3rd letter

Date: February 7, 2012

Companion: Wang Zhong Lao (Elder James)

MTC

I go to the temple every week. Speaking of which i just got back. After we go through the temple, we all go to the cafeteria as a zone and eat temple breakfast. It is a nice break from all that MTC food. I mean the food isn't bad but after a while you get a little sick of it. Just to let you know i have been writing in my journal every day so don't you worry about that!

 

Lately the MTC has been just as great as ever! The spirit is still strong every day and i have experiences that bring me closer to Christ every single day. Learning the language gets tough at times but we just keep pushing through. It is hard to remember so much vocab and grammar and everything it can get overwhelming. Every night at the end of the day my head feels like it is going to explode! One thing that helps keep us sane is laughing so our teachers try and have a little humor at time. We have two teachers and both are our two investigators and we teach them every day before class starts. A funny story they told us this week was about a greenie missionary who was scared to go up and talk to people and his trainer just kept pushing him and pushing him so finally he rides up to a man on a vespa at a stoplight and says..."Ye su ji du.....shi ni de fumu! Which means Jesus Christ is your parents..Hahaha i just know i am going to do something like that when i get in the field! The words are so easy to mix up sometimes like at the end of the first vision Heavenly Father says "This is my beloved son, Hear him." To say beloved son in chinese you say ai zi. If you say ai with a falling tone it means beloved. If you say it with a rising tone it means short, and in chinese when you say short son it means midget! So if you recite the first vision wrong you might say this is my midget, hear him! You have to be careful and accurate with tones!

 

This week we got to do TRC for the first time. TRC is training resource...something i forget what it stands for haha but it was where we go teach people who volunteer to come to the MTC! They could be a member or a non member you never know! It was probably one of the coolest things we have done since we got here.We got to sit down and just talk with people about the gospel in chinese! The first lady we talked to was going to school at Utah state University and she was super sweet. She was a member and served a mission in Vancouver, Canada chinese speaking! For the first time going we are just supposed to get to know the person we meet with and maybe share a quick message, so we talked with her for awhile about interests and what not and then shared a message with her about how God is our loving Heavenly Father. We read john 3:16 and talked about how because God loves us he sent his son, Jesus Christ to atone for our sins and die for us that we may be able to live with Him again. The spirit was strong! After talking with her we had the chance of talking with another lady. She was around 45 years old and had served a mission in Taipei Taiwan! For it being so long since she served she had great chinese! She was the nicest lady and i could tell she was excited for us to serve and loved us for making that decision even though she didn't know us that well. She reminded me of an awesome mother which made me miss you even more, Mom!

 

My schedule is different every day but goes somewhat like this- Wake up and shower, go to breakfast, go to class for 3 hours, have personal study for an hour, go to lunch, go to TALL (a computer program with all sorts of tools that help us to learn chinese), have language study and/or district study, go to gym, go to dinner, go back to class for 3 hours, have our daily planning session, and go back to our dorms and get ready for bed and have a tooth brushing party! Ha even though it is usually all business around here, at night around 10 we have abunch of us in our zone that all brush our teeth at the same time so there is a ton of us in the bathroom it is pretty funny. We make things fun. That is our day more or less. On sundays and P-days it is a bit different though. On sundays we get to watch movies! This sunday we watched Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. Boy i love that movie! Every time i watch it, it strenghthens my testimony of Joseph Smith so much! It is so great you need to go watch it and if you already have, then watch it again!