May 29

Sooo.. Last Thursday night was eventful. 10:30 is bedtime, and so about 10:28 we were all crawling in bed, super tired, and then the fire alarm in our residence goes off. We were all like, "are you serious???....." So the whole building of girls in their PJs go outside. All the Korean sisters live on the top 4th floor (it's cool 'cuz we are the only people on that floor), so as we descended to the exit, we could smell something nasty, it didn't smell quite like smoke, but definitely a little strange. For about 30 minutes we were outside just waiting for the alarm to stop going off and for the security people to figure stuff out and let us back in. Finally around 11:10 we were let into our building, and on the way past I asked the security guard what it was. On the 1st floor there are microwaves, and vending machines with frozen foods you can make, like burritos and hot pockets, etc. Apparently someone burnt a burrito. So our whole building smelled like burnt burrito. For two reasons I think that was ridiculous. First off, it's against the rules to use the microwaves after 10:15, and second. How. do. you. manage. to. burn. a. BURRITO? It is still totally beyond my understanding :P So needless to say, we were all tired the next day, because we still have to wake up at the normal time. Makes for a great story, but now no one wants to use the microwave on the first floor (there is one on the 3rd still), because every time you use it it starts to smell like the burrito. Gross. 

On Tuesday's devotional, Elder Nelson came! Crazy. Honestly, the prophet himself better be coming soon (and I had better be here) because they are going to run out of Apostles soon :P It has been really cool to hear from so many. He said a lot of good things.

In the news of our Korean-language mess-ups, Sister Hill during a lesson was trying to tell our investigator to write down the questions she has, and we will answer them. But she mixed up the word for answer with another word, and ended up saying "Your questions frustrate us." Bahahhaha, I was like, Sister, no, that means to frustrate!! Hahaha, good times. Our teachers must get such a kick out of us. Speaking of Sister Hill, the other day she got a box of candy from her parents, and she likes some weird candies, like flavored licorice and candy I've never heard of. Well, that day some native Koreans came in and she wanted to share with them, so she kept offering it to them, and I kept trying to tell her to stop it because they obviously didn't like it, but they kept taking it. I later explained to her that Koreans as a culture find it extremely rude to turn down food that is offered to them, it's like saying you don't want to be friends, so they kept taking it because they didn't want to be rude. We got a good laugh over it later; those poor Koreans :P

As time goes on, I am getting extremely excited to go to Korea. It's slowly becoming more real. Whenever natives come, or we learn some cultural thing or even some of the history, I just get really excited and terrified to go there. It is going to be so hard to understand them, but with my German experience, I know I will eventually get to a good point where I can understand most of what they say, though that might take 2 or 3 months... maybe 4 :P Just last night we got our Korean name badges, so it has "Sister Broyles" all spelled out in Korean, it's so cool! Sounding it out, my name is now "buh roh eel suh" (suh because you can't just have a 1 letter syllable, it has to have at least 1 consonant and 1 vowel). IT'S SO COOL! That got my excitement up to the next level. Also my terror ;) Hahha, I'm kidding, but it does make me nervous to think that we have less than a month left before we go to Korea. AHHHH. 

Last week on Friday, we have "TRC", which is teaching resource center, and real members volunteer to come and get taught by the missionaries; so Korean return missionaries or Korean students at BYU come and we practice teaching members, instead of investigators. So last time, this Korean guy came, who was friends with both of our teachers. We were pretty excited, and had a great time talking to him, and then we started with our lesson. He really opened up to us about some insecurities and struggles he has been having, and we were all able to relate and share some personal experiences, and testify that we all have received strength to overcome our problems through Christ. Then Sister Hill had him read Ether 12:27. When we started turning to it, he was like "oh yeah, Ether 12, I know that scripture" sort of thing. But when he started reading aloud, he only made it a sentence or two into the verse before he started crying. He was really touched by the verse, and it took him a moment to be able to choke the rest of it out. 

 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness.

I give unto men weakness that they may be humble;

and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me;

for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me,

then will I make weak things become strong unto them."  Ether 12:27

 

It was really cool to see how we can be led and guided to be able to help others; that experience made all of us really excited to be able to help and teach people in Korea, though we have definitely learned that it is not us who are doing the teaching, it is the Spirit that teaches, we just have to be sure that we teach with it, so that we can say what the Lord would have us say. He knows the people we are talking to much better than we ever will, so He knows what they need to hear, and if we are "listening," we will know what to say.

Basically, I am loving this so much, some days it is a little daunting, but I know we can do it. I have had so much fun with my teachers and my companions, they are all awesome. I'm so excited to go to Korea! It's crazy to think how much time has passed already, I though I arrived at the MTC just 2 weeks ago!?!!? Haha, we are in the last stretch of our MTC time, and I'm trying my best to focus and learn as much as I can while it is still easy :P Hahha. I bought some earplugs today so I can focus more during study time. It's also crazy to think on how much I've already changed, and it has only been 5 weeks. We are definitely being refined here, definitely becoming better people. I feel more like a missionary now, more ready to share what I know and feel.

 

May 22 - Half-way point at the MTC

So basically, things are going really well. I am learning so much, and I'm so glad to be here. I'm grateful for this opportunity and I want to give my all to it. You give everything you have to the things that mean the most to you, so I want to do that. I don't want to look back and realize I didn't try my best. The language is going great-ish, as long as I don't mispronounce things. I pick up on the grammar really fast and I'm getting a lot better at being able to say what I want. Though if you ask me about something not Gospel related, I probably have no idea how to say it :P

My tentative MTC departure date is June 23, so I'M HALFWAY THROUGH! Me and my companions had a halfway party, Sis. Hill got some donuts, chips, and salsa, so we partied a bit in our room and talked about the MTC so far. It was so fun.

This last week has been the most... uh. terrible and wonderful, so far. Haha. Terrible because Saturday was the worst day I've had here so far. It's kind of a long story, but during planning, we were trying to prepare a lesson, and we just weren't unified, we didn't have to Spirit with us, and I was trying SO HARD to just do what God wanted me to do, but it just wasn't working. We weren't really getting along, and all 3 of us had a bad day. All day I felt inadequate, and Sis. Stratton (who has the hardest time with the language and being here) hit an all-time low and was saying she wanted to go home, and Sis. Hill was feeling guilty that we weren't getting along and also just feeling bad about herself. That evening we taught our "investigator," and it went badly. Afterwards, our teacher told us he could totally tell we weren't unified (we knew that) and that he considered telling us to not come back to teach. Baaah. We were all extremely upset, but he forwent his lesson plan to help us. He shared some stories from his mission and some scriptures, it was really good. We also helped Sis. Stratton, encouraged her to pray and remember the testimony she wrote down recently when she really realized how happy she was to be here. 

 

When we got back to our residence, 2 sisters came in and talked with us, and they helped out a lot. Sister Holdaway is the sweetest girl ever, I love her. She shared something that I really liked. In Matthew 14 is that story of Peter and Jesus walking on the water. You should find it, it's really cool.

Anyways, in it, Peter sees Christ and says he will go out on the water if Christ bids him, which Sis. Holdaway compared to submitting our mission papers, stating that we are willing to go out if Christ asks. Well, He did, so we are here, out walking on water. There are waves all about and sometimes we get scared, doubt, start to sink. In the scriptures, when Peter starts to sink, he cries out to Christ to save him, and "immediately" Christ does so. As missionaries, it is hard, but if we just ask Christ to help us He will. And He did help us through that day. By the evening, we had all been uplifted in some way. I sometimes feel inadequate, but I know I can do this, and I know God and Christ are with me. 

 

Everyday since Saturday has been amazing, and we have learned so much. Saturday we got humbled, which allowed us to be teachable. The talks during Relief Society and devotional, the lessons our teachers taught, everything has been teaching us so much about our purpose as missionaries and about following the Spirit, how to teach. I'm especially happy for Sister Stratton. She has been doing SO WELL. One time we were role-playing our lesson in Korean, and she basically bore her testimony without any mistakes and without any help from us. Sis Hill and I started to tear up because we were so happy for her and proud of her. She has been doing really well with the language since, she just needs to have the confidence to speak. So Sunday-today has been awesome. We have had so much fun. 

Let me tell you about some of our mishaps :P On time, I was trying to say "God called Joseph Smith," but I mispronounced it and ended up saying "God is jealous of Joseph Smith." Our "investigator" started grinning, and I was like... oh no... what did I just say. :P He told us after. Then just yesterday, we taught a "less-active member," and Sis Hill mixed some words up and ended up saying "We like to eat before we teach" instead of "pray". Hahaha.... We picked up a new investigator yesterday as well, and we wanted to give her a Book of Mormon, but we didn't know there are two words for "gift", so we were using the "spiritual" gifts word instead of like a present as we gave it to her, she looked amused. It must be so funny to be a teacher here. 

Some other cool things, on Sunday night we have devotionals, and at first it was kind of weird because instead of a speaker, we were told we were going to watch a video of a previous MTC talk by Elder Bednar, which I had already seen. After the video ends (and it's a really good talk, by the way), suddenly Elder Bednar himself comes in and has an hour long Question and Answer session with us. It was so cool! But we totally got punked by an Apostle. :P hahaha, so in the month that I have been here, I have seen 4 Apostles, how crazy! But super cool. 

 

 

May 15

Things are going great! I seriously love every day, even when I'm tired and frustrated with the language, it's great. I love all the stuff I'm learning. 

SO GET THIS, Elder L. Tom Perry came this last week, crazy! So I have seen 3 Apostles in 3 weeks, which is basically unheard of. Even more so is that before I even got to the MTC, 3 others had recently been here, so 6 Apostles in 6 or 7 weeks have come the the MTC. It has been so cool and I have loved it. 

 

My "God's Church eraser" moment is nothing compared to some things one of my companions said :P hahah, she was trying to pray in Korean, and express thanks for our teachers, but she pronounced teacher backwards, which still is a word, apparently, and is a cooked fish of some kind, so she was saying "thanks for the Mr. Cooked fish"  (Mr. because she honor-fyed it too :P ) Afterwards, our teacher told us and was just laughing :P THEN during a lesson, she was trying to say "through prayer, I receive faith", but mispronounced receive, so she said "through prayer, I sell faith" Our teacher had to briefly cover his face behind a book so he could laugh. THEN in another lesson, she was trying to ask him what he thought and felt, but she said some things wrong and mispronounced it, and said basically "your thoughts are cheesy". hahahhaha, once we found out, it was SOOOO funny. man oh man. we get a laugh all the time. Other funny stuff with my companions is Sister Hill and I like to talk in Batman voices, so we have had so many funny moments with that. I love my companions. They crack me up :P 

Something we learned about Korean, a standard greeting is literally translated to "have you eaten?" and I think it stems from the war. and so people still say that today. It's so interesting to learn about Korean culture, how they are so formal, and what they find disrespectful, and just how they think, etc. It's really interesting. As missionaries, we mostly speak in high form, which is very polite, but there are other forms, which you use based on age, gender, occupation, marital status, relationship with that person, etc. and so they just know what to use in each situation. We only get taught high and middle form, but it's not that hard to pick up on the others. There are some native Korean sisters here who we were talking to, and she was explaining some of it. I'm really excited to be able to speak fluently and understand what my teacher is saying, but especially our "investigators". Sometimes it's really frustrating to want to say something but not be able to, or to understand what the investigator is saying. that's usually the worst. so hard, but we are getting so much better at it, and our lessons/teaching skills are getting a lot better, even if our Korean is so-so. It's amazing what we can get across with the little we know. Because our class is just the 3 of us, our teachers are able to focus on each of us individually, so our teachers have said they are quite excited to be teaching such a small group because they can help us individually; because of that, we are quite advanced compared to the other missionaries who have been here longer. We have learned things like how to use "if", and they just learned it a few days before we did. When we tell them what we did in class they are usually like "whaaaat, we just learned that last week!" so basically we're awesome ;) haha, kidding... we really just need to practice speaking fluently. I'm having so much fun, I LOVE LEARNING. It's great stuff. I can't say that enough. I'm so glad to be here.

May 8 - Second week at the MTC

Something I forgot to mention earlier has to do with something we sang on the first day at the MTC; we sang that Primary song "the Army of Helaman" but they adapted it for missionaries. So that part where you sing "and we will be the Lord's missionaries" was changed to "and we are now the Lord's missionaries" and little differences like that, and that just really touched me. I thought it was cool, and on the first day it was a bit of a shock to realize, I'M A MISSIONARY!

So in the news of my life, that first investigator is now our second teacher. We finished teaching him and he "got baptized" even though we basically taught him nothing :P He is super nice and funny, and his real name is Bro. Sung. He is also native Korean, which is good because then we will be used to hearing legit Korean, I guess. In class he basically only speaks Korean, so if we don't understand something, he draws the funniest little drawings to help us understand and guess it through. Class is basically a lot of charades. But we are learning a ton! 

How about I tell you about Korean? It is such a crazy language. Sentences are [subject-object-verb], and you have to put the subject or object marker on the noun, or the Koreans will have no idea what you are saying. Like "I love you", no matter what the word order is, you have to specify which is the subject or object, or else they are like "I you love" or "You I love?" There's a difference. And then it is whatever you do to the verb that determines basically EVERYTHING. How you end the verb makes it can love, cannot love, will love, loved, etc. They also don't have things like "the", "a", "that", "this", etc. because those are just connecting words that you don't need. It's really hard, but having learned German definitely helps, even if it is completely different. What I find hard is saying the words and remembering them. In German, "to learn" was "lernen", and that is easy because it SOUNDS like "learn", but in Korean it's "pehooda", which does NOT sound like learn :P so you just have to memorize them. 

 

There was only one legit bad day, but it also became good. We got a new investigator, who happened to look a lot like our teacher Bro. Jeon. :P But our first lesson with him went awful. We had this great lesson planned, but we just couldn't communicate it, it was too complex, and it went too long, bah. It was frustrating. The only good moment in that lesson was that I was trying to say "God establishes church" (simple sentences, ya know) but I didn't know establish, so I looked it up and put put my finger to it and sounded it out, but he didn't understand. He repeated it like, "what in the world is this girl saying?" So I repeated it, like yeah, it's this. But he gave me this look, so I looked again, and realized my finger had budged up and I said (word order in Korean is subject object verb) "God church eraser". Once we realized that we all busted up and he couldn't help it but laugh too.... But after that lesson we did go and cry :P It is just SO HARD to have all this wonderful stuff you want to say and just not be able to say it!!! So we planned our next lesson to be simpler, and we tried to really focus on the investigator, because that 1st lesson we hadn't. It went SO MUCH BETTER, and we definitely had the Spirit to help us. We were on cloud 9 for the rest of the day. 

On Tuesday we have devotionals, and ELDER HOLLAND CAME!!! There had been rumors for weeks, but he finally came! It was SOOOO good!!! He spoke about what a mission should mean to us, and our missionary purpose, and needing to be converted (not just having a testimony) to the Gospel in order to be able to help and invite others to come unto Christ. We have to be there first in order to help, ya know? He also spoke about how awesome it is that we can have a member of the GODHEAD with us always (Holy Ghost) and so we shouldn't take that for granted.

Things are going well, I really am loving being here, I can't imagine being somewhere else. I am learning so much and I love being able to focus on my Savior. Perhaps sounds corny or something, but really, you can really feel a difference in your life when you center it on Christ.

Something Holland said was (paraphrasing) "what you do after your mission isn't real life, what you are doing NOW is real life, and is as close to real life as you will ever get! Capital R capital L! (as he pounds the pulpit)"  About choosing to go on a mission, he also said "you have never done anything so right in your life." BAM. Haha, it was just so cool. I took so many notes and felt so uplifted. Honestly, I almost always feel uplifted, because goodness do we need it. Every day could be so hard and discouraging, but on the days where we really focus on relying on the Lord, it goes much better. I can't do it on my own, and when I actually own up to that and trust in God, it get's easier. Duh. It's just sometimes hard to do that.

 

This last Fast Sunday was cool for me in two ways. One, because our branch is so small now (12 people), they asked me to say the opening prayer. It was simple, and I probably forgot a few grammar things, but I did it! And then during testimony meeting, there was this super long pause where no one got up, so I was like "well, why not?!" So I went up and bore my testimony. It was probably also not grammatically correct, but it felt good to just try, because if I can't even try NOW, then when will I be ready? It's just cool that you can feel the Spirit in whatever language you are speaking, even if it is not grammatically correct, and people can feel what you mean, because everyone can speak the language of the Spirit.

Come thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
I'll praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
Mount of thy redeeming love
Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by thy help I come
And I hope by thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wondering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood
O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above

May 1 - First Week in the MTC

We have been soooooooooooo busy and there is sooooooooooooo much to do and we have learned a TON! It's crazy to think about how much we have learned. So, This first week has been crazy! So, my companionS, I have 2, so we have a tri-companionship?

Anyways, they are Sister Hill and Sister Stratton, and are super nice. We get along really well and have a lot of fun. I think it is interesting how different of people we are, but we get along so well, and I think it is in large part because we are all here for the same reason.

We will have two teachers, but at the moment we only have one, Brother Jeon. He is a native Korean, so he speaks super fast and it's hard to understand him sometimes, but he is really patient with us and helps us learn a lot! He's a really good teacher and I'm amazed at how much our language has progressed in so short a time. Something he said to us that I really liked is we are not learning Korean, but we are learning the Gospel in Korean. Our class usually consists of a Gospel-ish part, where we talk about how to teach our investigators and how to study, what our purpose is, etc. It's really cool. Um. I'll try to organize my thoughts... so, first day was really overwhelming. They did start out immediately speaking Korean, and we went over the alphabet. I'm so glad I tried to at least learn that, because I understood and learned it faster. My companions think I'm a genius Haha. But That first day was so hard because we were trying to focus so much. The second day was REALLY overwhelming, one of my companions even started to cry during class because she got so frustrated. Oh speaking of my class, it's only the 3 of us, because we were the only Korean students to come in that day. So our whole DISTRICT was just us. We have since had some Elders join our district so that we kind of have one, but they are a couple weeks more advanced than us. And a few weeks makes a HUGE difference.

Um yeah, so class. We started out trying to sing a Korean hymn.. It was really pathetic sounding. We were so bad at it But I just tried to focus and learn, and I had a rather good (but exhausting day) because I was refusing to get overwhelmed I've been through language stuff before, I know what it's like to have no idea to what they are saying, so I guess it was easier for me than for my companions. Then we learned some grammar stuff, and I found that I pick up on that really fast. So even though the rules and sentence structure are different than German, I am able to pick up on grammar easily. The hard thing for me is remembering words because they are SOOO different than Latin based words. But we are getting there, and are learning a lot of words and are able to form really simple sentences in a few tenses and forms. Our 3rd day we had our first lesson with an "investigator." For those who don't know, investigators in the MTC are not real, they are workers here, usually teachers, and so we had to teach him in Korean! It was SO HARD. We could barely say anything because it was only our 3rd day, and so we said things like. "Uh, God. you. loves." with many references to our notebooks. What made that lesson harder was we forgot our dictionary, so we couldn't really say anything beyond what we had written down. Oops. Our investigator is named Imwonsup (at least that's how I romanize it), he is Korean, so a lot of the time we can't understand him that's the biggest problem we have been having during our lessons with him. We can say some stuff and he usually gets what we are saying, but when he responds we are like "uuuuuuuumm..." So we end up playing a lot of charades and drawing stuff to get our points across. We have taught 4 lessons so far, the 3rd was SO BAD. We had this lesson planned about the Restoration, but it went soooo long because we were having the hardest time saying stuff, and we were too scripted, so we weren't listening to the Spirit, and didn't really know what Imwonsup needed to hear. If he were a real investigator, he probably would have said never come back Our 4th lesson went SO much better because we decided to not script anything, just have a list of vocabulary words we would need and keep it short. That time we could definitely feel the Spirit and we were able to better know what he needs. That was a really cool experience, because we were able to feel that difference when we were actually focusing on the investigator, not the lesson.
So about the MTC food. Uh. Hm... well. I had always wondered because people always said "MTC foood...." with such a weird tone, but now I understand. You have to be careful what you eat. I have had some rather questionable things, but I'm getting pretty good at identifying what I probably don't want to eat, so I know which days to get a salad or a wrap.
So our zone is pretty small. We HAD about 30 when we first arrived, but about 23 of them left this last Monday for Korea (including Elder Lynn, it was cool to be able to see him for a few days), but now there are only 12 of us left. Yay.

But in that last group were some native Koreans, and there was this one Elder Park, who was SO FUNNY. Once when we were trying to learn the alphabet sounds at the very beginning, he and some of the others came in to help us. There is the one letter that sounds like "yo", so he pointed to it on the board, and this litter Korean Elder who can barely say anything in English just says "YO MAN!!!" in such a gangster way. It was hilarious.

So, I had this "quotable moment", where we were all kind of being down on ourselves because others are doing better than we are, and even within our companionship we are at different levels in different things. But I said something along the lines of "don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself yesterday," and we are kind of trying to make that our motto, because it is so easy to get discouraged when we struggle to say what we want to or understand our teacher.
Oh goodness, there is so much I could say, so much has happened and we have learned so much, but I guess this is a good summary. I have good companions and we support each other whenever we are struggling and I think we work together well, because we are focused on doing what is right. We all just want to be able to learn the language and how to be spiritually guided missionaries. It's so strange to be a missionary. I look at my badge and think "Oh yeah, I'm a missionary now." It changes how you think about things, my focus and concerns are different. It's wonderful to be able to focus on good things, and forget little worldly concerns. I can't wait to learn more about the Gospel and how to share it, as well as the Korean language and culture.
Sister in Korean is pronounced ch-ah-meh-neem, by the way, so I'm Broyles Chahmehneem (if you romanize it)