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