Thursday November 13, 2014
Hello family! I am so
excited to email you! I didn't know who to send this to so I figured I'd send
it to Mom. (: I seriously love getting the Dear Elders... so keep sending away
please! They make the eight hours of hearing only Korean a day much more
bearable. Okay, so to the good stuff. First of all, Brady asked how the food is
here. Though I'm sure this won't make Mom too happy.... the food has already
made us all sick. No throwing up for me though, thank heavens. Just awful belly
aches and stomach cramps. Six of us sisters sat in class a few days ago looking
like zombies as our tummies fought the war against MTC food. Our teacher, while
speaking only Korean as usual wrote the Korean word for "Nurse" on
the board. But we refused because missing any class would put us so behind.
Yeah, I've sworn off MTC meat for the next 8 weeks. Looks like it will be
salads, wraps, and cereal for me. While they say the meat is turkey or chicken
or whatever, it looks like colored sponge, tastes about what it looks like, and
feels just as bad once its inside you. I ask myself every day how I will
survive eating MTC food for 9 weeks. So you can imagine how excited I was when
Grandma Stucki sent me that first package of cinnamon rolls... FOOD FROM THE
OUTSIDE!!! So exciting. Tell her thanks for me. Same with the cookies you guys
sent me. Thank you so much for that! Sometimes it feels like a prison here, but
most of the time its pretty amazing. Besides the food, I love it here. We
taught our first fake investigator completely in Korean last Friday, 2 days
after entering the MTC. You can imagine how that went. Simple phrases like
"God loves you. (Ha Na Nim Abogee sanranghamnida to give you a taste of
how you say it) Jesus loves you. We love God. We love Jesus," and so on.
Haha oh its so fun. But we teach our investigator every day now. We gave him a
Korean Book of Mormon already so that's good. And one day... though he's a fake
investigator, we actually made him cry. No, we didn't beat him up. The spirit
was just so strong. We had him read the restoration scripture in Joseph
Smith-History. And a tear ran down his cheek. Sister Russell started crying
too. I was shocked and happy and warm feeling... my Korean might be awful, but
hey I guess he could feel our spirit. No one else in our district or the Korean
branch has done that yet. Our investigator's name is Begunu. He is acutally a
returned missionary from Korea, and though we aren't supposed to know this yet,
he will become our teacher probably next week. He knows our strengths and
weaknesses since we have been teaching him. But oh my heavens, it is so crazy
the love we have already gained for him. It came out of no where. Every time we
see him we get all excited to teach him and just feel so much love for him. And
he isn't even a real investigator! Sister Simonson, our Korean teacher, was
talking to us about it two days ago. She asked us (in Korean of course) if we
could feel the love for Begunu. We lit up with a smile and said yes! So much!
Even if he isn't a real investigator! We asked where it came from. All the
sudden our hearts were just fillled with loved for our fake investigator. She
pointed to our missionary badges and said that it was because of our calling.
The love we already feel towards our investigator (whether he is a real
investigator or not) is absolutely amazing. Seriously. Our district is amazing
as well. 8 Elders and 6 Sisters. I just look around the room in class and feel
the love for everyone here. They are like my second family. Helps so much with
the homesickness! We all get along so well! We laugh when we get to the point
of Korean overload and talk for a few minutes altogether (in English! :) ) just
to take a break. Then we get back to work and learn. It's a pretty good system,
and we all know when to be studying and when it is okay to take a break and laugh
a little. I just love it. The Elders are so kind and willing to help. Sister
Russel was feeling discouraged last week and they automatically offered a
blessing. Though she rejected it, 2 other sisters have already recieved
blessings to help with discouragement, homesickness, and a major language
barrier. (Sister Wijitunge speaks very little English. But she is learning
Korean through English which is a major challenge because she doesnt know much
English.) I've been loving it though. No discouragement so far. My Korean isn't
great but its coming along better than I could have ever hoped. I can read
Korean (takes 20 minutes to get through one verse, but I am still proud!), pray
in Korean, teach a lesson in Korean, and i'm starting to understand my teacher
more and more. I mean eight hours of Korean a day just does that to you. Their
goal is to push it to the limit so that you have to work hard and learn faster.
It's just great. The devotionals here are so good too. It's nice to listen to
English talks on Sundays and Tuesdays. On Tuesday, the second counselor of the Presiding Bishopric
of the church spoke to us. I cant remember his name though, I'm scrambling to
tell you all that I can. It was really good though. He and his wife sung love
one another with us and it was the cutest thing. Brought chills to everyone
here. There's thousands of missionaries here so you can imagine the spirit. And
we are here longest so we have a big branch since it takes 9 weeks to leave. I
played the piano in sacrament on Sunday for the Korean branch. I played the hymns
while the congregation sang in Korean. That was different, but super cool. I
couldn't understand anything they were saying but I loved it anyway. I don't
know what else I can tell you now, this is a huge email already haha. Oh, and
thanks for sending my retainer Mom. The sisters in my room always laugh when I
try to talk at night with it in. We are all super close. Sister Fuatanga is
hilarious (she's the Australian one) and makes us laugh soo hard. Yesterday we were
filling out a questionare about the MTC and what we did before. One of the
questions was "how in shape were you before coming to the MTC?" she
said, outloud, "Well, circle is a shape right?" and that is when our
teacher broke. Brother Scoville was our teacher at the time. None of our
teachers ever break character. They speak only Korean and try to keep us
learning (even though they are as American as can be and totally speak
English). But when Sister Fu said that, he broke. He laughed so hard he had to
leave the room. We couldn't stop laughing for like 10 minutes because of his
reaction. She's like, one of my favorite people in the world. Our comic relief
with a pretty accent. Though she says that Australian accents are so
"bogan" (the Australian word for redneck apparently). Oh, speaking of
which, this place is accent heaven. I love hearing everyone's accent and
hearing where everyone's from. It's so cool to meet people from all over the
world. Well, I'm gonna try and upload some pictures now. I don't know if it will work but don't expect anything. Also
to answer Mom's questions, we have class Monday-Saturday. Except Thursday which is Pday. And we go to the temple on
Pday and go walk around the temple on Sundays. Sundays are spent in various
meetings of all sorts. There is never a moment to really breathe here except on
pdays. Busy busy busy. But it's good, and I love it (besides the food). I love
you all and miss you like crazy! Give all of the family and Chewy a hug for me.
I'm glad Brady likes my bed so much. I love hearing from all of you! So keep
Dear Eldering me! I get them every day you send them (except saturdays and
sundays... those ones come on Monday if
you send them then). This last week flew for me and I hope it did for you
too. :) love love love you all
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