Thursday, September 26, 2013

June 6, 2013 - Week 4 at the MTC


Wow, Jonathan must be having fun. Funny thing, our zone has 12 missionaries going to Madagascar. I’ll make sure and tell them to take their malaria pills.

And yes you can call while in the airport, I can either get a card here or you guys can send me one.

Dad: so my camera ate its batteries insanely fast so i purchased some rechargeable batteries and a charger at the bookstore here. Thing is I wasn’t thinking and bought a bunch of stuff right before we went to the temple. So not wanting to take a grocery bag in I unwrapped everything and shoved it in my pockets, not thinking I would need the directions. Bottom line I don’t want to wreck the batteries or charger, can you look up the directions online and email them to me? It’s a Sony Power Cycle 4 battery ni-mh AAA or AA. I have that adapter we got so you don’t need to worry about that.

I was going to send you guys a bunch of letters but realized I was out of stamps. Since we’re in the new place I can’t get stamps until Thursday. Ugh. So I’ll be sending you guys like 15 letters today. Still haven’t received your letter unfortunately.

The language is so weird, but also fun.  The language is coming along great, I have the basics mostly down, I can teach lessons without any notes and such. At this point it’s just vocab and the prefixes, suffixes and other things. The ixs are SUPER annoying. Basically it’s like English, you have active, passive, etc. The hard part is figuring out which to use while you’re using it in speech. Also some root words are already one thing while others are already others, so you have figure that in as well. In addition for some of the prefixes you drop the first letter of the root, so you also have to deal with that. There is also no "is, was, the, etc.". You also combine words to make others. For instance if i wanted to say "can you tell me what this scripture means?  It would go like this "Bolehkah(can the kah is for questions) komu(you) beritahu(tell, beri(give) tahu(know)) saya(I,me) apa(what) maksud(meaning) ini(this) tulisan suci(writings holy). "Bolehkah komu beritahu saya apa maksud ini tulisan suci?" At least I think.

Thanks Sister Ward for the encouragement, my brain has stopped melting at least a little bit, I no longer slur and stutter when I speak English, though my grammar and punctuation is totally shot to ribbons. How long did it take you before you could speak somewhat fluently to people?

I have been reading the Old Testament for the last week and just finished 2nd Samuel, I swear that if I ever read about how to sacrifice an animal again my brain will melt.  I have some really good scriptures that I found but I can’t remember them now because I don’t have my scriptures with me. Really I have learned a heaping ton of deep profound things since I have been here. I will include them in my last email next week, it’ll be cool.

One thing I do remember is that while I was waiting for my turn for an interview on Sunday I was reading hymns out of my mini hymn book and humming the tunes as I read "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief." I’ve always liked that song but never really read it. Very cool song. On top of that I realized the last verse has 2 meanings. First off, remember that he has now died. So now you can take it both literally, he realizes that he has been helping the savior all along and the savior calls to him. There is also a 2nd meaning, pay attention to the wording, see if you can find it. People who aren’t married or haven’t gone on missions don’t even try, you won’t find it.

Our progressing investigators are progressing! Finally after like 3 weeks of teaching and learning that were are teaching wrong and then doing it all over again, both Jeffrey and Rosalina are getting baptized!!!!! So ya, learning how to teach, plan and properly use study time is probably harder than the language. It’s actually counter intuitive. You would think that you would take a lesson say lesson 2, the plan of salvation, and then teach it asking the people to make commitments that have to do with that lesson or topic. Nope, all wrong, I’ve been teaching and planning wrong my whole life; no joke. You start with what you want people to take away from it, whether that’s a commitment to read and pray about the Book of Mormon or obey the word of wisdom; or in the case of teaching members what you want them to know or do better at. Once you do that you look at what you can teach them and what would move them toward baptism and then you integrate it together. Sort of kind of. That way when you teach about things it’s moving them in a direction not just feeding them useless information they might not understand or appreciate.

Out of time, the breakfast food is still literally 75% sugar (the only thing not sugar is the milk, water, oranges and bananas and the bagels and cream cheese), love you all, goodbye

Some pictures:
 
Elder Halpin
 





My MTC District

Elders: Thatcher, Sheranian, Halpin, Paul, Rodriguez and finally Hill.




My Companion Elder Rodriguez and I

(don’t look at my face, the sun was right in my eyes)

 

 

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