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