Fourth Week in MTC

Canh Baskino! 

This week has improved greatly!. This week has been an answer to my prayers. Everything has been working out the way that it needs to and it has been great! The language is slowly coming and our lessons have actually improved a lot since they told us we can't use our notes anymore. We basically get to bring some vocab with us, our scriptures and then any pamphlets. It was a little intimidating cause usually we have a whole plan written out with what we will say and how to say it but this has been a great learning experience. It has showed us what we do know and that we have come a long way since the beginning. Our lesson seems to flow better as well since we are not scrambling trying to find out what to say, instead we just listen and do our best to answer questions they may have. You are able to feel the spirit a lot more in our lessons now that we are doing this. This is part of the reason they said no more notes, we are able to let the spirit guide your thoughts and what you need to say. (For any of my friends who have no idea what I am talking about when I say that and have questions just email me and I will be happy to explain that) :) 

We also had our first Teaching Resource Center lesson. We had some return missionaries from Mongolia come down to the MTC that day and we taught them a lesson. It is similar to giving a member a lesson, it is just sharing a lesson we have prepared for them and what we thought they needed to hear. He was really nice as we struggled a little trying to teach him and get him to understand our Mongolian because we don't always know how to pronounce something, haha. but he was great and we had a lot of fun teaching him. At the end of our lesson we actually had a couple of minutes to talk to him. I asked him if we could speak to him in English now and ask a few questions and he was more than happy to. Of course I asked him about the language and when it gets better. He was like do you want the honest answer or the hopeful one and we answered the honest one. He said it takes about a year to feel comfortable with it which makes sense and he gave us some advice. It was comforting to be able to talk to someone who knew exactly what we were going through and could give us some advice about it. We also asked him what he thought about the food.... Let's just say he wasn't thrilled about it. Lol. He told us that it took some getting used to. He said that they like everything sour, especially their milk! He also said that the milk is super chunky... Can't wait to have that, you all know how much I love me some milk! He also told us about the sheep blood soup.... and how for holidays they have the goats head with the hair still on it. So that was cool. Sister B was telling me how her friend who served in Korea said that he went in with the mindset that he will love the food and never once said otherwise and he loved it! I am going to try that and see how that works. I will let you all know in about 10 weeks if it works for me;)

I am definitely loving the warm weather down here! I am trying to soak it all in before I head off to Mongolia. My teacher was saying how it is winter 8 months out of the year. It snows a couple of times in November December, then it pretty much freezes over and it is even too cold to snow again... CANT WAIT. lol She showed us a picture of her in winter and her eyelashes were literally frozen over... Don't worry i will make sure to get a pic of me with my eyelashes frozen so everyone can see! it is alright, I am surviving. No, no one likes the food.

Lastly, we started our first ELC (English Language Center) Training so that has been fun. It is a lot of reading and writing assignments but it has been a nice little break from Mongolian. It has been interesting learning how to teach English and we have even had to plan our own lessons and how we will teach them to our students. We send them to our Mentor and she reviews them and then gives us feedback on it and what was good about it and how we can improve. Lets just say the more I plan these lessons, the more excited I become to teach my kids:) 

Love,

Sister Kerby

Third Week in MTC

Hello my beautiful family and friends,

So this week I actually have no idea what has really happened... It has all kind of been a blur. I am not kidding when I say that the days here are super long and the weeks go by fast! I hope everyone has been doing well. This probably won't be a super long letter so I am sorry about that and if it is, it's probably just because I end up rambling on about something or nothing all at the same time. So bear with me... :)

So Wednesday we had some new sisters arrive here and so we had to pick them up at the front desk and take them to their rooms and show them around type thing. We also had a Branch meeting where we explained all the rules and our schedule so that was fun! I have actually been studying Charity this past couple of days and have been trying to develop that attribute in my own life. My calling as a Sister Zone Leader has actually helped a lot with this. Especially since the beginning of this week was a little rough with the language and honestly I am not quite sure why but everyone in my district was just having a hard time, but I am so much better now. Part of that is because with the new sisters, they have taken a lot of my time and I have been so focused on their needs and what help I can give them that I have shifted my focus more towards them and less on myself. Let me just say that I have so much love for these sisters. They bring such a LOUD FUN and CRAZY energy to our branch and I love it! They are from Tonga, Samoa, and the Marshall Islands so it has been great getting to know them! I have been able to serve these wonderful sisters and have gained a great friendship with all of them. Don't worry I will attach a picture of them so you can see how cute they all are!

I think that this has been exactly what I needed. Another thing that has helped me is something my teacher said to us the other day. He said, "Pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on you." I have come to learn that this is not something that I can do on my own. I need to put my trust in Heavenly Father and in His time. By working diligently and trying my best to be doing what I need to will allow him to make up the rest. As long as I am giving my 100 percent, Heavenly Father will recognize that. I am truly grateful for this experience. It has probably been one of the hardest decisions I have made but I know it will bring blessings to not only my life but to the ones I will be serving.

I already love the people I am about to serve and I haven't even met them yet! I can't wait to be able to teach them and to be able to learn from them as well. So, I suppose I will explain this weeks title for you. We sang this song for our devotional this week and it has been stuck in Sister B's and my head all week! I will do a brief explanation of this song and what it means. The movie The Other Side of Heaven which is based on the actual Elder who served in Tonga and the experiences he went through. I don't know when he began doing this but later in his life he started teaching in a prison and he taught them about the gospel and he brought hope into their life and forever changed them. This song was written for him by these prisoners. Our choir director was asked by him one time to sing this song before he spoke one evening which is how he got a copy of this song. So that is the story behind my title. Exciting I know... haha

Language Update: Like I mentioned earlier, it is difficult but I am slowly getting the hang of it. I guess you could say for only being here a little over 2 weeks I am doing pretty well. When we were planning our lesson for our investigator, Sis. B and I wrote it out in English and then we would say it in Mongolian. Usually we write it out in Mongolian and just read it but this time we wanted to see if we could do it and we did! It helped us realize that we actually know a lot more than we think we do. We have been sent here for a reason and Heavenly Father knows us a lot better than we know ourselves and He knows what we are capable of. I hope everyone who reads this keeps that in mind:) I love you all!

Companion Update: Sis B is hilarious as always. This week she has been into hashtags and so pretty much everything we say has one. For example: #winning #awkward. I love her, she definitely keeps things fun. 

Anyways, I think that is about all I have for this week! I love you all and hope that each of you are doing well and have a great weekend!

Love,

Sister Kerby

Second Week in MTC

Hello Everyone!

I have been super busy. My schedule is pretty much eat, sleep, study and then 9 hours of class each day! I can't believe that I have already been here over a week! Time has really flown by! As you may have noticed, my p days are on Friday so that is when I will be able to reply to everyone! So don't worry if you haven't heard from me in a while, I haven't forgotten about you! So for those of you who are worried that you can't write a lot to me because I don't have a whole lot of time on the computer, I suggest going to dear elder on the LDS website or even searching in google for that. It is basically an online thing like email except they print out the email for me and then give it to me like it’s a letter. This way I will be able to read it and take some notes and then get back to you. ;) 

This week has been a roller coaster. I don't even know where to begin. I guess I will talk to a little about how class is going. It is definitely getting better! We are understanding a lot more and although it is frustrating at times I have come to learn that I need to put all of my trust in the Lord and as long as I continue to study diligently, He will be able to help me. So we teach our "investigator" every day and on our fourth time, we had prepared this amazing lesson for him. We had it all outlined and knew exactly what we wanted to say. When we started teaching about the Atonement, he started asking us questions. Now this was totally off topic and we didn't plan on any questions really but something great happened. I understood exactly what he was asking and was able to answer all his questions so that he could understand. I know for a fact that this was not me. I was able to recall where the answers to his questions were in our little Mongolian book and be able to teach him. This was such a neat experience and at the end we invited him to be baptized which he said YES to! Now I know this is just role play and not a real situation but it was definitely something that I needed to experience because it helped strengthen me as well as my testimony. Heavenly Father does answer our prayers and he is there for us always. We only need to be willing to listen.

On a different subject, we got our sponsor papers the other day! So exciting! I will be teaching at the Logarithm Secondary School which will be kindergarten to 9th graders. I am so unbelievably excited and can’t wait to meet all my kids! The best part though is that my teacher was actually sponsored by the same people so I get to ask him questions about it. So far he said that they are pretty wealthy and they treat you very well! They take you on little field trips like into the country, feed you really well and may even give you some of the cultural clothing that they wear. I will be teaching the class by myself and then my companion basically will just sit there since they won't be sponsored by the same people so that will be a cool experience but one that I am slightly nervous about but I know that I will not be alone. 

Something else he told us it what they eat... now this will be interesting... they eat horse, lamb, camel, and wolf.... now I don’t know about you but this is going to be one interesting experience but one that I look forward to! He also said that we are able to ride the camels there so YEES people, I will get to ride a camel :) haha. 

Sister B is awesome and she has been a great example to me and we have tons of fun together. We actually just got called to be the Sister Training leaders for the zone so we will be helping the new sisters that transfer in and showing them around and making sure everyone is doing alright so that will be fun! 

Well this is all that I have time for so I will make sure to keep you all updated! I love you bunches!

hiretay! (Love) definitely not how you spell it in Mongolian but that’s the best i can do, it’s at least how you pronounce it... sort of... lol

Sister Kerby

First week in MTC

Sain baina uu!

 Hello my wonderful family and friends, I love you all! I wish that I could share with you what I have learned with the language but sadly they don't have the Mongolian Alphabet on the keyboard here. Haha. It's a little hard knowing what to write since it has only been a couple of days, but I feel like so much has happened in this short period of time. My first day here was a little overwhelming especially when I was trying to figure everything out and get used to it all. There is such a difference here and having the type of schedule we do is tiring but it is so great! I have been able to learn so much already and have been blessed when it comes to learning the language. There is a great spirit here at the MTC and I am lucky to be able to feel that each day. So let me tell you about my first experience dealing with the Mongolian language! I walk into class the first day and Sister Largin is speaking in only Mongolian to me and I'm just looking at her like huh? Of course she just smiles and then has the sister next to me show me to what I needed to be doing. It is really nice having all the Sisters and Elders together and being able to learn it all at the same time, it makes it feel not so awkward when you are speaking because we are all learning it together! So, our district is HUGE! and by huge I mean it is 7 Elders and 6 sisters! That is a lot when it comes to a Mongolian District. Last transfer they had only 4 sisters and 1 Elder. This just shows how much the Lord needs us! He wants us to spread the gospel and be able to teach all His children. I also got my first companion, her name is Sister Bollwinkel and she is so cute. She is from Gilbert, Arizona. I love her and she has been such a great companion! We are so similar which is awesome because that means we get along great! We both have so much in common. Lets just say that she has made these first couple of days a lot easier. Moving on to the MTC food.... alright talk about not the greatest stuff in the world. Most of it I have been afraid to touch because its totally gonna mess my stomach up. I will be getting enough of that in Mongolia so no thank you! lol. Sister Bollwinkel and i did find one thing that we liked, it was their cookies. Oh my goodness talk about delicious! And today they are having creamery ice cream which we are both looking forward to! We have basically been surviving on wraps and salads and caffeine free coca cola which actually is the best thing ever! For some reason it tastes a lot better here!  Today we went to the temple and as we were waiting for the rest of our District to show up, we ran into a Sister from Mongolia who is going to serve in Temple Square. Let me tell you, she is seriously the cutest thing ever! She makes me so excited to officially be in Mongolia and serving the people there! I was able to say the few lines in mongolia that I know to her and she was so happy to be talking to someone in her native language. She even said I was using the correct pronunciation of everything which let me tell you is not easy and I was surprised to hear that but you know what, the gift of tongues is real and as I keep the spirit with me I know that I will continue to learn the language and will be blessed! Right now we are able to bear our simple testimonies and we know a couple of other phrases like bye and thank you and we figured out how to say, we are missionaries from the church of jesus christ. It is amazing and I am loving everything about being here. for my next email sister bollwinkel and I will make a video of us speaking and we will attach it so I am super excited for that! I can't wait for everyone to hear it. Its going to be awesome, just like we are! 

There is more that I wish i could share but sadly I am running out of time and I suppose you will just have to wait until next Friday to hear from me. I love you all and hope that everyone is doing great! Feel free to write me back, I would love to hear from you guys. Just make sure you reply to just me and not send a group one out;) I had to send this letter to everyone since I was limited on time but wanted to make sure everyone was able to hear from me and about my experience so far! You are all in my prayers! 

 

Баяртай! (Goodbye in Mongolian) Not as hard to pronounce as you would think! I copied and pasted this from an email which is how I got this.

Love,

Kerby Ectch (Sister) Of course not the proper spelling but thats how you pronounce it ;) have fun with that!

 

 

 

 

Day 1 at the MTC

We had a great trip up to Provo with Kristin and was able to visit with one of her friends Hailey from school. Brooke, Clayton, Ady and Phillip came by the hotel to visit.  We dropped Kristin off at the MTC (Missionary Training Center)  on Wednesday September 2nd at 1:15pm after spending the morning with her and going to the Provo Temple. It was a very quick but sweet goodbye. She definitely was ready to go and start her new life as a missionary.