MTC Week 3! (June 21, 2013)

Anyunghaseo!

This past week's gone by so fast! I've talked to some of the others in my district, and they all seem to agree. I guess the first half-week is a little frustrating and confusing, the next week is just long as you adjust to the schedule, and then things start to speed up once you get used to the routine and know enough about the language to actually learn it. My Korean still needs a lot of work, but I've gotten to the point where if someone asks a question, and I understand most of the nouns and verbs, I can usually answer it. Things don't always work out that way (like in one of my lessons, the investigator asked what the difference between a minister and a prophet was, and I didn't know the word for minister, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure that out... but once we did, I could answer!), but hopefully my vocabulary will get better over time.

One thing that's hard in Korean is verb conjugation. Depending on what you're trying to say, verbs sound different (same thing in English, but I'm used to it). For example, "ka" means "to go," but if you're saying "can go," then it sounds like "kaal," and if you say "let's go," then it sounds like "kaap." If I listen for "ka," then I'll miss it because that's not what it sounds like when it's conjugated. It's hard for me to pick out the verb when a teacher speaks, especially if they're speaking quickly. Context helps out a lot though.

To help with my language study, I've been reading PMG in Korean out loud, then try and figure out what the sentance means, and then read it in English to see if I'm right. There's been a couple of times where I've been exactly right, which feels really good (they're usually short sentances, like "Through the Book of Mormon, we can know truth."). It kind of depends on the topic though - I can figure out more in a lesson about baptism than I can about Joseph Smith, just because the words are ones that I've actually studied.

My very first lesson, I wrote out all the sounds in romajii-like form. I was told by some more experienced elders that that's a really bad way to learn Korean, so then I switched to writing out the English sentances, and then the sentance in Korean right underneath it (most of the sentances were stolen from my book of missionary phrases). A few lessons later, I felt like just reading the Korean words wasn't helping me as much as it could (and some of the others decided to stop writing things out in Korean as well), I wrote out sentances using as much English as possible. Bascially, if I knew a word, I would write it in English, and anything I didn't know or conjugation/noun markers I would write in Korean. Now, I'm trying to write in all English, and just write down where markers go, but conjugate things in my head - my script/lesson plan looks more or less like I've just written English sentances with really poor word order.  I'm slower and worse at giving Korean lessons this way, but it makes me think about sentance structure and trying to figure out sentances as I say them, so I think I'm learning more this way. The next step is probably bullet points in English, then saying things in Korean, but I've still got awhile before I get there!

It's interesting how in the class, different people have different strengths. There's one companionship that study a lot of vocab words, so they can say things that others can't, like "to strive." I'm not sure if what they're learning is 100% useful though, because I'm pretty sure they said that one of the words they learned was "to bend." I haven't ran into a situation where I needed to know that yet... Anyways, another example is one sister in the district studied Greek at BYU, so she knows a lot about learning a foreign language. She's always asking some crazy question about how gerunds work in Korean, or participle somethingsomething. I don't understand it all, but I figure we'll learn that stuff eventually. Other people like to go ahead and learn new grammar forms so that they can express their thoughts better or just learn things they need but we haven't covered yet. Personally, I think I'm one of the better people at knowing the things we've been taught. Like I said, I figure we'll learn all the hard things later, and I would rather have a teacher teach and explain it as opposed to me having to spend a lot more time to do the same thing. I don't know though, everyone has a different way they learn.

District leaders serve for three weeks at the MTC, and it's been 3 weeks, so guess who was called to be the next DL? Yup! So far, I haven't done anything really different. Because of the Sunday broadcast, the normal leadership training meeting's been cancelled, so I feel a little bit lost as to exactly what my responsibilities are. Basically, I just start the district off on any meetings we have, make announcements as needed, and that seems to be about it... Oh, and I'm supposed to get the mail for everyone else (there's a couple of people in my district that are very vocal about when and how often I should get the mail, which can be annoying, but it guess it just comes with the position). Luckily, I can talk to the previous DL (he didn't have this luxury!) about what I'm suppposed to do, and I've got a DL that's been at it a week longer than me in my room, so I've got some people to go to if I need to ask questions. I'm supposed to interview all the elders in my district tomorrow, so I'll probably ask them about what they want me to do as a DL.

As for other news, a lot of people are getting sick in the MTC. There's some sort of "intestinal virus" going around, and it seems like it can get pretty nasty. One of my roomates got it, and was throwing up for a while; thankfully, not in the room! It's gotten to the point where we've been asked not to shake other people's hands for the next few days to try and stop it from spreading. I've got a little bit of a sore thoat, and I got a headache during gym time after jogging for a few minutes, but that's about it; I'm definately not as sick as some of the people are! I'm going to the doctor today to get my cough checked out again though. I thought it was getting better, but I think it's come back. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure out exactly what's going on. I'll make sure to wash my hands and not share food and all that, so with a bit of luck, I won't catch anything.

Also, Korean speakers come every 3 weeks, which means that my district and I are no longer the new Korean speakers! They'll probably look up to us like we did to the three-weekers when we were new. That's weird; it doesn't feel like we know too much more Korean than they do though! :)

Thank you for the postcard from South Carolina, as well as the letter that everyone wrote on (I couldn't read what Jim wrote though... I think I saw "work hard," and "study" in it though. Maybe by the end of my MTC stay, I'll be able to figure it out)! It sounds like everyone had a fun time, and I wish I could have been there to be with everyone else. Sounds like South Carolina's got a good mix of history and nature - plenty of things to see! Though it sounds like the flight over there was pretty crazy; I hope my flight to Korea isn't going to be like that. Somebody said that might stop in Japan to transfer for Korea, so if that's true, that'll be pretty cool. Some of the others in my district seem to be expecting me to give them a tour or something, because I've been to Japan before. There's not that much to see in the airport! They say they're not worried about getting lost because they'll just stick with me, and I'll help them. I'm sure the MTC has things planned out so that missionaries don't got lost in another country though...

I don't know if you send this out to the whole family, but tell Debbie and Greg thanks for their letter! It was fun to read what you all wrote, and look at the pictures of the MTC, basketball, and... plus signs? In any case, it was cute, and I loved the letter!

Our Sunday devotion was really good, but I don't have a tone of time so I'll just summarize it. The speaker told a lot of stories about how the Holy Ghost helped him on his mission. He had some examples where the answer they recieved was really weird - like building sign board about the LDS church in Madrid, which was odd because it was illegal at the time. The missionaries still did it, and the speaker talked about how amazed they were at how effective these sign boards were; instead of missionaries being interested in people, the people were interested in the missionaries. The point of the devotional was, as missionaries, we've been called to do the Lord's work, and he'll help us to do it. Through the Holy Ghost, we can learn what we need to do to be as effective as we can be. I think this applies to everyone that's not a missionary as well; if we're making the right choice, the Lord isn't going to let us fail; if we do our part, the Lord won't let us down. He'll help us so we can make it all the way.

Thanks for all your love, support, and prayers! Write to you all next week!

Love,

Luke jangno



Notes:

romajii: Japanese word for "Roman characters," e.g. writing "jangno" instead of "장로."

MTC Week 2! (June 14, 2013)

Anyunghaseo!

How's the family reunion going? I bet it's fun to see everyone again and get to hang out in South Carolina - Lucky!

So Dad asked how my language study/classes in general works, so I'll explain. Dad wrote a lot about studying out of books, but we really don't have like a main textbook that we study from. On the first day, we were given this huge bag of books that had a PMG in Korean, a book for basic Korean grammar, a book for advanced Korean grammar, a book for basic Korean phrases, an English-Korean/Korean-English dictionary, and a small book of missionary phrases (like how to say prayers, how to invite people to baptism, sentances to explain each PMG lesson, things like that), a Korean bible and Korean Book of Mormon/D&C/Pearl of Great Price, along with several booklets about various gospel topics. I mostly use the missionary phrase book. It comes with a E-K/K-E dictionary of the words that we'll mostly likely be using, and it's much smaller and easier to use than the big dictionary.

I guess we could study out of the grammar books if we really wanted, but for the most part, the teacher will give us the grammar forms that he thinks is going to help us out the most. I was wrong about Bro. Sung being the Korean teacher, and Bro. Campbell being the gospel teacher though - they both do a little of everything. Class periods are 3 hours long, and so we usually split it into 3 1-hour sections. One hour goes to teaching our investigators (our teachers), and two people have 30 min to give their lesson. The rest of the class spends that time preparing lessons for later, or studying vocab for the lesson the teacher will give.

As a side note, teaching investigators is hard when you don't know a lot of Korean words! Our first investigator, Chegandok, was really nice, and I think he spoiled us. He was always willing to accept commitments, and seemed very agreeable with what we said. One of our other investigators, Bakcholoo, asks a lot of questions that makes it hard to teach. He asked us why there are so many different churches if there's only one Christ. That's not an easy answer to explain simply in English, let alone Korean! Luckily, I learned how to say "next lesson," so once we decided that we couldn't easily answer his question, we were able to move on. He asked another question that we understood but couldn't reply to, so he just told us to ignore it and move on. D: I think it's good practice though. We don't do much of making sentences on the fly, so it's good to make me think. It was fun though. He asked me the difference between baptism by immersion and sprinkling, so I go to act out baptism with sentences like "is water," and "is person." Bro. Su- I mean Backcholoo was smiling the whole time, so I think he had fun too, even if it was hard for him to understand and communicate with us.

So anyways, about class. The teachers mostly just teach about grammar forms. The students are expected to learn vocabulary on their other study times, so we really don't cover that. We pick up words that the teach says a lot though, like "why," "how," "good," "this way," "does not exist," "you guys," "question," and basically any other word that makes it so we can actually communicate and understand what the teacher is saying. Dad asked if the books are newer or not, but to be honest, I haven't really looked at them, so I have no idea. We also learn about other missionary-related stuff. Bro. Sung gave a pretend lesson about the Plan of Salvation yesterday so that we could see and hear that we can teach lessons simply with the grammar that we already have. We've also had lessons about how to study your language and writing up a study schedule, our purpose as missionaries, setting goals, things like that. But I think we're both teacher's first class; Bro. Sung's only taught Koreans so far, and Bro. Campbell is less than a year off of his mission (I think), so I don't know if what we're studying is exactly what the others are too.

In his letter, Dad gave me some advice to not get discouraged once the newness of the MTC wears off, which is funny because I wrote about sort of the same thing in my journal the other day. I don't think anyone in my district is really discouraged (There are some people that are behind others though. I think the teachers understand that and try to call on them more often to say sentances and answer questions. I don't know if that helps them or makes them more discouraged when they don't understand in front of the whole class though... but people are nice and try to help the others out though. Whenever we help someone else out, Bro. Sung says that there are spirits with the gift of tongues guiding the other person). Anyways, I'm starting to notice that people are getting a bit restless in class, especially the elders who played a lot of sports in college and high school. It's just hard spend like 10-11 hours a day sitting in a desk, listening or studying. The last like 20 minutes before a meal or before we're done for the day is probably our most unproductive. One elder who's companion is particularly having trouble focusing came up with the "dano walk," where they just walk around the MTC campus while studying vocabulary and grammar that they have on note cards. I've done that once, and while it's probably not as effective as sitting down and studying, it helps a lot to break up the study time.

Oh, just to mention, I've seen a handful of people I know here on campus. I've seen Kendall like 4 times (I guess he already has left by now!), a couple of people from my BYU classes that I was friends with, some people from high school, and a looooot of people that I recognize from classes at BYU, but I don't know their name and have never talked with them.

Now, little bit about Korea: my teacher said that in Busan and the southern parts of Korea, there's a kind of southern drawl. He says where it's really thick, it can be a little difficult to understand, especially for missionaries. I asked if Koreans find the accent charming or annoying, and he answered that people think that when men have the drawl, it's charming, but they prefer women to have the "pure" Korean from Seoul.

Korea is super humid and hot in the summer. Since everyone wears suits to work (Apparently, Koreans are a little bit prideful and wear nice clothes everyone. If they go shopping for groceries, they dress up at least a little. My teacher said that you'll never see people shopping in their pajamas like you do in the USA. He explains that another reason for this is that Koreans say that you're the only one who doesn't have to look at you - if you dress sloppily, then everyone else has to suffer because of it. Dressing nice shows respect to everyone who looks at you. I thought that was interesting.), Koreans invented/wear "summer suits." Basically, these are suits made out of really thin fabric; you can't tell when someone is wearing one, but when my teacher took off his jacket and held it up to the light, you could see through the material. The same goes for the pants too, so I may be buying another or several suits in Korea. He said non-fitted suits are probably around $70, and a really, really nice, fitted suit goes around $200, so things are cheap there.

Mom asked what I needed, so if you could sent me a winter hat, the flashlight, some deoderant, and the thing you put in the backs of binders, that would be great (I'm not sure what they're called, but it's a piece of plastic that goes after the last papers in a binder. I know we have some at home; it's black, as long as the binder is tall, is three-hole punched, curved, and it basically just makes it so the papers don't bend when you close the binder. I hope you can figure out what I'm talking about!). And about deoderant: Bro. Sung said that Koreans don't really really sweat, and when they do, it doesn't really smell that bad. So their deoderant is more of a cologne, not an antipersperant. He said to stock up now, because they're hard to find in Korea and usually a bit expensive.

As far a pictures go, we have a specific time on Sundays to take pictures at the temple. I'll bring my camera up then, and I can get a picture of me with my district. I'll try and get a picture of other things that you guys might be interested in. My companion's having trouble uploading pictures to the computers though, and I don't know if I will too, but I'll try (the computers).

I've been working on trying to be more positive here at the MTC. I know you guys have heard me complain about things way too much at home (the more I think about that, the worse I feel. Sorry! ;o;). Working and studying all day here makes me realize how much easiser life is at home! I think being positive and trying to see the bright side to everything makes life easier here. Instead of thinking about something insensitive someone said to me, I'm trying to just forget that and think about the good things they've done, like maybe when they've shared their testimony in class. Since I'm spending almost all day with these same 12 people, it's important that I do my best to get along with them. Class is long, but thinking about that doesn't make it any shorter. Let me tell you - cleaning bathroom at 6:10 in the morning is a lot better when you don't dwell on the negatives too much. :D

I might write about my district and each person in it specifically next week. I know I haven't written much about my companion either (for example, he's having problems with getting his visa, and the way companionships work, pretty much all of his problems also become my problem...).

Anyways, thanks for the letters and all your support!

Anyunheekesayo until next week!

- Luke jangno



Notes:

dano: Korean word for "vocabulary word."

Anyunheekesayo: standard Korean "goodbye" phrase.

MTC Week 1! (June 7, 2013)

Anyunghaseo!

My first weekish of the MTC has gone pretty well. Korean is still hard, but I've gotten to the point where I can at least pick out the nouns and verbs I know when my teachers are speaking in Korean. I don't know 100% what they're saying, but I can usually guess at it.

Thank you for your letters! I got them last night, and it was fun to read them all! I would write letters back, but that takes up a lot of time (you don't have a whole lot of free time here!), and to be honest, I've never sent a letter before and I'm a little scared I'll mess it up. :)

Daniel, Lisa, summer vacation sounds nice. You two are lucky! But let me tell you, you get waaaaay more done in the day when you wake up at 6:00 am. Remember that!

I have two teachers at the MTC, Bro. Sung and Bro. Campell. They both served in Korea (of course!), though Bro. Sung lived there quite a bit and grew up speaking Korean. Bro. Sung my Korean teacher, and he started to use English to teach around five days ago, and that helps a ton. He's a great teacher; he's interesting and funny, and I look forward to his class every day (He's very Asian though! When he introduced himself, he told us that he was born in the year of the dragon. A few people laughed, and Bro. Sung was really confused why people thought that that was funny. I guess it might be standard to say in Korea?). Bro. Campell was our first "investigator," and he started teaching last night. He's our teacher for Gospel topics and how to be an effective missionary - things like our purpose, how to study and plan, etc. He spoke mostly in Korean, which really frustrated me at first. I felt like I wouldn't be able to learn if the lesson was all in Korean, but I later realized that him not speaking English meant that I really had to try to understand what he was saying. It might not be a very efficient way to teach, but it's good training for being able to hear and understand Korean.

About my district: we have 12 people, 8 elders and 4 sisters. I think 7 are going to Busan, and 5 to Seoul. I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time, but I was a little worried about becoming friends with the other eldars (we're not supposed to say "guys" at the MTC...), especially because 6 of them share a room, and Eldar Stapley and I are in another room with people from another district. But we played four-square as a district, and kind of slacked off and talked during out study time, and I feel like we're much closer together as a district, which is good. I'm friendly with if not friends with an Elder Dede and an Elder Pickard. It's not like I hate the other people or anything, but I haven't talked to them as much, and I think I'm closer in personality to Elder Dede and Pickard than the other people.

Since Lisa wrote about choir in her letter, I'll write a bit about that. Sorry to say, my choir career you had hoped for me is likely not happening. My whole district wanted to go to choir (except me, thought some of the elders were going because the choir is performing in the Mariott Center, and they wanted a chance to get out of the MTC for a bit), so I was forced to tag along. Once we got there my district realized that they wanted people that knew how to sing. Luckily, after rehersal, Elder Dede said that he didn't want to go sing in the devotional, so we teamed up as temporary companions and just watched instead of particpating, which I was more than happy to do. Apparently, the choir gets to perform at some big training session or something, and I think the Twelve Apostles will be there. But I still don't want to join. (and the important members of the Church don't want to hear me sing (;n;)

Oh, and I met Elder Carter, who is one of mom's friend's friend's son (...?). He mentioned that our moms know each other, which I didn't know. It's a small world! After church I met with a couple of the other half-Japanese missionaries and we talked a little. We all said that our moms worried about us going to Korea, so I guess it's a shared concern for Japanese parents.

Mom wants me to talk about food I guess, so here goes: it's not that good. It's cafeteria food, so it's pretty much all processed/frozen foods. It kind of kills my appetite to be honest.... Like even if I can fit more food in my stomach, I don't feel like eating any more after one plate (I don't ever stuff myself like I did back home!). I am excited to each delicous food in Korea though; it'll be so different from what I get here.

My daily scedule goes something like this: Wake up at 6:00. Shower, brush teeth, shave, dress. Go to study session at 7:00. Breakfast at 7:45. Some combination of personal study, gym time, computer-based language study, and extra study time until lunch at 12:40 (the time slots for eveything changes depending on the day of the week). Class for 3 hours after that, then personal language study for an hour. Planning session with companion for around half and hour. Dinnner at 5:40, class again for 3 hours (I think the afternoon class will usually be Korean, and Gospel/missionary lessons in the evening). I'm done at 9:30, change, brush teeth, write in journal, review goals. We're supposed to have lights out at 10:30, and I usually fall asleep at around 11:00, 11:30 if my roomates start snoring.

P-days are a little more relaxed, but we have to do service at 6:00 (a.m.!) before we start our day. Within the time given, we go to the temple, do laundry, do any shopping at the bookstore we need to do, write letters/emails, and catch up on studying and lesson planning. I thought that P-days were a time where I could take a lovely, lovely nap, but they're as busy as regular days! Oh, and P-day ends at 6:00pm, so it's classes after that.

Oh and for Daniel: One of the elders in my district asked Bro. Sung if he knew how to play Starcraft. He answered, "Of course, it's like... learning to tie your shoe. Everybody knows how to play Starcraft."

Well, there's still more I want to say (we've learned a lot about weird Korean culture stuff that I wanted to write about), but we only get an hour for emails. I guess it used to be half an hour, which is crazy short. Please keep asking questions! Since I'm the first missionary in our family, I get to be the person to tell everyone else what it's like :D. Oh, and if I didn't answer someone's questions, send it again. I'll probably forget.

Well, I guess I'm a missionary, so I should include a little spiritual thought here. It's amazing how effective prayer is. I don't know if it's because I'm at the MTC or if I was normally too distracted to notice, but I feel like I get little inspirations very often. I was worried that my Korean study on my own wasn't very effective, so I prayed that I would be able to figure out how to work it out. The next day, I studied a chapter in PMG about effective language study, and whenever I had an idea, I would write it down in my planner. By the end of the day, I put all my ideas together, and I had a study plan! Studying grammar and vocabulary are obvious parts of it, but I got the impression that I should read out loud something I was unfamiliar with every day. I think this will help me with recognizing sounds and words, and reading is something we don't practice in class, so it'll be helpful to practice this. I haven't had a chance to actually USE my plan yet, but I'm excited to see how it will go.

Thanks for your prayers, letters and support!

- Luke-Jangno

Notes:

District: in the MTC, a group of people who have class together.

PMG: An abbreviation for "Preach My Gospel," which is a missionary handbook / textbook / guidebook.

Hello from the MTC! (May 31, 2013)

Anyanhaseo! (If that's how you spell and say it...)

Well, I've survived amost two whole days in the MTC! I'm still a little lost and confused (especially in my Korean class!), but it seems like everyone else is too, so I'm keeping up with the others I guess. The schedule for these first few days are pretty busy, and things seem to calm down after this weekend. Hopefully, I can concentrate a little more on my studies once I get into the MTC routine. I'm still having to worry about which classes and meetings I'm going to next, and the difference between "personal time" and "personal study time" and "study time."

The first day was pretty crazy. After I said goodbye to everyone, my host took me through some basic registration stuff (like making sure my information was correct, giving me a sweet Korean nametag, things like that), and then they threw me in Korean class. The teacher is supposed to use as little English as possible, and so it'll be confusing until we pick up some basic Korean. Once everyone got to class, he started teaching the Korean alphabet, and that was a lot easier to understand than the sentances he was trying to teach us.

The second day of class was similar to the first, except we kind of knew how to read (one Elder my class said "I've learned more in this day and a half than I have my five weeks of summer." So true!). We learned some vocab and some grammar, and it was funny to see the teacher try to teach us without using English. It eventually became a weird game of charades/pictionary, and we would try and guess the English definition of the Korean word he was saying. Our class moves pretty slow because of this, but we're just starting, so that's okay.

We're supposed to prepare and teach a lesson for an "investigator" today, and I'm pretty nervous; I don't know enough Korean yet! Luckily, we were given a book of missionary phrases in Korean, so my companion and I will probably end up mostly copying that for this lesson.

Speaking of my companion, his name is Elder Stapley, and he's from Manhatten, Kansas. I still don't know a whole lot about him, though he went to BYU and is looking into majoring ing Chemistry/Chemical Engineering. I think we're fairly similar in personality, and we haven't really had any problems yet. Oh except for that fact that he sings and wants me to join the choir with him. D:

My room is on the 4th floor of a building sort of towards the back of the MTC. The whole floor has Korean-speaking missionaries, and some of the older Elders affectionately call it "K-Town." There's 6 (!) in my room, so it's pretty crowded. Apparently, 6 to a room is pretty normal though, especially after the missionary age change. It seems like everyone in my room's been to college for about a year, so we don't have any of the younger missionaries in our room. We only have 4 desks and 4 closets, but that hasn't really been a problem so far.

In one of orientation-type meetings, one of the MTC presidency told us that we had 700 new missionaries arrive the Wednsday I did. Of those, 67 are going to Korean-speaking missions, which is one of the largest single language groups to come to the MTC at one time (they said that the Italian/Romanian missionaries had more, but that's because they get new missionaries every 9 weeks, while Korean missionaries come every 3).

Learning Korean's been my main focus so far, but I've had a few other meetings and seminars that's been more about investigators. It's been interesting; they really emphased getting to know investigators well enough to prepare a personalized lesson that the investigator will understand and relate to. We're supposed to ask about their religous background, what they already believe in, and things like that to sort of probe and figure out where they are spiritually. I hadn't realized that missionary work can involve getting really close to your investigator, so it's a good thing I've learned!

I guess to sum it all up, it's been sudden change in my lifestyle, and I'm still working on adjusting, but I think I'll like it once I get settled in. My teachers and leaders are good people, and I hope I can learn a lot from them. It's hard work, but I know the Lord will bless me and all the other missionaries here to learn and to grow into the missionaries He needs.

Love,

Changno Luke

Oh, and Dad, can you send back a list of who I need to email? I know that Mom definitely wants me to send to her, but I'm not sure what her email addresss is. Ask and see if Daniel, Lisa, Rachel, or Grandpa/Grandma want me to copy this to them. I guess for today, you can just forward this I guess. And it should be pretty obvious, but Friday is my p-day, so I'll be writing and checking emails then. Also, if anybody is curious about something or has questions, send them to me! I don't want to run out of things to type about. :D





Note: Andrew's letters are published exactly as he wrote them.  I'll add notes at the end to explain his slang, abbreviations, foreign words, or anything that might otherwise be confusing.

Anyanhaseo: Standard Korean greeting.  Means roughly "are you well?"  Usually Romanized as "anyeonghaseyo."

MTC: Missionary Training Center, a facility associated with the Brigham Young University campus in Provo, Utah where many outgoing missionaries spend two months starting to learn the language they will be speaking.  The rooms in the MTC were designed for four people to share, but due to overcrowding most rooms currently are shared by six.

"teaching investigators": "investigator" is the word commonly used to describe someone the missionaries are teaching the Gospel; that is, someone who is "investigating" the Gospel. In the MTC they role-play teaching situations with their teachers acting as "investigators."  Andrew will explain this more a few letters in.

P-day: One day a week is designated as "preparation day," when instead of attending class they have mostly free time to write letters, do laundry, etc.

Changno: Missionaries are designated as "elders;" "changno" is Korean for "elder."  Usually Romanized as "jangno."