Saturday -
So on Saturday, for our first class the teacher asked me to lead the discussion on our in class Book of Mormon reading. This basically means that as we read people would just comment about certain verses along the way and what they liked about them and stuff. When nobody had much to say it was kind of my job to ask questions to get people to comment and stuff. I've done this before and it's really no big deal but this week a member of our district chose chapter 60 of Alma to read. This chapter made it more difficult because this is the Epistle of Moroni to Pahoran. Basically, this whole chapter was a great upright guy, Moroni, and his jumping to conclusions and accusing Pahoran of a bunch of stuff. Seeing as the chapter was about a hero being in the wrong, it wasn't super easy to pull a lot of thoughts out of it, but we managed. There were a few good verses to discuss, and the whole thing was a good example of how no one is really perfect.
During our second class period we also learned Tagalog of course, but what I wrote down was the sentence "Bababa ba." which means "We will go down." Which is really just a super funny statement that tells a lot about the Tagalog language.
Sunday -
Sunday had the typcial schedule of Priesthood, District council (I conducted), sacrament, some type of skills training, lunch, more training, a mural walk, discussion, choir, dinner, devotional, and then videos.
The devotional was given by President and Sister Martino. Earlier in the day though, we were given emails that said for everyone to wear white long sleeve shirts and some people were really convinced that it was because the prophet was coming or something. I didn't think so myself though because when D. Todd Christofferson came we didn't have to dress nicer. When I said that everyone was like "Yeah but he was an apostle not the PROPHET!", but I insisted that the quorum of the "12 are all prophets, seers, and revelators so it shouldn't matter." To the surprise of many, it turns out it wasn't President Nelson. It was actually just our MTC President and his wife. Some people were really disappointed considering they originally thought they'd see the prophet, but in the end, they still gave some pretty good talks. They talked a lot about both of their individual conversions and how just two missionaries could have such a huge impact on so many people and really not even know it until later.
After that, we watch a devotional video. This week we watched one by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. The talk was really all over the place but was really good as well. I can't really summarize a huge main point of the talk but I did take a few small notes. One of the things he said was "If God is for you, who can be against you?" which I thought was something pretty cool to think about. If you're doing the will of our Father in Heaven, then no one will be able to stop you from completing the work he needs done. Apparently this was something Elder Uchtdorf's missionary that taught him would say. He also said it's better for people to have a "humble occupation that requires growth and work rather than a prestigious one that you don't regularly learn." Which I really just thought was interesting. He also talked about how sometimes we might not receive clear answers to all our prayers and things because not all questions have eternal consequences, and God knows that, so it's not really a big deal for Him to reveal it to you immediately.
Monday -
On Monday, I didn't really take many notes on things that happened. I think we just went to our classes and did our normal stuff. I did write that within the last couple of weeks, we haven't been doing in class role playing as much though. Instead, we approach it just like we're teaching the topics to the members of our district as themselves rather than some random person that they come up with a complete backstory on, on the spot. I think it's really helped because we focus on just teaching the topics rather than the cringe factor of being fake people. That being said, we still do individual companionship role plays with our teachers.I don't necessarily love them, but I've got far more used to them. We use this time just to teach lessons and stuff.
Tuesday -
For Tuesday, I didn't have any notes from the day except for the Tuesday night devotional. The person that gave the talk was Elder Brent H. Nielson, the Executive Director of the Missionary Department and a member of the Seventy. His wife talked first. Her talk was based around one statement that a Filipino man made to her when they served in the Philippines. When she was going to put a ladder away the Filipino guy said "No, no. I will be the one" instead of "I will do it like Americans would say. Apparently "I will be the one" is something Filipinos say frequently. She kind of related it back to Christ and how he said "I will" to lots of things and how we should figure out what we will be the ones to do. If you look in the topical guide at "I will" there's actually a ton of cool things to read.
Elder Nielson himself gave a talk about gathering Israel. He mentioned a quote from President Nelson about missionary work being of high importance and magnitude. He also talked about how being a missionary isn't about the amount of people you convert or something, but rather changing the lives of individual people. He told a story about how on his first mission in Finland as a young man he "didn't have very much success." He said that near the end of the mission he was doing very well with one man but he was unable to get him to commit to baptism before he got sent home. He had taught him all of the lessons and everything but just couldn't finish (lol Finnish) the work. After he got home he found out he got baptized and stuff and eventually lost track of him. Many years later he heard a lot about his convert and that he was a stake president and stuff and had a huge affect on the gospel growth in Finland. From this story he explained the importance of individuals and how you might not always know the major role you played in the lives of others.
Wednesday -
This day was actually really pretty busy. We had our normal morning service of cleaning the bathrooms in the R3 building. We also got some toilet paper from the janitors there because our janitors never fill ours up. I guess their just trying to prepare us for life in the Philippines without toilet paper. Oof. But anyways, we talked to them about it and they said R8 (our building) has notoriously bad janitors.
After our first piece of service we immediately showered and had to prepare for our next service activity. It's unusual to have more than one service activity at a time, but for this Wednesday, we got to host new missionaries. It was a pretty uncomfortable experience kind of.. Like to me, it wasn't super enjoyable to take missionaries away from their families and stuff. Bringing them to their dorms and stuff wasn't so bad though. It was actually pretty fun just waving to people has they were bringing new missionaries in and speaking to them in Tagalog. While we were waiting in lines we were talking to this Filipino Elder that got called to serve in Korea. It was pretty fun to talk to him in Tagalog. He spoke scary fast. Though it was a little intimidating, it was cool that we basically could understand most of what he was saying to us. He also told us that we were doing super good. I don't know if he said that just because he realized he was scaring us with his speedy quick language or if it was sincere. Either way, it was great. We were also talking to him about how popular basketball is in the Philippines and one of the elders asked him "what do they play it on" and he said on dirt or "Cemento, pero hindi gaya ng magandang cemento dito" which means "Cement, but not beautiful cement like this." as he pointed to the parking garage floor. Considering it looked like normal crappy cement, I'm just trying to imagine how bad the cement is over there. Haha.
Thursday-
Later in our second class everyone including Brother Roberts got a little off topic and started talking about seer stones and stuff which was pretty fun. Also my companion and I were looking at our Tagalog dictionary and found what the old school Tagalog alphabet looked like and I'm glad we don't have to learn it or it would have made things 10 times harder. Also Elder Earnest told me about the punctuation called an interrobang that I had never heard of. It's just a mix of an exclamation point and a question mark. Also we learned a funny word in Tagalog as well. It's "naaalaala" (you pronounce every a) which means "remember."
Friday-
Today we went to the temple and did our normal stuff. I also have seen a few more people that I know in the MTC recently including Elder Dalby and Elder Stettler. Probably the most exciting thing that we will have done this week is actually gonna happen after I've already sent this email. We're doing another TRC (lesson with members) but this time it's over Skype and with a real member family from the Philippines. It's a little stressful, but exciting too.
Pictures -
So there's a bunch of good and random pictures in here. There are a few of us with our Host stickers on. One of them is a picture of the ancient Tagalog language. Then there's the Provo temple that I go to every week, a picture of a piece of a building that says "What-E'er-Thou-Art-Act-Well-Thy-Part" which I think is a good quote to stand by. Then there's some random pictures from in the residence hall and also a picture of Elder Etcheverry that I took while we were watching him from inside the window with his new missionary he was hosting. And that's basically all.
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