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!