Thursday, March 6, 2014

MTC Week 1

Annyonghasayo everyone! The MTC is so awesome, but yet soo exhausting. My very first few days here was pretty nice. I didn't really feel overwhelmed or anything. I feel so lucky to have been blessed with a companion I love. Her name is Sister Van Weezep. Pronounced just like it's spelled.She is from Farmington, Utah. 20 years old. Super fun outgoing personality. I've noticed she and I laugh a lot together so that's great. I love everyone in my district. The elders and other sisters are way cool and funny.Sister Gooch and Sister Johnson are just as amazing and fun as my companion.
A little about my branch and district. My branch has 47 missionaries in it. 2 of them are my district(28B) and another (28C) that came on Feb. 26th. The other 3 will be leaving to Korea in about 1 1/2 weeks or so. Which means the natives came! The came about 2 days ago. I haven't talked to them much because I really only see them while eating, but they sure seem happy about us learning their language.
The first day I stepped into my classroom and heard my teacher (Sister Allen) only speaking in Korean I felt calm. It was weird, but I just couldn't stop laughing because it was just weird. I didn't feel overwhelmed like everyone made it seem like. I just tried guessing what she was saying and asked and she would say Nay which means yes or un yo which means no.
The spirit is definitely stronger here at the MTC.
 By my 3rd day here, I learned how to introduce myself in korean, the alphabet, and I learned how to pray in Korean. How cool is that? Of coarse everything is simple phrases but after like 3 or 4 days I felt like my district and I were learning so fast. I remember Brother Halloway trying to teach me and I was struggling, but here I can definitely feel the Lord helping me. On friday we had to teach our first lesson to a pretend investigator IN KOREAN! I had only been there for 3 days and I had to teach! It was ridiculous! But my companion and I did good. We basically were teaching for maybe 3 or 5 minutes which consisted of hello, introducing ourselves. We said do you know god? We know god. We love god. Then we prayed. But over the coarse of the week we've learned more Korean and can now make our 5 minute lesson into possibly 10 min lesson. Yesterday we even taught him how to pray and he actually prayed it was amazing! We were on a spiritual high it was great!
Us 4 sisters (Sister Gooch, Sister Johnson, Sister Van Weezep and myself) all were joking about putting our orange dot stickers we got on our first day here back on when the new set of missionaries going to korea come. Then we will pretend we are new and pretend we are so nervous about learning korean and then bam! All of a sudden just start speaking korean to them and say "The gift of tongues!! It works!" or something like that.

Mom you were wanting to know about some things so here goes..
the mtc food is alright. I'm trying to eat small amounts and healthy cause honestly I feel like we study eat study eat and then eat eat eat.study study study. It's exhausting and my tummy doesn't like being bloated 24/7 from eating too much.
I chose the top bunk because I have no idea why! But I did. There's 3 bunk beds in our room so I could change but doesn't matter much. My bed is pretty hard but I'm so tired by the end of the night it doesn't really matter.
I have plenty of closet space. and drawers. My own desk area. It's all good.
Honestly to answer your last few questions everything is just great! Well for the most part. I have come to realize I love Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.
Sunday was a cool experience because we sang in korean and everyone bore their testimonies in korean. Then we have a devotional which was just so great! Loved it! Then it was movie night. Definitely going to be a fav of mine. We watched the testmaments movie and its pretty good, I've seen it before so it wasn't anything new but there's some cheesy parts that all the missionaries like to quote. Some of the older korean elders were making me laugh to hard with their comments during the movie haha.

Tuesdays are service days so it's just nice to be able to take a break and wear some regular clothes for a change and clean. It was a good break. Our assignment is to help clean 19M which is the gym. Sister Van Weezep and I cleaned the drinking foundations and had to wear these goggles that look like ones you would wear in a science class lol. Sister Gooch and Sister Johnson got to vacuum the stairs with this cool ghostbuster looking like vacuums. We will have to send some pictures haha.
Tuesday nights we have a devotional where a general authority comes and speaks. This week it was Marcos A. Aidukaitis of the Seventy. He and his wife gave wonderful talks about missionary work and how we were born in this time in history for a reason. Us 4 sisters also joined the mtc choir so we got to sing that night during the devotional. We sang Come to Jesus. Such a beautiful song! Look it up! It's written by Janice Kapp Perry's daughter I believe. It was printed in the Ensign or something like that this past year. After the devotional we have a devotional review type thing as a district where we talk about it and that was really good. It was really spiritual and uplifting :)
After we had personal study time and companion study. I think we ended up just doing language study and I was doing so well up until that moment. We were talking about a way to say something in Korean and I didn't quite understand. On Tuesday morning I woke up with a stuffy and runny nose (which I still have sadly) so I was even more drowsy because my body was still adjusting to the new schedule and so that night I had a sinus headache and was tired and then I just had a hard time understanding verb stems or whatever. I thought I knew but then everyone was trying to help me understand but there's this one Elder named Elder Lynn. Grrr boy does he get on everyone's nerves! He talks and sings and just thinks he is always right. but anyway he just was correcting me and making me feel stupid and I felt so overwhelmed and I realized I was never going to be able to learn Korean. I tried to hold back the tears but they just flowed out. Then Elder Ely (pronounced e-lee) who is super funny. He has such a great funny personality haha. We joke around with him all the time. well he just happened to notice the tears flowing down my face and so did my companion and I immediately say I'm ok. Cause really I was, I just laughed it off. I just couldn't stop the tears from coming out. Another awesome elder named Elder Bryner joked about giving me a hug but of coarse.. we can't haha. so that made me laugh. Then my companion gave me one instead haha even though I said I was just fine. I just was tired and stuff. Then Elder Ely was so sweet when he said they could give me a blessing. That made me feel better, like the Lord was trying to tell me it'll all be ok. At least that was until Elder Lynn had to go and say, "I believe the handbook says that there's only certain circumstances we are allowed to give blessings to sisters." or something like that. Honestly I don't know but he just ruined that whole moment for me.
I never ended up getting a blessing. I really didn't feel like I needed one, at least I don't yet haha. My Korean is slowly coming along. I'd send you all pictures but I have no cord to upload it to the computer :( so send that and then you will get pictures!!
I'm sad to hear about Mr. Wilborn. I love him!! And wow!! so many views! I really hope I didn't look ugly in the video.
haha I know I shouldn't care but yet I am still a girl and I still care. Please tell me I looked pretty. I wish I could watch it. It sounds like great video :)

I love you guys so very much! No more food!! please! I'm having a hard time finishing what you gave me already and now the other 3 sisters got some goodies so that's even more food. I'm trying not to be one of those missionaries that gets fat guys. Come on! Don't you know me at all? hahah but yeah thanks though! I still loved what you all gave me! Tell Tyler he needs to keep that room clean and that I love him. Tell mel She better love those shoes to death! DON'T wear them out too much though haha. Then everyone else.. just I love you! Miss you a ton. Steven got my birthday card right? Sometimes I forget I'm a missionary and feel like I'm just away at EFY and I go to look for my phone to call mom or text someone but nope.. No phone. but It's all good. Just studying studying and more studying. People aren't joking when they say that the days feel like they go on and on forever and the weeks go by so fast. I can't believe it's already been a week. Time is flying by.

Talk to you in a week!
XOXO,
Sister Kelly

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