Letter Week 5

Here's a collection of things I want to tell you about. It's going to be a little all over the place, but so is my life at the MTC so hopefully it'll give you a taste of what I'm experiencing.

Every week we go to the temple on preparation day (which for us is Tuesday, but starting next week will be Wednesday). We switch between doing initiatories and a session, so we've done each twice so far since we've been here. Every time we all walk together as a district, which is such a good sign seeing as we spend 16 hours a day with each other and P-day we still choose to hang out as a district.

Most of my district is from Utah. Our district leader is from Texas, his companion is from Cali, and there's an Elder from New York (who's been in the Hill Cumorah pageant every summer for years). My companion is Sister Mikalyn Orton and is from Salem (where they have the color fest at the Hari Krishna temple). There's a sister in my district, Sister Janessa Melton (there's two of us Janessas!) who is from American Fork, and her mom said she went to high school with Jace McQuivey. Another absurd connection- Sister Jessalyn Homer in my district went on the same Peru trip I did, just the year before me. We know all of the same locals there and had many of the same experiences.

Sarah Nnah leaves today for Anaheim, CA after having finished out her 6 weeks. She's my best friend and we've been so lucky to see each other frequently the past 5 weeks that we've overlapped. Other people leaving this week: Mele Etsitty, headed to Idaho, Adam Charlton (byu friend who was in my FHE group in the summer), going to Japan.

Our zone consists of one district each of Thais, Hmongs, Cambodians, and Viets. Our sacrament meetings are all in English because none of the languages are really similar enough that we can understand each other, or read each other's characters.

We are the first Cambodian group ever to be here only 9 weeks. We're also the first to overlap with another Cambodian group. When we got here, they were on their 8th week. They just left (all 12 of them for Cambodia) a week ago today, after having finished out 12 weeks (they just changed the transfer date and this group got here in January). There was a Sister Nellie Kacher in that group who is from the UAE and knows the Crandalls (theyre close family friends). 

We reached our halfway point on the 20th, which was huge. We've now been here more weeks than we have left! This language is ridiculous because it looks like ramen noodles, and I alternate between feeling like, "Get me out there I want to use these words on real Cambodians" to feeling like, "Holy french toast I don't know a single word and I need to stay here the rest of my life". 

In Khmer (Cambodian), you don't read left to right, you read in like little circles, starting with the consonants, then looking below for sub-consonants, then looking to the left for vowels, then looking above and to the right for more vowels. It is the longest phonetic alphabet in the world. And it doesn't make any sense sounding out things much of the time, because there's random silent 'roo's and also little didactic marks that once you get to them, change the entire pronunciation of the word you just translated. We sit in class and read the scriptures with our teacher guiding us, and each person will read a line. It's a good day if we can get through 2 verses in an hour.

I think the best thing I've learned here is that everyone has ID cards that they carry with them on a clip on their belts. On these cards it says your first name and the mission you're going to. This is a veritable gold mine of opportunity. My favorite activity (besides yelling out, "Elderr!" in huge groups of missionaries) is to sit next to a stranger during lunch and just calmly ask, "How's your granola, Joseph?". I make a lot of friends here.

  

I've been in the MTC 5 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister Janessa McQuivey

My First Real Letter!

Hey everyone!

First off, apologies for not writing earlier. They just barely changed the email policy to allow missionaries to email each other and friends and so my inbox every week is very full with messages from people who are excited that they finally can email me now. It takes me the full time just to read and reply to all of those emails in my inbox, and I don't even get the chance to send a real letter home for the blog. But I'm forfitting my laundry time today in order to finally write something.

I have been so lucky to receive so many letters and packages. I got a package from you, an easter package from Tutu, a conference package from Heather, and a picnic package from Cherie (plastic cutlery rolled in napkins with pink bows around them, plates, and cinnamon rolls). I've gotten Dear Elders from Jeremy and Jill Erb, the Dowlings, and Kamalie in addition to the letters/dear elders from home. My first night in the MTC I recieved a handwritten note from Bishop Makechnie. Erica Ernenwein also sent me an easter package (oreos and peeps!) with a handwritten letter. I'm so lucky to have all of you and it makes my rough days easier when I know I have a package or letter to open at the end of the day. Thank you for all the kind messages!

I keep a running list in my journal of all the familiar people I see everyday. New missionaries come in on Wednesdays, and every week it's new familiar faces that I didn't know would be at the MTC the same time as me.  I see Drake Allen (friend from BYU) all the time, and Mele Etsitty just got in on Wednesday. Jacob Johnston (friend from BYU who I hung out with and played frisbee with a lot) just left last week, and it was really nice to see him all over for my first three weeks. He had some great stories; in one he taught an investigator to endure to the end by running laps around the building, after which the investigator (gasping for breath) said, "Okay, I'll be baptized". His investigator stories show me that there's hope for mine; in our first lesson we accidentally told ours that he wasn't a child of God because we completely misunderstood what he was asking. He looked at us puzzled and then asked again, and we were like, "still no" (we thought he was asking if God and Christ were the same person). So then he had to go over to the chalk board and draw us out a diagram of what he was asking, and once it was thoroughly spelled out for us, we said, "ohhh. Well in that case, yes." What a mess! Our investigator had to correct not only our pronunciation and our grammar, but our doctrine as well. We haven't had a lesson quite so bad since then, but I never leave feeling like I understood more than 20% of what happened. We (my two companions and I) usually sit together after a lesson and just piece together what each of us understood so we can learn what we missed that someone else might have picked up on.

My district is crazy and awesome. They're all headed to Cambodia, minus one Elder going to Long Beach, and me to Tacoma. As it turns out, I'm the very first Cambodian speaking missionary in Tacoma for 30 years. And seeing as I'm the only one in my district, I'll be the only Cambodian missionary until at least September (assuming the next group coming in June/July will have a Tacoma-bound missionary, which they might not). They don't send native Cambodian sisters to the states anymore because they've had problems with them never going home at the end of the mission.  There will be four Cambodian speaking missionaries in Tacoma total, so I'll be curious to see if that means two sisters two Elders, or four sisters. I'll definitely have English speaking companions for at least a portion of my mission.

The language is tough. Let me just say, the gift of tongues is real because I'm dumb and I'm still able to get by.

I've been in the MTC 4 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivey