Dear Family & Friends,
So time seems to be flying by here at the MTC. Today was such an awesome experience at the Temple. We got our new district in and in the new district there is an Elder named Elder Hem. He is from Cambodia and his english is a little broken but he can understand a lot. Well since he has never left Cambodia in his life he has never been to a Temple. So our zone got permission to go to a later Temple Time so that we could go through with him. Seeing someone go through for their first time is such an amazing experience. It brought up a lot of memories of how I felt when I went through my first time. It still amazes me that this 19 year old Elder from Cambodia has the exact same beliefs and knowledge of the gospel as I do. It reminds me of how great missionary work is and how privelaged I am to be here right now. I honestly can't thank everyone back home for everything that you did for me to make all of this possible. And as we left the Temple after our amazing Temple breakfast we walked outside and that's where Elder Hem saw his first snow storm. He saw some snow fall last night but right now it's snowing pretty hard. I love seeing all of our Arizona kids and Elder Hem just be so amazed at the fact that it's snowing. We all laugh at them but I couldn't imagine the feeling of seeing something so strange and out of the ordinary.... Especially with less than a month left on my stay at the MTC.
So a long with our new District we got some more roommates. Elder Breckwoldt moved into our room last Tuesday to be Elder Anderson's companion and the next day we got Elder Rice (he's such a teddy bear and I make him tell me that he loves me everynight) and Elder Dyer who is our little country boy and we love him. He sings with his family members in a band called Dyer Highway and they actually have some albums on itunes. The other day when Elder Anderson and I were acting so put out because we had a rough day (we acted that way just to scare the new Elders) I had Elder Dyer sing to me haha. Everytime we have one of those days Elder Anderson and I go buy some Sangria (it's a mexican beverage and I can't explain the taste) and we go back to our room and just yell random things. Well he ended up singing a remix of one of my favorite country songs and he called it Sangria lullabies. I won't tell you the name of the real song but I can say it's by Brad Paisley. But he made up his own lyrics to make it a lot more happy haha. He'll just be sitting in his bed and he'll start singing a song about spreading the gospel in Korea. I love those two Elder's and we have a great time just hanging out in our room everynight.
Well the Korean is coming a long and the "investigator" lessons are getting a little rough because they are getting longer and more conversational but Elder Brown and I are doing pretty good. So some cool news is that we have TRC every saturday and it's where members come in and we teach them a lesson in Korean and they help us out with a lot. Well the cool thing about this is that there is a 15 year old girl who goes by the name of Mary in america. She's attending Timpview on a student exchange program and she actually ended up coming to TRC last saturday. I guess she has been meeting with missionaries but she has been struggling with the language barrier. So the Missionaries actually told her about what happens at the MTC every saturday and her host Mom brought her down. So we found this out as soon as we got to TRC and Sister Judd (our teacher) actually has all of her information and she is planning on meeting with them everytime they have the missionaries over. We all wrote her a quick letter last saturday in Korean and it sounds like she'll be back for this TRC. So basically our entire district is coming together on this one to be her 9 missionaries and she is our first investigator! Another great thing that happened at TRC was that Brother Ball stopped by and had Elder Brown and I teach him the first lesson for 40 minutes all in Korean. We miss him a lot but he stopped by twice this week basically just to say hi.
Well here's the Korean lesson this week. We have been covering indirect questions this week to really start asking questions to make our Investigators actually think and have to respond.
so here's the sentence:
Sister Kim have you ever wondered how Jesus Christ Atoned for our Sins?
Well basically it goes:
Kim Sister Jesus Chirst Our SinsFor (connected) how Atonedpasttense (connected)
And that sounds like:
Kim-cha-meh-neem-kay-so-nun Yeh-soo-ku-ree-su-do-kay-so
And I have to honorify a lot in that sentence because I'm talking to someone else.
Well I love learning Korean and now that we have the sentence structures covered it's all about getting vocab. Right now my goal is 15 a day and I review those 15 words 5 days later just to make sure. So I'm constantly working with about 30 words a day. Our second Councilor in our branch presidency is a genious. His name is Brother Stoddard and he has every scripture in the Book of Mormon and New Testament memorized. He has a system worked out where you memorize a scripture one day and review it the day after. Than you review it on the 7th,14th, and 28th day and somehow that makes you retain knowledge better. There's just so much going through my head right now I'm starting to get a headache haha.
Another cool thing that happened this week is that we passed our halfway mark last week or the week before so we have leadership changes. Elder Brown has been the Senior companion because they do it alphebitcally (or however you spell that) so I became the Senior Companion this week. But the other thing they do is switch District Leaders so I still can't get that memory out of my head of Brother Stoddard coming through the door and looking right in my eyes. So long story short now I'm the new District Leader of District D and that means that I have to get the mail and attend three meetings throughout the week. It also means that I have to take care of any issues within the district and I conduct all of our district meetings and district study times.
I hope everyone at home know how much I love it here and how excited I am that in 4 weeks from today I'll be in Korea. I love all of you so much and I'm so thankful for everyone back home and all that you do for me and have done for me. An-yang-heh-kah-se-yo (I can spell it a lot easier in Korean than in english)
Jensen Chang-no
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