Are you ready for the longest email of your life?!
Before I even got to the MTC, I was so ready to have the Cookies and Cream Chocolate milk that they have here. After one of the longest days that I've had here so far, I finally went to get some and THE VENDING MACHINE WAS BROKEN. I'm pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. It was devastating. But then we got sack breakfast the next morning and they had some there! Tender mercies are real guys hahaha. My district is super chill. We're all super stoked to learn the language so we aren't scared to speak it. The amount of times I hear "SYL" (Speak Your Language) throughout the day is ridiculous. I'm convinced that one of the best ways to bond with your district is to learn a lanugage together. So many inside jokes. So many tears from laughing so hard. It's great. My companion is Sestra Johnson from California. She's so cool. We get along so well. Probably a little too well to be honest haha. I'm pretty sure our district is annoyed with us half the time because we are constantly joking around with each other and having way too much fun. It's such a blessing having a good companion because it makes the whole MTC experience a lot better.
First week of the MTC down, and I've never been so confused by time in my life. It's only been a week, but all the days blend into each other so it just feels like it's been one super long day. It's so weird being blocked out from the rest of the world, but it's also a cool experience.
Before I even got to the MTC, I was so ready to have the Cookies and Cream Chocolate milk that they have here. After one of the longest days that I've had here so far, I finally went to get some and THE VENDING MACHINE WAS BROKEN. I'm pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. It was devastating. But then we got sack breakfast the next morning and they had some there! Tender mercies are real guys hahaha. My district is super chill. We're all super stoked to learn the language so we aren't scared to speak it. The amount of times I hear "SYL" (Speak Your Language) throughout the day is ridiculous. I'm convinced that one of the best ways to bond with your district is to learn a lanugage together. So many inside jokes. So many tears from laughing so hard. It's great. My companion is Sestra Johnson from California. She's so cool. We get along so well. Probably a little too well to be honest haha. I'm pretty sure our district is annoyed with us half the time because we are constantly joking around with each other and having way too much fun. It's such a blessing having a good companion because it makes the whole MTC experience a lot better.
My whole zone situation is so weird. Right before we got here, they moved our district to the Southeast Asian zone. So the Czech/Slovak speaking missionaries are with the Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong missionaries. It's super weird. But our zone is literally so cool. I couldn't have asked for better one. I'm pretty sure at this point I'm learning more Thai than I am Czech, but it's the best haha. It's also weird because we don't have the same schedule as our zone. We are still on the same schedule as the Finnish, Danish, Dutch, etc. missionaries. We hang out with them more than we do our actual zone. It feels like we're living a double life zone wise haha.
Learning Czech is so fun. It's crazy how much I'm learning. On our third day here we taught a lesson 100% in Czech. We got our investigator to feel the Spirit and we got him to pray for the first time in his life. After only three days of learning the language! The Gift of Tongues is so real. I definitely am nowhere near where I need to be to be an effective teacher, but I'm learning so much. I thought learning a language for 6 hours a day would be hard, but honestly the classes go by so fast. There's so much to learn, and it's so much fun.
Spiritual thoughts for the week:
We were reading in Preach My Gospel about being set apart, and it mentioned how being set apart is conditional on your faithfulness. As missionaries, and with any calling in the church, we are physically set apart with the laying on of hands, but it's up to us whether we actually set ourselves apart from the rest of the world. We can be set apart physically, but if we're still trying to have relationship with the things of the world, we aren't actually setting ourselves apart from it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but we're gonna go with it.
It's crazy how much perspective changes in the mtc. I'm learning more about the Gospel and in different ways than I ever have before. I'm having to force myself to change the way I think about things, and as a result I'm learning so much.
If you made it this far in the email, I'm impressed haha. You should get an award or something.
Love you all!
Sestra Lewis
Good to see you so happy.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are learning so many languages you could be an international substitute.
Love to hear of your success.
Love,
Bro & Sister Lilly