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)