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!

3rd. Week in the MTC

this last week was pretty good, we taught the 1st lesson 
 in Mongolian on Friday..it was kinda rough to get through
 but we did it and i felt pretty good about it.we've been
 working on it throughout this week as well to get it down
 better and get the vocab memorized and we'll give it again
 tomorrow,i feel a bit more confident about it this time! 
 we've also been working on small talk type conversation
 and have started working on whats called taxi referrals,
 in other words we just talk to someone for like two minutes
 and then give them a short one minute explanation/
 testimony of God and Jesus Christ and to get them to commit
 to us to come to their house (ger) and teach them more.
 Since Mongolians are Buddhists they don't anything about 
 god so we have to start from scratch and  work our way up..
 but the funny thing is that the majority of them have seen
 the passion of Christ it got translated and it was this
 huge epidemic that swept through the country and everyone
 saw it! so most of them have heard of Jesus Christ, they
 just don't know understand His role and what He did for us,
 so that's a good thing to hit em with.. just a real quick
 explanation and them with a cliffhanger! also another
 really cool thing about Mongolians is they are so nice 
 welcoming that if you ask to come to their house they
 will say yes just about every single time and they'll
 let you in and listen to what you have to say. so we've
 been working on short conversations-and testimonies.
 this last Tuesday for our devotional we had  elder
 Dellenbach come and talk to us about how much of a
 miracle the book of Mormon is, it was really
 interesting and i wanna tell ya all about it but im
 outta time so if i remember I'll do it next week! 
 well i love you all and hope to hear from everyone shortly
 sooo... write letters!!!


 I will email to Greg any comments that are made so he can
 read them.  Greg's mom 

Second week in the MTC

I think I was getting a little too confident in the language because when I started translating the first lesson I realized just how much I didn't know about the language! but no worries I learned what I needed to be able to do it.. but now I'm working on memorizing it all and let me tell ya.. it aint as easy as memorizing my testimony! but its coming along and we're giving it tomorrow so wish me luck! Time has started to pick up speed.. it seems like I just barely wrote the last email... we started doing the call center, last week we did outbound calls which I didn't like very much cuz it just felt like I was a salesman but this week we did inbound calls where people call in to ask about the church and I liked that ALOT better, I got a family and an old man to agree to have the missionaries come and teach them about Christ so that was a neat experience because we were able to work with real people which was a nice change and somewhat nerve rackin too!

Have you ever seen the Disney movie the other side of heaven?? if not you should check it out, its about a missionary named John Groberg who went to Tonga.. well on Tuesday John Groberg came to talk to us, he brings with him a strong spirit that was felt by everyone there, he talked about how the temple is the end result in everything we do in the church, he had a lot of good insight on families and missionary work, it was a great devotional! Its interesting to watch all the other missionaries leave and to think about the day that I?ll be leaving for the airport to head to Mongolia.. We've had 3 groups so far leave in our zone and the elders that came in the same day as us leave on Monday and we'll still have 9 more weeks!! Our zone consists of everyone on our dorm floor.. We have us, the Mongolians, Malagasies, Indonesians, and a few state side english elders, so its kinda funny to walk through the halls at night and hear all the different languages! well my time is running short and I wanna thank everyone for your prayers and your support, I have felt them and I love you all. I love this work and hope and pray that the Lord will continue to shape and mold me into the missionary He needs me to be and into the man that I was foreordained to become!

Ist. week in the MTC

Well my first week is officially up! my companions name is
elder marquis, we've got a whole lot in common so its been
good! making it to the first Sunday wasn't nearly as hard
as people kept saying it is.. the first day was all just
informational which was kind of disappointing because i
wanted to jump right in to the language but no worries
because the next couple of days we got slammed with it!
they use the cyrillic alphabet which has been fun
getting used to, we can all pretty much read everything
just fine and can bear a simple testimony, by this time
next week we should be able to give the first discussion
in the language which is kinda hard to believe but not
really considering the rate we're learning, i can already
see the effects of the gift of tongues and its amazing!
there's 13 of us going, 7 elders and 6 sisters, we tie
with the largest number going at one time and double the
amount of  the most sisters to go. we had our first
devotional Tuesday night and it was awesome, it was
Robert R Steuer, he was able to bring the spirit and
we all felt it and it was a good reminder that i am where
im supposed to be, when im supposed to be and going where
im supposed to be going. the holy ghost has confirmed
that to me many times this past week.. I love this place
and im glad i get to spend twelve weeks here.. im really
excited to learn this language so i can go and teach the
people of Mongolia and bring to them our Father in Heaven's
gospel to bring them true happiness in this life! My
testimony has grown so much in the past week, im anxious
to see what eleven more will do to me! I love you all very
much and thank you for your support! by the way.. everyone
here gets like three letters a day and ive only received
two.. total! so come on make a missionary feel loved and
send me some mail!!! there's an awesome sight thats free
and i'll get the letter the same day you write it, its
called dearelder.com and all you gotta do is find my
name.. its pretty self explanatory but that would be
AWESOME!! well my time is running out, i love you all and
hope to hear from EVERYONE shortly!!