Another week

Halo Keluarga Saya! (Hello my family :)

Another week has come and gone here at the MTC. I’ve been noticing that the days blend a lot more, and there really aren’t too many things that happen anymore that either surprise me or are enough to take notice. So this could be a super lame email because my journal has had a super lame week. Sorry!

However, today is a pretty significant day, besides being pday. I’M OFF MY MEDICINE TODAY!!! So guess what…now I can play bball in gym and tell you about it! Haha, mom please don’t be mad…lol I’ve only played twice! But I had to! And I didn’t get cut once. Not that that justifies it, but…well, I figured that twice in an entire month is pretty darn good. Usually I just go and run and do my exercises…which by the way, I’ve worked my way up to 20 minutes around the track! I run between 2-3 miles on the track in 20 minutes, so I figure I’m doin pretty good there. I didn’t think I’d be able to run without music, but I just recite the First Vision in Indo while I run around, and it keeps me busy for the most part. I’ve almost got it down now :) I also noticed just this week that they have records here at the MTC for free throws and 3 pointers…so I will be focusing on that from now on. I have to have one of the employees come and watch me, but I got 8, then 7, then 11 the other day before I missed and had to start over. But that’s not too bad…I hafta beat 21. And now I have 5 weeks to do it, so I WILL be doing it! And after the free throws, I’ll be working on the 3’s (I hafta beat 13 there). Can I just say that I LOVE basketball? Now all those free throws and 3’s I’ve shot over the last 10 years of my life will REALLY have an effect…a record at the MTC! Haha. I guess if they can’t count at state, they might as well count somewhere else, right?

We’ve been working on Lesson 2 in Indonesian all week, and it’s finally starting to come along. We found out that we can draw pictures as we teach (duh!), so that really helps us remember what we’re supposed to be talking about as we go along. Especially with the Plan of Salvation (Kesalematon Rencana…yes, the language is finally starting to stick now, so I’ll randomly be putting the Indo word after the English one if I feel like it’s significant enough :). I’ve been working on specific words all week that I need for my lesson, and it has taken me all week to get them to stick, but they’re sticking, and I’ll be darned if they go anywhere. I’ve worked out a pretty good schedule to help me remember words that I’ve learned and I need to remember, and then also words that I knew at one time, but have forgotten because it’s been a few weeks since I’ve looked at them. They go back to the “learn” pile. I should send a picture of all the words I still need to learn. I have about 100 or so words that I know without having to think too hard now, but I have about that many on flashcards still, while I have about 4 pages of about 100-130 words on each of words that I still need to learn. And the list just keeps growing… I haven’t even really started working on communicating with people yet (ya know, the stuff past “hey how are ya? What do you like to do? Where are you going?”…I can ask those questions, but then once they answer…I’m lost!). I figure that if I can get the lessons down, then learning how to talk to people will come a lot quicker when I’m over in Indo. Might not be true, but for now that’s all I can handle! We started on Lesson 3 yesterday, but this is a lot of the same vocab for the most part, so hopefully it’ll go well…we’ll see.

Saturday we were in the TRC again, and this time we only had one investigator show up. It was Jackie! :) So that made me happy, but it stunk for all of us because our teacher had to be an investigator, and then we split up into our Malay and Indo companionships, and we had 4 people teaching each of them. The hardest part was when Jackie would ask a question…Once we figured out what she said, we all would try answering at once, then we’d all stop at the same time, then no one would talk for a minute because we were waiting for someone else to say what they’d be starting to say just before. At least when it’s just Sis O and I, I know she’s going to answer, so I just let her unless I really have something that I want/need to say. But with the other 2 guys in there, things were a little bit crazy and overwhelming. AND I wanted to talk to Jackie more, but it wasn’t the same with the guys in there. The lesson went well tho…it was different, but it went fine. But after we’d closed (Jackie said the prayer, which was AWESOME to hear in Indo…they’re so fast and I have no idea what she said for most of it…but I’ll be there soon!), the first thing Jackie told us was, “You guys need to make sure to bear your testimonies at least at the end of the lesson, if not in other places along the way as well.” WE FORGOT TO BEAR OUR TESTIMONIES! We were so concerned about doing the lesson with 4 people, that not ONE of us remembered to bear our testimonies! I was pretty embarrassed about that, but AGAIN…it was a learning experience, and I pray that I’ll NEVER forget to do that again.

We’ve been working on a lot of vocab since I got here, but now the teachers are changing the focus from us knowing words to us being able to LISTEN and understand what people are saying with the words we know and will continue to learn. It’s been hard! They read us from the children’s BofM with the pics and stuff, and I rarely have any idea what it’s saying, except that I know the story so I’ll just guess what it’s saying, and sometimes I’m right (the pics help with that too, haha). We also listened to a General Conference talk…AHHH! It was a talk on service, but none of us had learned the word in Indo for service, so we were all SOOOO lost by the end. It was ridiculous. And fast. And holy cow. But I felt better when Bro Leo said it was especially fast because the interpreter had to keep up with Elder Oaks… He said most normal people don’t talk that fast. About all I heard or understood was kita (we), Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, BYU (all are said just like in English…that’s why, haha), Keluarga (family), Allah (God), and a few others. So ya…I actually almost fell asleep cuz I’d given up, but then I tried to refocus on picking out the words that I knew. But it was hard for sure. But I’ll be able to understand it soon….

The RC wasn’t anything too special this week. I got to chat (IM) with someone from Turkey who was Muslim, though. That was cool. He wanted to read the BofM, but we don’t have it completely in Turkish yet…total bummer, but I showed him where he could get more info in Turkish. Elder Lang had an interesting chat with someone… this guy found like 2500 graves in Iowa, and they were all buried in some different way, so since it’s along the Mormon trail he wondered if we have some sort of special way of burying people (which apparently we kinda do…dang, I worked at a funeral home for a year, and I didn’t even know that most Mormons are buried facing West? I pretty sure West, but it might be East, in significance of looking forward to the Second Coming…Dad, you can inform me more of if there are any other burial things I should know about…). It was a totally weird chat, but we laughed about for the rest of the day.

The firesides on Sunday and Tuesday were both really good. Sunday was a guy named Robert Swenson (the Director of Missionary Services), who talked about how a mission is like a kite. But he didn’t go about it the way I would’ve expected. He started out talking about that darn string, and how it just holds us down from flying even higher, and then he said that those things were kinda like our mission rules, companions, language, etc. He asked us if we felt like sometimes we just couldn’t talk the way we wanted to in the language we were speaking, how some of the rules just seemed so stupid (not gonna lie, I automatically thought of the no music rule…), or that our companions just hold us back from doing what really want to do or maybe we just don’t get along as well so it’s not very much fun. Then he changed it around, and he said that the Lord will speak for us through the Spirit as we’re trying to talk in our assigned language, so really that’s a string that keeps us attached to the ground. The mission rules really actually keep us more focused on the work we’re supposed to be doing, and also keep us safer from the adversary and other problems we could run into…so that’s another string attached to the ground. And our companions? Well, even if we don’t get along, we’re told to learn, love, and appreciate those we serve with. He really emphasized the learn part, because they are a different person with different experiences who might help you in one way or another, whether you notice it or not. So there’s another string attached to the ground. Then he said that with all these strings (he actually had about 6 or 7 examples of various things, I only summarized 3), we create a rope, and that rope makes it much harder for the kite to “fly higher.” But when you fly a kite, and the string breaks, what happens to the kite? Sure, it MIGHT fly a tiny bit higher without the string attached, but in the end, it’s the string that keeps the kite flying. Without it, the kite just crashes to the ground and breaks. COOLEST ANALOGY EVER! He said that without all those things to keep us flying, we would just be falling to the ground. Which is why it’s so important that we remember to follow all of the council from PmyG and our mission presidents, because that’s what’s going to keep us flying. I loved it!The other talk was by Stephen Nadauld, who is the President of Dixie and used? To be in the Quorum of the Seventy (he might still be…but they made it sound like he wasn’t). He gave us 4 steps of the Trial (or Trail) of Faith: Teach simple principles, Desire to believe, Take action, and Receive a witness. Then you start over with a new principle. It was really good too.I saw Elder Nielson yesterday in the cafeteria. I don’t think he was as excited to see me as I was to see him. I asked when he came in, and he said last Wednesday, so I told him how surprised I was that I hadn’t seen him before then. He said he’d seen me at one of the firesides so he’d tried to get my attention, but I’d just ignored him. Sad, huh? I obviously just hadn’t heard him, but oh well. We’ll see if I can get more out of him the next time I see him. Kel was asking about the RS General Meeting last week, so I guess I’ll tell you about how conference is going for us here at the MTC. We didn’t get to watch that meeting, because they’ll be showing it to the sister missionaries during the Priesthood session on Saturday night. All of our classes for Saturday have been cancelled, and we’ll just have some personal study time between the sessions on Saturday and Sunday. I’m sad I haven’t watched all those talks, but since Kel told me about the 2 talks that she liked the most, I’ll be paying the most attention to them, haha. Jean wrote and told me about how amazing General Conference is here, though, so I’m pretty excited. My butt will be sore, but my heart will be full! ….possibly not appropriate (tidak pantas), but it’s a true statement, ladies and gents. Those seats in the main gym are HARD! Oh ya…for all our meetings we meet in the gym, and they have bleachers that come down, and between those and the seats they set down on the floor, they can fit about… I wanna say 2500 missionaries in the gym? I might be over emphasizing that, but that’s gotta be pretty close to accurate. Anyways, it’s a lot of people, but those are always the best meetings.Well, time’s a ticking, so thanks for all the letters that I’ve been getting! It’s great to hear from everyone, and find out what’s going on in everyone’s lives. It sounded like Kel and Zak had a good showing at their open house…gotta love our family and all the support we get from them! I love you all, and I pray that all is well with each of you. I know this church is Christ’s church, and that He runs it from on high. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God, and I am SOOO excited to listen to him, along with other prophets, teach what needs to be taught to help me become a better person/missionary. Thanks again for all of the support! Love ya!

~Sister Sara :)

PS. On a side note, my district has started calling Sis O the mom, and me the mom dad…I’m not quite sure what that means, or whether it’s good or bad, but it certainly makes me laugh.