we have to get up at 5:50 in the morning for service, so two nights of less sleep was not fun. Also, I got my suit, I'll be sure to check the pockets. I love DI. I have to go now. Loves.

Elder Swartz

PS: Make sure you use the EXACT mailing address when you send me mail, or else it gets delayed. I was kind of sad when I was delivering everyone their letters and I hadn't gotten any.