MTC week 6ish (July 12, 2013)

Anyunghaseo!

Thank you for all your letters! It sounds like everyone had fun this Fourth of July, which is awesome. I wish I could have been there! Just keeping busy living our normal summer life sounds wonderful :).

I don't have much to write about, so here's some stories about MTC life...

Korean is hard, and we're still learning. Whenever we're done with a lesson, we usually share how the lesson went with the district. Usually, it's just "good," but sometimes, people have funny stories to tell.

I guess this isn't as funny as the other stories, but it's made me realize that even though we're all missionaries, we're all still 19 year old boys. Recently, people in my room have been locking themselves out with alarming frequency. For the past 3 nights, I'll be studying out in the hall, and I hear a "Luke jangnoniiiiiiieeem?" When they find out that I've got a key, they all give a huge sigh of relief. It seems like everyone else assumes that someone else will either be in the room or have a key on them, but the "someone else" thinks the same thing. I just find it funny that at times, 5 out of 6 people forget to carry their key on them.

One companionship of elders were trying to get the investigator to pray, and so they wanted him to read James 1:5-6 ("If any of ye lack wisdom..."). I guess they weren't very thorough in making sure that the scripture they opened up to in the Korean Bible was correct, because they read John 1:5-6 instead (something about "God is light"). The investigator was confused what this meant and what this had to do with prayer, and the missionaries were confused why the investigator was confused. He would point up to the lights in the room and ask if it was God, but they just thought he was pointing to heaven, and so naturally the answer was "yes." Anyways, it derailed their entire lesson, and I think they spent a good 20 minutes on that one question.

One companionship of sisters asked one of our teachers about funny things we've said, one companionship, when trying to say "we want share about our Christ-centered beliefs," actually said "we want to share our capitalistic beliefs." I have no idea how the teacher managed to keep a straight face, but the group that said that didn't notice anything was wrong at the time. My teacher also mentioned that the sentances "where is my backpack?" and "my granpa is in the room" are either spelled the exact same, or sound very, very close. I'm curious what things I've said that I had no intention of saying.

Just the other day, Elder Stapley and I were teaching our investigator about baptism and the Holy Ghost to try to get him to commit to be baptized. I made the invitation, and he agreed to be baptized, but he seemed a little confused. In Korean-Chinese, 3 and 4 sound very similar, so I think I asked him to be baptized on July 40th instead of the 30th. He still accepted, which is good, but he definately was not sure about what I was trying to say. He then asked me if that (the after we resolved the fact that I was trying to say "30") was a Saturday, because he had time then. I hadn't thought that far ahead (July 30th is the day after we leave, so I assumed that was a safe day...) and so I could only answer "Um, maybe?" He thought for a second, and then told me it was like a Tuesday. We agreed to make it the Saturday after that, but from this, I've learned to plan for every detail...

To answer some of Mom's questions: I have no idea what our travel plans are going to be as far as going to Korea goes. Rumor has it that we get itineraries next Friday (the 19th), but I don't know how true this is. I think the other older districts got theirs 3-5 days before leaving, so it might be awhile before I know what's going on for certain.

I haven't stopped taking the medicine, so I have no idea if my coughs are gone, but it seems that I'm still coughing a little in the evening, so I'm not sure that it's gone (the doctor says he thinks it's allergies, so it might not go away until summer's done/I go to Korea). We'll see I guess. Other than that and being tired sometimes, I'm doing fine though! :)

Yes, I've opened the package you sent me. Thanks for all the food! It was interesting to try them out, and I ended up sharing a lot of it with my district. For some reason, everyone compared them to cornflakes - "Oh, these taste like salty cornflakes! And these are cinnamon cornflakes!" They were a little strange at first, but they were delicious! People in the district especially liked the white grape hard candy. I left it in the classroom on P-day so whoever dropped by could take one, and the whole bag was all but gone in around 6 hours.

I don't think there's much more I need before going to Korea. Worst case, I'll probably be able to buy it there.

Since you seem really curious about dessert, here's the answer: We have dinner at 5:40 most days, and while we're at dinner, they have a cooler with ice cream in it (ice cream bars, fudge bars, that sort of thing), so if I want, I can get dessert then. I'm usually not in the mood for more food directly after dinner, so I don't get any. We've got class from 6:25 to 9:25, and I think the cafeteria is open during that time, but nobody wants to leave class to get food, so we don't get dessert there. Everyone on our floor shares the food they get though, so at nighttime, there's always people wandering around with like a pan of brownies, or a box of doughnuts, or a bag of cookies looking to get rid of it, so most people can get some sort of dessert if they're hungry.

To Jim - Yes, there's an Elder Jackson in my zone. I'm pretty sure he's from around here, so if I get the chance to talk to him, I'll ask :). And yes, apparently, knowing Japanese helps with learning Korean. I was talking with another elder about learning Korean (someone somewhere said that in a survey/study they took at the MTC, Finnish was the hardest language to learn for English speakers followed by Korean. I think Chinese would be up there, but they just learn the Romanized sounds for Chinese; I don't know if they actually learn how to read characters), and I was trying to explain why I thought that learning any language would be about the same level of difficulty. I told him that all you have to do is accept that sentences go "subject-object-verb," and the sentences should make sense, but he told me that he couldn't think that way. He literally had to skip over the object, read the verb, then read the object to understand what the sentence was saying. I thought that because I didn't actually learn Japanese (I just grew up with it), it wouldn't affect me much learning a new language, but I guess it has helped me to be more flexible in new sentence structures.

To Dad - You mentioned in your letter about giving lessons from notes. Just so you know, in order to do that, I still have to practice a lot and know roughly what I want to say before the lesson. It's not really "extemporaneous" like you said. It'll be awhile until I get to that point...

Oh, in case you were wondering, I've been getting your Dear Elders. I was a bit surprised at first, because I had no idea who would send me a Dear Elder; I didn't know you knew about it! Anyways, I haven't asked Bro. Sung directly about whether I need thermals or no, but he's mentioned how cold it can get in the winter (To paraphrase him, "The cold goes through all your clothes, no matter how much you wear, and goes into your bones."). I'll definitely need them, but I think I'll just buy them in Korea. Sung hyungjeniem recommends just buying what we need in Korea because it's better quality for a cheaper price, so I'll just do that when I get to Korea. When we were talking about it, everyone seemed disappointed that they had already done so much shopping (apparently, and "big" things like suits and jackets are better bought in Korea) - we thought we were off the hook for two years! So yeah, I'll figure out what I need in Korea and get it there.

Speaking of buying things, have you heard about the new missionary dress code? The main thing is that missionaries aren't allowed to wear backpacks anymore (one of the more sane theories I've heard about that is that it makes you look like a student instead of a missionary, especially in countries where school uniforms are standard). Side bags are pretty much required now, so that's something else I'll need to get in Korea. Other than that, just things like more specific instruction on what ties are allowed (no skinny ties, no unprofessional ties, no complicated patterns, but bright colors are okay), wider range of pants colors (khaki and light grey pants are acceptable), and I guess we can wear more sweater colors (reds and lighter blues are okay now it seems). If you want to check it out, it's on LDS.org under "Resources" and then "Missionaries," I think.

For the missionary scripture, how about D&C 68:4-5? I think it's 10ish lines. If that's too long (I don't really want to edit scripture...), then just go with Alma 5:33, which is almost exactly what the Jacob scripture said, but in fewer words.

One more thing - I don't know how much money is on my debit card, but I'm pretty sure we have to pay for the airplane luggage fees by ourselves (it gets reimbursed later), so can you make sure that I have enough money for that, as well as some extra for emergencies (I think that needs to be in cash, so I'll just take some from the ATM)? I'll try to figure out more specific details this week. Thanks!

To Lisa - If I remember, I'll ask about shoes. I doubt I'll understand the answer thoughts. Women's shoes are not my forte. As for your story about the temple, I've waited 2-3 hours once when I went to do batisms in Provo, so an hour and a half isn't too bad!

The MTC is a place of many small miracles. It's awesome to see how much prayer changes things - it's easy for Elder Stapley and I to forget to pray before planning lessons, but whenever we do, I notice that we work better, and our plans fit together much better. We said prayers before planning yesterday, and I can honestly say that I yesterday's plans are some of the best that we've ever had. Things just seem to come together and connect the way we need them to be. Sometimes when I'm really tired, I'll say a quick prayer to help me get through class without spacing out, and by the end of the class period, I feel completely awake. I've had times where I'll be looking for a perfect scripture to share to my investigator, and I just can't find it. If I pray before the next study session, I'll be able to find an awesome scripture while studying something unrelated. It's hard to explain, but I know that the Lord hears our prayers, and is contstantly answering them. Sometimes it's hard to notice all the answers and inspirations we're getting, but they're there, and as I've begun to notice them, it just makes me all the more grateful for all that I have and have been given.

Thank you for your support, love and especially prayers! I know that God is helping me and blessing me for it, and I'm grateful for that.

- Luke jangno


Notes:

"Dear Elder": A service in Provo that allows you to send e-mail and they'll print it out and deliver it to the MTC the same day.  Usually we wrote Andrew letters and sent them by normal USPS "snail mail," but a couple of times I had questions or information I wanted to get to him quickly so I used that service.