Hey all, I literally cannot believe how fast this last week has gone. Mason showed up last Wednesday and has class right in the next class and lives on my floor! We see each other all the time. Thanks to eveyone who's written me on DearElder, seriously just like five words on how your life is would be awesome. And Abbey I would totally write you a letter but you live in Wales, and so I have no idea where to address it to. Also, sorry to my parents! I had no idea you guys weren't on my email list...
This week has been awesome. I love my zone, which is the largest zone in the entire MTC clocking in with about 90 missionaries. We have five languages in my zone and I can have conversations with four of them... Dutch is a little more sketchy than Swedish and Norwegian, and Icelandic is just impossible. Last week I told you the MTC was kinda like Hogwarts... but my district has convinced me that it's more like the Hunger Games, and this is why: We litterally have Districts, I'm district 37J. We also have reapings because every Sunday every missionary has to write a talk and they randomly select one elder and one sister to give them during the meeting. We also are inclosed by a fence, and occasionally see peacekeepers with fancy technology that we don't have access to driving around in vehicles. Yup. Also, remember that four note whistle that Katniss and Rue use to say they're safe? People do it here all the time. As an experiment I tried to create a chain reaction in the lunch room. I whistled the four notes really loudly, and seconds later the entire room was filled with missionaries whistling the safety notes right back. It lasted for about 10 or 15 minutes of different people whistling across the whole room haha!
So if you go to the MTC and look at dorm room 14M on the second floor window on the North side you will see a cupcake that somebody threw. It stuck to the window, and has been there ever since I got to the MTC. It drives my companion absolutely nuts. It demonstrates very well his incredible ability to turn mole hills into mountains. Everytime we walk upstairs he sees that cupcake stuck to the window and gets upset for the next twenty minutes as he tells me all about his plans to get that cupcake down. So far his worst idea was to throw a second cupcake at the first one. His name is Ældste Read and he is great though. He struggles slightly with the language but he is literally the hardest worker in our entire district. He is always the first one up and hasnt once fallen asleep during personal study which for some reason takes place in a very comfortable chair a few minutes after we wake up in the morning.
(cont.)I found some of my favorite Danish words this week. I kid you not the word for Stereo in Danish is "Ghettoblaster". Pronounced just how you think it should be. So that's awesome. Also Abe in Danish means monkey, so that's appropriate. The Danish is coming really well, I had to practice street contacting with my teacher Bror Pullan who refused to break character even when I introduced myself as Bror Pullan and pointed to my nametag which I had switched with his own when he wasn't looking. The conversation actually went really well though. My companion afterward told me he didn't understand what I was saying... but I asked my teacher how he was doing, and about his family, and if he'd ever gone to church with them. He laughed at the idea, and when I asked him if he would like to learn about our church he asked why. I hadn't planned how to answer that question but I managed to answer without leaving Danish by telling him that our church can bring Joy. After explaining what prayer was he seemed interested in the idea of being able to talk to God in order to feel his love so I got him to agree to letting us come back to teach him about prayer and about our "book". It was neat that I was able to say all that and more in a language I knew next to nothing about a few weeks ago. Despite all my Danish, I'm still completely lost on how to sew a button back onto my brand new suit that fell off during sacrament. I'll probably ask a Søster for help.
Speaking of Sisters I found the cutest girl of my life here, of all places. Totally got a handshake... so I'm in there I guess... Oh well.
A lot of you have been asking about my favorite and least favorite things here, so let me tell you they are both the same thing: the people. Just as an example we had to say goodbye to two Sur Nam (no idea on the spelling) elders who got reassigned temporarily because of visa problems. Everyone got the idea to go sing to them in their dorm. A few minutes later I was sitting on top of their closet because we had no room, and by my count their were 63 elders packed into a room that can barely fit three beds. We all sang them Army or Helamen and God Be With You Till We Meet Again. It was really really cool of everyone to do for these two elders. The spirit was really strong in that room. Everone here is so genuine and friendly. However, sometimes being around the same people for so long especially ones that have gone crazy from being in the MTC for 5 or 6 weeks gets tedious. But I deal with it.
A close second on the favorites is the gym time though. I didn't realize how much I missed basketball, but I love it here. I'm playing better than I ever did in High School. One of the starting bigs from Skyline just arrived in my zone and I got on his team twice in a row and nobody could stop us. The games are actually really high level because with three on three the top games are all players that played high school ball and I've been able to be on the best team almost everyday and people don't want to guard me just cause I'm small anymore that they've seen me playing. My shot is on, and my passing is better than it's ever been in my life. Anyway... me and the skyline big challenged our two zone leaders to two on two tomorrow because they're generally accepted as the best players but we think we can beat them.
Don't think I have a lot more to say, except to try out DearElder or else send a letter to me at my MTC address, I love mail! Best time of the day is mail time! I promise I write back haha :) Also, first person to ask me for them on DearElder can have two free meal passes to the Old Spaghetti factory... I found them in my backpack and can't exactly use them haha!
Well I'm halfway through, there was a debate in our district on whether today was the halfway point or if yesterday was. I didn't really care either way because one day is nothing here. Time doesn't flow the way it does on the outside. We'll struggle to remember what happened in the morning of a day because it seemed so far off, but be able to recall details from weeks ago as if it had just happened. It's interesting. Også, I was put in charge of the sacrament each Sunday so now I pretty much have total power.
I have been seeing Conner and Trevin a lot more. Apparently my emails have been going to the wrong Conner Johnson though so thats a little awkard... it was interesting when me and Conner started yelling at each other in a Danish Russian stand off after I slipped a napkin underneath his suspenders. I have no idea what he was yelling at me but I told him in a very angry voice that I loved him, I thought his tie was very fine looking, and that he was a beautiful man.
All of the Dutch missionaries left this week making us Danish and the two Icelandic missionaries the next group to leave which is super weird to me. We will probably get our flight plans in a week or two and if our visas come through I will be in Denmark before I know it! Once again we packed in 57 elders into a room that struggles to fit 3 beds and sang our hearts out to say goodebye to our Nederlansk and Sur Nam/SouthCarolinaDueToVisaProblems missionarires. Its a really cool experience. The language keeps on getting better and better. This week I learned that the word for Lawyer is Nerd and that kids often use that as an insult.... sorry Mom!
We had a Swedish sub because our teacher had some car problems the other day and so I got a chance to teach him with Ældste Warner who isnt my companion. I was amazed at how easy it was teaching with him even though we had zero time to prepare. Warner is one of the Ældster (plural form of Ældste) I am better friends with and he really has a hold of the language and so this lesson felt so much more like a conversation rather than a rehearsed talk. My lessons with my companion have been interesting and I actually pulled the teacher out of class for a minute to talk to him fordi during our lessons my companion would literally only say a sentence or two and I would end up talking to the investigator for 20 minutes on my own. We discussed ways I could get my companion more involved and willing to talk during the lessons in the future and after planning the lessons down to a tee and having my companion rehearse what he was going to say with me the next lesson was a bit better. There were a few moments when I literally just stared at him for over ten seconds of awkward silence after a question and waited for him to answer it rather than me. I helped him by slipping him a few of the words he needed or explaining what had been said, and by the end of it we actually had a pretty good lesson and it actually worked my Danish a lot more than a normal lesson would have. I guess there was a good reason we got put together here at the MTC!
Dallin gets here next week and he is gonna be in the same zone as me and Mason! Pretty much Scandinavia is the best. Like I said before our zone is the biggest in the MTC and somehow I got the chance to bless the sacrament twice in a row and we are now in charge of preparing it and making sure it gets blessed each week. I have no blessed the sacrament more in the MTC then I ever did at my home ward and I really enjoy it. Mason made me promise to let him do it next week, so we pretty much have a monopoly going on.
Anyway, I want to hear from all of you! Mail is really the best thing that breaks up the routine here! DearElder, or regular letters are fantastisk! Three lines on your life are three more lines than I would know without it. Also, if anyone is sending a package it would be made a zillion times better if they included the days newspaper in it. Ældste Madsen got a newspaper in his package today and it was some of the best entertainment we had on a P Day because we love hearing about the outside! I actually got to get out of the MTC twice because my companion needed to go to the pharmacy down the street to get some medicine. I was hoping I would see someone that I knew... but all I got were a bunch of random people in cars that I dont know waving to the missionaries. It was kind of interesting to be on the other side of that.
Hey all, I literally cannot believe how fast this last week has gone. Mason showed up last Wednesday and has class right in the next class and lives on my floor! We see each other all the time. Thanks to eveyone who's written me on DearElder, seriously just like five words on how your life is would be awesome. And Abbey I would totally write you a letter but you live in Wales, and so I have no idea where to address it to. Also, sorry to my parents! I had no idea you guys weren't on my email list...
ReplyDeleteThis week has been awesome. I love my zone, which is the largest zone in the entire MTC clocking in with about 90 missionaries. We have five languages in my zone and I can have conversations with four of them... Dutch is a little more sketchy than Swedish and Norwegian, and Icelandic is just impossible. Last week I told you the MTC was kinda like Hogwarts... but my district has convinced me that it's more like the Hunger Games, and this is why: We litterally have Districts, I'm district 37J. We also have reapings because every Sunday every missionary has to write a talk and they randomly select one elder and one sister to give them during the meeting. We also are inclosed by a fence, and occasionally see peacekeepers with fancy technology that we don't have access to driving around in vehicles. Yup. Also, remember that four note whistle that Katniss and Rue use to say they're safe? People do it here all the time. As an experiment I tried to create a chain reaction in the lunch room. I whistled the four notes really loudly, and seconds later the entire room was filled with missionaries whistling the safety notes right back. It lasted for about 10 or 15 minutes of different people whistling across the whole room haha!
So if you go to the MTC and look at dorm room 14M on the second floor window on the North side you will see a cupcake that somebody threw. It stuck to the window, and has been there ever since I got to the MTC. It drives my companion absolutely nuts. It demonstrates very well his incredible ability to turn mole hills into mountains. Everytime we walk upstairs he sees that cupcake stuck to the window and gets upset for the next twenty minutes as he tells me all about his plans to get that cupcake down. So far his worst idea was to throw a second cupcake at the first one. His name is Ældste Read and he is great though. He struggles slightly with the language but he is literally the hardest worker in our entire district. He is always the first one up and hasnt once fallen asleep during personal study which for some reason takes place in a very comfortable chair a few minutes after we wake up in the morning.
(cont.)I found some of my favorite Danish words this week. I kid you not the word for Stereo in Danish is "Ghettoblaster". Pronounced just how you think it should be. So that's awesome. Also Abe in Danish means monkey, so that's appropriate. The Danish is coming really well, I had to practice street contacting with my teacher Bror Pullan who refused to break character even when I introduced myself as Bror Pullan and pointed to my nametag which I had switched with his own when he wasn't looking. The conversation actually went really well though. My companion afterward told me he didn't understand what I was saying... but I asked my teacher how he was doing, and about his family, and if he'd ever gone to church with them. He laughed at the idea, and when I asked him if he would like to learn about our church he asked why. I hadn't planned how to answer that question but I managed to answer without leaving Danish by telling him that our church can bring Joy. After explaining what prayer was he seemed interested in the idea of being able to talk to God in order to feel his love so I got him to agree to letting us come back to teach him about prayer and about our "book". It was neat that I was able to say all that and more in a language I knew next to nothing about a few weeks ago. Despite all my Danish, I'm still completely lost on how to sew a button back onto my brand new suit that fell off during sacrament. I'll probably ask a Søster for help.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Sisters I found the cutest girl of my life here, of all places. Totally got a handshake... so I'm in there I guess... Oh well.
A lot of you have been asking about my favorite and least favorite things here, so let me tell you they are both the same thing: the people. Just as an example we had to say goodbye to two Sur Nam (no idea on the spelling) elders who got reassigned temporarily because of visa problems. Everyone got the idea to go sing to them in their dorm. A few minutes later I was sitting on top of their closet because we had no room, and by my count their were 63 elders packed into a room that can barely fit three beds. We all sang them Army or Helamen and God Be With You Till We Meet Again. It was really really cool of everyone to do for these two elders. The spirit was really strong in that room. Everone here is so genuine and friendly. However, sometimes being around the same people for so long especially ones that have gone crazy from being in the MTC for 5 or 6 weeks gets tedious. But I deal with it.
A close second on the favorites is the gym time though. I didn't realize how much I missed basketball, but I love it here. I'm playing better than I ever did in High School. One of the starting bigs from Skyline just arrived in my zone and I got on his team twice in a row and nobody could stop us. The games are actually really high level because with three on three the top games are all players that played high school ball and I've been able to be on the best team almost everyday and people don't want to guard me just cause I'm small anymore that they've seen me playing. My shot is on, and my passing is better than it's ever been in my life. Anyway... me and the skyline big challenged our two zone leaders to two on two tomorrow because they're generally accepted as the best players but we think we can beat them.
Don't think I have a lot more to say, except to try out DearElder or else send a letter to me at my MTC address, I love mail! Best time of the day is mail time! I promise I write back haha :) Also, first person to ask me for them on DearElder can have two free meal passes to the Old Spaghetti factory... I found them in my backpack and can't exactly use them haha!
Jeg kan lide jer mine venner!
-Ældste Durrant
Well I'm halfway through, there was a debate in our district on whether today was the halfway point or if yesterday was. I didn't really care either way because one day is nothing here. Time doesn't flow the way it does on the outside. We'll struggle to remember what happened in the morning of a day because it seemed so far off, but be able to recall details from weeks ago as if it had just happened. It's interesting. Også, I was put in charge of the sacrament each Sunday so now I pretty much have total power.
ReplyDeleteI have been seeing Conner and Trevin a lot more. Apparently my emails have been going to the wrong Conner Johnson though so thats a little awkard... it was interesting when me and Conner started yelling at each other in a Danish Russian stand off after I slipped a napkin underneath his suspenders. I have no idea what he was yelling at me but I told him in a very angry voice that I loved him, I thought his tie was very fine looking, and that he was a beautiful man.
All of the Dutch missionaries left this week making us Danish and the two Icelandic missionaries the next group to leave which is super weird to me. We will probably get our flight plans in a week or two and if our visas come through I will be in Denmark before I know it! Once again we packed in 57 elders into a room that struggles to fit 3 beds and sang our hearts out to say goodebye to our Nederlansk and Sur Nam/SouthCarolinaDueToVisaProblems missionarires. Its a really cool experience. The language keeps on getting better and better. This week I learned that the word for Lawyer is Nerd and that kids often use that as an insult.... sorry Mom!
We had a Swedish sub because our teacher had some car problems the other day and so I got a chance to teach him with Ældste Warner who isnt my companion. I was amazed at how easy it was teaching with him even though we had zero time to prepare. Warner is one of the Ældster (plural form of Ældste) I am better friends with and he really has a hold of the language and so this lesson felt so much more like a conversation rather than a rehearsed talk. My lessons with my companion have been interesting and I actually pulled the teacher out of class for a minute to talk to him fordi during our lessons my companion would literally only say a sentence or two and I would end up talking to the investigator for 20 minutes on my own. We discussed ways I could get my companion more involved and willing to talk during the lessons in the future and after planning the lessons down to a tee and having my companion rehearse what he was going to say with me the next lesson was a bit better. There were a few moments when I literally just stared at him for over ten seconds of awkward silence after a question and waited for him to answer it rather than me. I helped him by slipping him a few of the words he needed or explaining what had been said, and by the end of it we actually had a pretty good lesson and it actually worked my Danish a lot more than a normal lesson would have. I guess there was a good reason we got put together here at the MTC!
ReplyDeleteDallin gets here next week and he is gonna be in the same zone as me and Mason! Pretty much Scandinavia is the best. Like I said before our zone is the biggest in the MTC and somehow I got the chance to bless the sacrament twice in a row and we are now in charge of preparing it and making sure it gets blessed each week. I have no blessed the sacrament more in the MTC then I ever did at my home ward and I really enjoy it. Mason made me promise to let him do it next week, so we pretty much have a monopoly going on.
Anyway, I want to hear from all of you! Mail is really the best thing that breaks up the routine here! DearElder, or regular letters are fantastisk! Three lines on your life are three more lines than I would know without it. Also, if anyone is sending a package it would be made a zillion times better if they included the days newspaper in it. Ældste Madsen got a newspaper in his package today and it was some of the best entertainment we had on a P Day because we love hearing about the outside! I actually got to get out of the MTC twice because my companion needed to go to the pharmacy down the street to get some medicine. I was hoping I would see someone that I knew... but all I got were a bunch of random people in cars that I dont know waving to the missionaries. It was kind of interesting to be on the other side of that.
Well, Ive gotta go.
I er glimmerende! Ældste Durrant
Vi Ses!