Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Second Missionary Email: Drama and Loss

Monday, February 2, 2009 2:22 PM

Ahhh, my last email got lost, so now I have like a couple minutes, like 12, to write this one. Hopefully I can do it in six so I can check my email again today.

This week has been the biggest drama fest of my life. I already dislike DTRs and have avoided having them in my life. I would say I can probably count on my fingers previous to my mission the amount of DTRs I've had. However, this week at the MTC has been an insane amount of DTRs. Well, at least I refer to them as such, even though we aren't really defining our relationship persay, but we are doing some kind of figuring out, and I don't like it. In fact, twice this week I have stayed up past quiet time to try to smooth things out. I know dad posts these emails online so if you want more detail on that, write me and if I have time next week and the computer doesn't CLOSE my email, I'll tell you about it.

You need to be careful who you are SYLing with. In the Bible it talked about how if you talk in tongues and nobody understands then it is not a good thing. Well by my interpretation of that scripture. Most of the new missionaries are beginning Chinese speakers. They can pray, testify, and say, hi what is your name. Obviously they can't understand a long stream of Chinese and sometimes if a leader refuses to translate, it can be frustrating for some.

But for something dad can post online, the MTC hasn't been the experience I was hoping for quite yet. But alas, maybe after all these discussions this week next week will lead us in a different direction. My companion and I were talking about how we can see the vision of what it is supposed to be, but because of all the hindrances, it has been impossible to quite get there yet. But we have hope that it will come.

I'm grateful for the older elders. My companion Sister Ackerson and I have kind of let some of them become our teachers. We SYL with them at meals and they teach us new words. They are patient with us and always teaching us. They also shield us from a couple of Elders that have a tendency to flirt with the sisters, for our sake as well as those Elders. Hahaha. But it doesn't bother me. I'm outgoing and I realize that people don't change at the drop of a hat. And so, they will change slowly but surely. It helps to just remember they are 19 year old boys (even the "older" elders are 19, they just have been learning Chinese for 8 weeks)

Sunday is my favorite day. We get to have talks by members of the 70 and then after amazing talks we get to watch a movie. Sister A and I were talking about how cool it is that we get a Sunday movie. This week we watched the Testaments. Or however you spell that.

I'm really upset my last email closed because now I have 4 minutes left so I'll have to wait until next week to check my email...but yeah, the MTC is an adjustment. And mission politics already. But everything comes for a reason, and I'm just blessed that I got the best companion in our entire zone. Because we have fun and we aren't hardliners...everyone in our zone is our friends because we don't judge them for their mistakes and weaknesses and disobedience at least not to a harsh extent...but we encourage them in their strengths. I'm glad that we have become friends with the other districts. I will be sad when they leave because my teachers will be gone! But then we will become the teachers. Haha. Woooo.

It's crazy, days creep by and weeks fly. Oh by the way, they drew my blood and it's getting worse. I can see internal bleeding and huge bruises. It started hurting yesterday. We will have to take me to the health clinic tomorrow. Wei zhanglao said that he had that happen and they had poked all the way through the vein. SICK. Hopefully that's not true or he said it takes over a month to heal,

DONT FORGET TO DEAR ELDER ME!

Love yall

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