Seventh Week Email

02.21.2012


Hey Tawns

  Well another spiritual growth week at the MTC. I had told you about
everyone that was heading out but one that we hadn't planned for was
Elder Gibbons (My roommate from California). I had told you in recent
e-mails that Elder Gibbons was probably one of the best kids I know.
Well with him going home last thursday In my eyes he seems even
greater now. He had some things he needed to work out and he took the
right steps to get it done. Both of our Teachers were amazing through
all of it and they actually gave him their number's. So we have had an
update on how he's doing and it looks like he can come back maybe
before the year is done so if you could give him a shout out through
my facebook every once in a while I'm sure he would appreaciate it.
Dealing with that was pretty rough on Elder Anderson. Elder Anderson
is one of the funniest kids I know but he can cover a very broad range
of emotions very quickly so our room has done everything that we could
for him. So if everyone could keep him in your prayers for now that
would be really appreciated. Elder Anderson is getting better though
and our district acts like our family whenever we have rough times we
use our sense of humour to get by. So after Elder Anderson just paired
up with me and Elder Brown. he was reassigned to Elder Breckwoldt on
Sunday so Elder Breckwoldt is moving in to our room tonight. And we're
also getting a new district tomorrow. That also means that we're
getting two new missionaries in our room tomorrow so that should be
fun except for the fact that we have to give up some closet and drawer
space haha.
  So funny moment on the week. We have literally lost our minds here
and we're only half way through. Everyone made a fake iphone on a note
card and everyone pretends like they text eachother and that they
check facebook. So the other night we crawl into bed after everyone
came into our room and we had a good time. Elder Brown always passes
out so fast and never wakes up but Elder Anderson and I have a hard
time getting to sleep. So after about 5 minutes of dead silence I hear
him make the vibrate sound and he literally got out of bed ran over
grabbed his phone and pretended like he was texting. He pretended for
about 2 minutes straight and when he text he says everything out loud.
So he finishes up and he puts his phone down and after another minute
of silence I just lose it. We both ended up laughing for about 5
minutes and waking Elder Brown up. So if anybody is worried about my
sanity trust me it's completely gone haha.
  I'm still loving it here though and it's actually starting to
settle in that I will be leaving here in 6 weeks. A lot of the Asian
missions left today so after our planning session last night there
were a lot of goodbyes and I think it settled in with everyone that in
6 weeks I won't be able to understand a single thing anybody says to
me haha. I'm getting a little jittery about it though and days seem to
be going by slower and slower. The other day we walked out of TALL lab
which is a computer program to help us learn Korean. Well since it's
the MTC they always have people out on the sidewalks or in the
courtyards practicing street contacting so we get stopped by a trio of
sisters who were going to argentina. Well apparently we all looked
terrible to the point where they called us out a little bit on how
days can be rough but they knew we were here for a reason. So after we
all felt bad about looking like that we set a goal to try to say hello
to as many people as possible with a smile on our face for this week
and we're going to see how we feel at the end of the week. That's a
big thing for Korea though with the members there. Apparently if my
companion and I have had a rough day and we're walking home with our
heads down and a member see's us. The member will call our Mission
President and tell him that we're not doing our part on having a good
attitude and that he needs to talk to us. I guess that happens all the
time and the Mission President's in Korea take it very seriously now.
  Well we have reviewed all of the sentence structures that we will
use in Korea now and now it's all about getting vocabulary to plug
into those sentence structures. Also we have to memorize so many
sentence markers because that's how they can understand what you're
talking about in Korean. And as of right now the only thing all of us
can talk about is only church related and it's in high form. I can't
even tell people what I want to order for food or even ask where the
bathroom is at (I think I'm going to go look that up right now).
Sister Judd has challenged us to learn a ridiculous amount of vocab a
week and we reached it last week as a class so of course she raised
the bar. I carry these little flipbooks they sell at the bookstore
with me everywhere. One of our goals is to study them while we're
standing in the lunch line and also to study them while we're walking.
I think my brain is starting to get use to taking this much in so my
headaches aren't as bad at the end of the day. Another new thing this
week was that we can't have notes in our lessons anymore which isn't
too bad because I was only writing simple sentences out in english and
forming them in my head in my lessons. I we God's Love feelcanthat
(they are all combined in one word) know. That's how I would say that
I know that we can feel God's Love. (Cho-nun Oo-ree-ga Ha-na-nee-meh
Sa-rang-urr Nu-keer-soo-eet-da-nun-go-sur Al-go-eet-sum-nee-dah) that
last dah means that it's the end of the sentence so they don't use any
periods and if it was a question it would end in Kah and the sentence
markers would change a little bit. So there's a quick Korean lesson
for you and it is constantly running through my head these days.
  Well I love all of you and I'm so grateful for this oppurtinity to
be here and I'm going to keep on giving it everything I have.

Elder Jensen

P.S. my second councilor of my Branch Presidency is Ken Jennings Jr.
a.k.a. father of Ken Jennings the third who is the Jeopardy champion.
And his son contributes a lot of his knowledge to growing up in Korea
when his parent's were mission president's in Busan. They didn't have
a TV and he wouldn't go out a lot so he would just study at home a
lot. They know everything about everything. I know people say that a
lot but we literally got a history lesson on red velvet cake the other
day when he saw some of our cupcakes. fun fact!