Eighth Week in MTC

сайн байна уу!  (Hello!)

This week has been pretty busy, the countdown has officially begun! We have 11 days left here and then we will be taking off! We should be getting our flight plans soon so I am excited to receive those! Also, I finally am finished with the ELC, we received our certificates on Thursday so I am officially an English teacher! All of us are so excited, my whole district is ready to leave the MTC and we all know that this coming week is going to fly by!

I am having mixed emotions about leaving, I am excited, nervous, scared, and pretty much every other feeling you can think of. I am thankful that even though I may not know everything, I know that I have the Lord on my side and that through Him, I can do this. The students said we did great, one of the girls in our class actually came up to us and gave us a hug. We thought it was really fun. On our last day there we actually met with the board members who are creating our curriculum for teaching English in Mongolia and two of the people in there were a married couple who were working in Mongolia and so they had the chance to share with us what we would be doing. They actually changed a lot of the things and how they were going about with teaching English. So when we arrive we will be the first group to try out the new plan. They have changed it so now we don't have to plan our own lessons, the lessons will already be prepared for us and we just have to read it before hand and know what and how we want to teach it that day. We will also have a teaching companion. Instead of it just being me teaching (like they used to do it) they have changed it so that I will have a regular companion that I teach the gospel with who will be either a native Mongolian or someone from the US, and then I will have a teaching companion who will definitely be from the US who has been certified to teach English. They chose to do it this way so that President Benson could have more flexibility with the missionaries and where he can send them. Before he could really only send native Mongolians to the country side but now with this new system set up he can send more to the country side. Since there are two teachers now, when I first get there I will be paired up with a sister who I will teach with and she will train me what to do and then when President Benson thinks I am comfortable he can take the sister and send her somewhere else like to another school or to the country side if he needs to or if she gets sick I can still teach then he will send her back when he wants to. So there will be times when I teach alone and times when we teach together. But with this system there will always be at least one teacher so if he wants to send me to the country side he can because the other sister will be there to teach. Largin эгч was saying how when she was serving in the country side, she would be walking down one of the dirt paths and she would look up and see 50 eagles flying over head. I thought you would find that cool!  I don't know how long I will be teaching there. Largin эгч said that she had to teach 9 hours a day so I think it just depends..... I know that we teach about a total of 12 to 14 hours each week but how that is all scheduled out, I am not sure. I won't find out until I get there. Largin эгч showed us her daily planner and it was full of investigators who were referred to her. I will be kept busy. It will be so cool to see the Lord's work progressing and I am so blessed to be apart of this. 

So TRC Skype is both return missionaries who served in Mongolia, Mongolians who live near by, and also Mongolians who are currently living in Mongolia. This Wednesday for example, Sister B and I had the opportunity to teach a Mongolian member who is currently living in Mongolia. It was so neat to speak with him and for the most part we understood him. He was pretty cool, in fact he was more than cool? Why? Well because the church is so small in Mongolia, there are only about 100 who are still active if even that, and the member we were talking to is serving as Stake Clerk, Bishopric Counselor, and a seminary teacher and he is only 24 years old. They have an accelerated program down there as Boyd ax puts it. That is crazy to have that many callings but he was really awesome!

хаиртай шүү,

кэрбий эгч  (Sister kerby)

Seventh Week in MTC

Anyways, this week has been so great! I can't believe it has been 6 and 1/2 weeks, only 2 weeks left and I will be out of here! I have mixed emotions about that. I am excited, nervous, scared, but I am looking forward to being able to teach the people of Mongolia. I have only heard great things about these people and I can't wait to be able to meet them. The language has been improving and I am feeling a little more comfortable speaking. It is nowhere near perfect however, I know that when I get there, the Lord will help me and through Him I will be able to speak the language. 

It wasn't really until yesterday that I am starting to understand what it means to trust in the Lord. Through my personal study, I was looking at faith and what it means. Faith and Hope as you know go together. Without hope there can be no faith. I was studying in Alma 32 and I love verse I believe 26, don't quote me on it, but it talks about how if we just have that little bit of hope and desire to believe then as we focus on that, we will be able to work on growing that hope. We hope for the blessings that we are promised and then have faith that they will be given to us. The biggest thing is remembering that it is in the Lords timing and when He knows we need it. He knows us so much better than we know ourselves and we need to trust in that. Sister B was telling me about how before she left that someone was talking to her about faith and how people tend to have faith in others and their abilities and know that they will be able to accomplish things but we forget to have that kind of faith in ourself and the things that we can accomplish. I really loved this and it has truly been a learning and growing experience for me and I am thankful for the opportunities I have been given to grow. 

On another note, Sister B and I taught our first lesson on Thursday and it went really well. The students were awesome and we loved being able to teach them. We taught for 65 minutes and basically the lesson they told us to use was a magazine article that was from their book. It was hard trying to turn that into a lesson but we were able to figure out how to relate everything and make it fun so that they could learn. It was a neat experience. We taught in their classroom and It was nice having it just be us and the students. They also recorded us so we were able to watch the video afterwards and see how we did and give ourselves our own feedback and what we could do better. It was interesting watching ourselves and how awkward we were in the beginning but as we got into the lesson we improved and everything went smoothly. 

We also had our first TRC Skype on Wednesday so we skyped with some members which was fun. We had to teach a 40 minute lesson and we decided to speak on enduring to the end. It went really well. Some of them were actual people from Mongolia but the member we taught wasn't. He ended up being a return missionary but it was great nonetheless. He was super cool and fun to teach. Maybe next time we will have one of the Mongolian Members to teach. 

 

Largin эгч  our teacher brought in some of her hats that she brought from Mongolia so we were able to try them on and take some pics as you will see. They were so soft and warm! Higgs also showed us some videos and pics from his mission. In mongolia they have these huge ice sculptures and one of them is this giant slide, made entirely out of ice and we watched him slide down it. It was so cool! I really can't wait. Everytime they talk about their missions and show us pics gets me so anxious to leave! I can't wait! 

Until next week!

таны номлагч,

кэрбий эгч

Sixth Week in MTC

Missionary life is great! The ELC (English Learner Class) has been going well so far and on Thursday Sister B and I had our lesson planning session so on Tuesday we will have a practice teaching session where we will be teaching our mentor as well as a graduate student. They will be recording us so that we can watch afterwards how we did. This will be interesting. I am looking forward to it. It has been great weather up here as well! A little overcast but it isn't too cold. 

I loved Conference as well. It was such a neat experience being able to watch it in the MTC! My testimony of General Conference has been strengthened this week and I am so thankful for our prophet and the apostles and that through them we are able to learn of God's will for us. I enjoyed it. We actually had the General RS President (Linda K Burton) come speak to us for our devotional and she was amazing. She gave such a great talk! She testified of our apostles and said, "If you had any idea how important we are to the apostles of this Church, we would never do anything wrong." As she has been able to be with these great men, she has seen this. She asked us this question, "Do we appreciate what we have?" I started thinking about this blessing and do we realize how amazing it is that we have a prophet here on Earth today to lead and guide us. He is able to receive revelation from God for all of us so that we may be able to know of God's will and what he desires us to do. We need to be an example and a light to those around us. Something she also said that helped me was, "You may not know everything but you can testify of Him." I am so thankful she shared this message because I sometimes worry about the things I don't know and the inadequacies I at times feel. However, the one thing I know that I can do is that I can testify of Him. I can let people know of our Savior, that he lives, and the sacrifice that He willingly gave because He loves us. This knowledge is what is important. The testimony I have of this gospel, I will gladly share with these people so they may know of the joy I feel each day because of this. We don't need to know everything in order to bear our testimony.

 

To answer your question regarding the food, there is nothing American that will be over there. Even their fruit is usually old and extremely expensive, like you can buy an apple but it’s like 2 dollars for one and most of the time it has already begun to rot.

 

Learning how to speak the Mongolian language as well as teach English has been an interesting process. It has been hard, but with the Lords help we have each been able to do it. I have come to learn rather quickly here that trust in the Lord is so important. This isn't something that I can do on my own. No matter how hard I would try, I need His help to be doing what I am now. It will definitely be in the field that I truly begin to develop the ability to speak the language. The MTC is great but it is nothing compared to what I will see in the field. I am so excited though! We just have 3 more weeks and then we will be leaving! It's crazy! In the next week or 2 we will actually be receiving our flight plans! No one speaks English in Mongolia; the teachers said that some of them speak a little bit of English but not a lot. Most people don't have the means to receive that kind of education. The sister that I met here didn't know any English when she came. She was in the MTC for about 4 weeks by the time I arrived so that’s how she was able to communicate with us. 

The more our teachers tell us about Mongolia, the more exciting it gets! All of us are ready to go! 

 

 

One last thing, my sponsor actually changed. At the ELC on Thursday Dr. Evans had an email from President Benson that had us matched up with our sponsors and where we will be teaching and the age group. I will now be teaching at a university where I will have students that are 17+. I forgot the paper that has the name of the university. It was like Oxnard or something similar to that. I will let you know next week.

 This is all I have time for, I must go. Know that I love you all so much! Have a good week!

Love, 

Sister K