7th week in the MTC

Well I’m seven weeks in now! I’ve got less than two weeks left till we switch over to Mongolian permanently! I’m getting kind of nervous about it ha ha. Well last weeks lesson didn’t go quite as good as I was hoping, I started with using notes but then finished up without them, but this week I’m not even gonna take notes with me so that i'll be forced to teach without them! All the Indonesians in our zone are leavin on Tuesday.. it will be weird cuz they only got here a week before us but they’re leaving four weeks before we do and there’s about 20 of them so we're gonna be empty for a little while. It was really cool on Tuesday night for our devotional we had Elder Richard G Scott come and talk to us! He gave an awesome talk and we all learned a lot.. It was an awesome experience to have one of the Lords Apostles come and teach us! and I was only like 5 rows back so there was a couple times that we made eye contact!! well we taught English again this week, its pretty fun because we get to interact with all these new people so its a good change from sitting in our classroom all day long, it’s fun teaching, I’m excited to be able to do it in Mongolia! Part of our visa requirements is that we have to teach English for 16 hours a week, so that’s why we're starting now to learn how to teach it.. It’s funny because we all know it but to teach it is a completely different story, its fun. I can feel my testimony growing each day and I’m so glad that I can be in this place learning and growing where everything is concentrated on the gospel and strengthening your knowledge and testimony and spirit. I know that there is nothing else I would rather be doing with my life right now and I know that I am where the Lord wants me to be when He wants me to be, there is no other time in my life that I would have been prepared to serve like I am now and I know that Heavenly Father knows that and that’s why He has entrusted me to learn such a difficult language and to teach the people of Mongolia about Him and His Son Jesus Christ and to take to them the knowledge of Christ's gospel. I know that we have a Prophet of God leading our church and it’s through direct revelation that he can lead and direct the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Each day my testimony in these things and so much more grows and I have had many confirmations of these things. I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!

6th Week in the MTC

6 weeks in! Everything is going good here, the language is coming along really well, only three more weeks and we have to start talking in Mongolian exclusively for the rest of our stay here at the MTC so I‘m looking forward to that! this past week we started teaching english to the international missionaries, its been a really fun experience, english is a hard language to teach I decided! also this week we in the Referral Center we were able to get 42 missionary referrals in about an hour and a half, it was really fun and I’m looking forward to next week! We teach the 3rd lesson tomorrow, I’m not feeling as comfortable with it as I was last week, last week I taught with no notes.. Well I love you all but time is out

5th Week in the MTC

Alright so I’ve got some exciting updates… my teacher just back yesterday from spending a week in Mongolia with his wife. He said that he was in contact with the mission president there pretty much the whole time and said that he will be in contact with him daily from now on. So here’s the news… he said that it's becoming more of a proselyting mission, that we can now go up to anyone and start out talking about the church and we don’t have to go through any of the loopholes anymore. He also said that the ratio of Mongolian missionaries to American missionaries are now 2-1, there are 125 Mongolian and 75 American, so chances are extremely good that I will have a Mongolian trainer, which will be awesome! He also told us to go ahead and expect to have visa problems, he said worse case scenario we will be transferred to the states for a few weeks while everything gets worked out, and we won't know until the day we're supposed to leave, so that will be exciting! K so this part was pretty weird and he hesitated telling us but it’s a culture thing that when you’re sick in Mongolia, it’s a health remedy to drink your mother’s urine!! So as you can imagine that threw us for a loop! He said that it is pretty common to be offered some if you get sick! But he said that you can usually get out of it by saying that your mother would be offended if you drank someone else’s urine!! There’s also a bunch of other funny culture stuff he told us about but you'll just have to wait to hear about those when I get to experience them! I’ve made a break through this last week in the language and things are going really well and coming really fast! I should be able to give this week’s lesson without using any notes which will be a HUGE step for me, so wish me luck! Well I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!
awklagch burns

4th week August 6, 2009

Can you believe its been a month?? I sure can't, the first week week went by really slow but since then it all seems like one big day with a couple naps here and there. I've pretty much lost all conception of time, weeks just fly by.. Well I told you that I'd tell you a couple facts I learned about the Book of Mormon.. so today with all the technology and resources we have, it takes a group of translators on average 4 years to translate the Book of Mormon from english to another language. Joseph Smith had roughly the education of a 5th grader and translated the Book of Mormon from refined egyptian to english in 63 days! A good translator can do at most one page a day, Joseph Smith did 8-10 pages a day and during this time he had a church to run, a family to take care of and mobs chasing him.. There is no question that God had a hand in the translating the Book of Mormon. I know without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, like the Bible it is another testament that Jesus is the Christ and our Savior. I love you all!