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."