MTC Week 2

Letter # 1
This is in response to your Dear Elder which first off I love Dear Elder.  Only because I get it the same day so that’s very nice.  I understand I can’t get everything.  I will just not get anything.  Hopefully you haven’t gone and bought me a purse or anything.  I have survived without a bigger bag.  Same as the tops. I’m fine.  I really want the skirt, but I understand I don’t need it.

If there is anything I’ve learned it’s definitely that this mission comes with sacrifices.  I feel like I’m making or will be making a lot of those but it’s just all apart of the experience.  As many outfits as I’d love to have I’m fine without it.  If I do ever see a skirt in Korea though could my tax refund go towards that? Or does that go against everything I just said: Haha aren’t I silly?

I am getting sick of the MTC food…yup.  Definitely sick of it.  At first I liked the options but this past weekend they just have stuff that looks gross or just not what I want.  So what do I eat? Cereal…yup! I ate cereal and PB&J for like 3 days.  Maybe some fruit here and there but nothing is good.  Oh wait, the bagels are good, too! So bagels, fruit, and cereal and PB&J. That’s a good diet right?  I haven’t had soda once!  Doing so good with that.  Only water.  Plus during gym I’m actually working out instead of playing volleyball so hopefully I’ll get a flatter stomach.  My butt and legs get a workout daily.  My residence hall is on the 4th floor and my classroom is on the 3rd floor and no elevators.  So the stairs leave me out of breath some times and my legs felt sore the first week but I’m good now.

I moved bunk beds to the extra bottom bunk and I’m sleeping so much better now.  Thank goodness! Plus I put some pictures on the wall next to  my head so I see all your faces every night.

Found out my old  investigator is now my 2nd teacher.  He’s super handsome FYI haha.  His name is Brother Campbell.  He’s such a great teacher.  I understand him better than Sister Allen.  But Sister Allen is so sweet and cute.  Brother Campbell just explains better.  Sister Allen and Brother Campbell are now role playing as new investigators.  So I have 2 investigators instead of one now.  I taught Sister Allen’s character yesterday and it went so well.  We taught her how to pray and gave her a Book of Mormon to read.  Tomorrow we teach Br. Campbell’s character again.  We have been busy today and Sister Van Weezep and I haven’t finished planning our lesson and tonight was Tuesday general authority devotional sows hopefully will find time before we teach.

Love you all so much.  Can’t wait to email you on my p-day.  I go to the temple in the morning so probably later in the afternoon I’ll be on email.

Letter # 2
Man! I am so happy to finally be able to get back on the computer and email. You were right when you told me that I'd get tired of just studying all the time. I am enjoying the MTC but at the same time it is so physically and spiritually draining. I'm sure you've heard that over and over before though.

So, everything is still good. For the most part, besides being sick of studying haha. I love my teachers. Brother Campbell and Sister Allen are such great teachers and I can truly feel the gift of tongues working. I mean I've been here exactly 2 weeks now and I know a lot. I have been teaching actual lessons in Korean! Ain't that crazy?! I haven't really felt overwhelmed anymore. I've just come to realize and accept that I will make mistakes and not be able to learn it all at once. I just have to study and learn what I can and then when I teach lessons the spirit will guide me as to what I should say. Which actually did happen just two days ago. My companion got called to be the new sister training leader for our zone since the other one is leaving for Korea this coming Monday. So, because of that she had to go to these meetings to be trained and that affected our companion study time. Which then affected our lesson for the next day. After her meeting we seriously had no time to study. Since I'm still the senior companion for another week or so I had planned some of it myself, but since we are a companionship I wanted to make sure she was involved too. We didn't have much time at night to do it, so we ended eating breakfast really fast and getting to class early so we could finish. Thankfully we got it finished, but it wasn't that long. I had a prompting to bring one of our old lesson plans on prayer and I wasn't sure why but I am so glad I did. Our investigator ended up asking questions about prayer and I was so thankfully I had brought my paper that helped me remember the korean vocab so I could translate what I wanted to say. And let me tell you, that lesson was short, but the spirit was still present. It's weird to me that we are just role playing with our teachers and that we can feel the spirit like that, but at the same time I'm loving it. My companion and I felt like we were able to just go by the spirit and not use our notes and just bare our testimonies on prayer. It was amazing. I mean I seriously maybe looked down once and the rest just flowed. There were times I was just trying to figure out what to say in my head but I could definitely testify that the Lord was helping me remember what I had learned and He helped me speak Korean to my investigator. Pretty cool huh?

Now I have a more funny experience to share. First on Friday night since I am senior companion I had to get interviewed by the (now old) sister training leader Sister Lyman. She is awesome! I love her! She and like 3 other sisters are seriously my favorite out of the older group of korean missionaries. In the interview she said that she and those other sisters actually look up to us. Which took me by surprise because we actually look up to them. She also mentioned that they love that Sister Gooch, Sister Johnson, Sister Van Weezep, and I are more like a 4 companionship. Which is so true. We always end up doing everything together. It's rare when it's only 2 of us together. On Saturday night, us 4 went and took showers at the same time. We always leave our door open so we don't have to take our key with us. So I was the first one to come back to our room and I noticed the light was off for some reason. I didn't really think much of is because I just figured one of the other girls just decided to turn it off since we were all in the shower. Sister Johnson comes back and we just happen to noticed that there's this black blow up cat. Which has been passed down from each group of missionaries when the others leave to Korea. So, we laugh at it and just throw it. Thinking they just decided to throw it in our rooms. (Normally they throw it in our showers while we are showering haha) So the night continues and we just all are talking about random stuff while we get ready for bed. I finished writing in my journal earlier than everyone else so I decided to just do some crunches on the floor. While I was doing crunches I noticed underneath Sister Van Weezep's bed a fist that made me like look twice. I was like thinking, "what the heck?" I sat there for like a minute or 2 just trying to figure out if that was really a hand or not then I saw a foot... and then I just was like "oh my gosh is that a dead body?" and the other girls were like wait what? Sister Gooch and Sister Johnson's desk is on the other side of the bunkbed so she immediately turns and looks under it and we then realize it's Sister Jacobson! Haha I love her! Meanwhile this whole time of us talking about the body she didn't move one bit till maybe like 5 minutes and she finally lifts the blanket haha and she tells us how she wanted to scare us haha. She was under there for maybe an hour!! So funny! So while talking to her Sister Gooch notices under Sister Johnson's bed that there's another body! She was Sister Lyman! Man these girls are hilarious! So, immediately I check undermine which had  suitcases where Sister Collinwood was hiding. We were maybe laughing about it for like a whole other hour. They were hoping to wake us up in the middle of the night by shaking our beds and scaring us. Would have been funny, but I'm glad we caught them. It just made it that much more funny.

That's probably the funniest thing that has happened this past week..
So the natives from Korea come for about a week and a half to be trained on how to be a missionary and teach so yes its at the beginning of their missions and they then leave with the set of missionaries that will leave next to go to the Korea. Which is next Monday!! I'm so sad they are all leaving. The native sisters are soo cute! They are seriously happy about everything and excited to even just go to the gym with us. One comment that one said was "I really want to go swimming, but I don't know how to breathe underwater." Haha seriously it was funny at the time. They say such funny innocent things like that all the time. Talking to them makes me so excited to finally get to Korea and meet more Koreans. I still got a whole lot more to learn though. Thankfully I have 7 weeks more of that.
Oh! Another awesome experience that happened was on Sunday during our district meeting, we talked about the devotional we had that night. We all kind of told very personal things and shared our testimonies. They elders also mentioned that they considered all of us family and they would do anything for us sisters. It was very comforting, cause it's true. I really do feel like they are like my brothers. Sister Gooch also mentioned that our district seems to be a lot closer and stronger than others. We really are lucky to have been blessed with such great strong missionaries in our district. I consider all of them such great friends. I'm going to miss them when we actually have to leave and go to Korea. Once again, thankfully that's 7 weeks away haha.
We didn't sing in the choir this week, because the song was some really hard song.. Yes there are 47 missionaries in my branch. ALL are going to Korea. Some different places in Korea but majority to my same mission. We are asked to SYL which stands for Speak Your Language. So that means once you learn a new word then replace it with the english word and try to never say the english word again. It's hard sometimes because we go to eat or devotionals where we speak and hear english but then in class, lessons, and church we are to only speak korean. They understand we all can't know it all, so we syl. Sister van weezep and I have recently realized it's affected our english a little. We talk more like yoda haha cause that's how we have to think in order to translate to the way korean grammar is. It's not a huge difference but occasionally we notice we put our verbs on the end of our sentences on accident haha. Like for example I might say something like "I cold am." Get what I mean?

I went to the temple this morning and that was such a great experience. Just a nice refresh to make it another week here.


Love you all! Miss you a ton! I miss you Daddy a lot!! I am always praying for you and mom!
Sister Kelly

Korean word of the week: Death
Pronounced Chock um
Pretty self explanatory right? Chock someone and that equals death haha