End of week 6

October 19, 2016

So this week was another super great week. We had a speaker his name was Vai something. He played in the NFL for a long time and is now like some big sports news anchor guy. But he was really cool and had a lot of great insight into the power of your personal influence.

This week we also completing renovating our dorm. We decided to take the top bunk off of elder Donalson's bed and use 2 mattresses to make a couch. It's been rather useful this past week for when the other elders on the floor come in to our room to hang out. But yeah this is what happens when we're at the MTC for so long.

Last week we had our first TRC tho and I guess I forgot to write back about it. So TRC's are when members in the nearby areas come and we have to give them a lesson in the language we're learning so Chinese for me and my district. So these members don't pretend to be investigators or anything; they just be themselves, so we're able to discuss more advanced doctrine and have more of a discussion then lesson. Most of the volunteers are actually return missionaries from Taiwan so they like all know English too so if I forget a few (or a lot) of words in Chinese, its okay. Even though I'm not supposed to speak English at all. But aside from these being like real people and not teachers acting like investigators, its usually super chill and fun. So last week during my very first TRC after talking with the members, I was asked to give the opening prayer and decided to thank my heavenly father for our new friends we made in that lesson. So I said "Women ganxie nin women de.." (which kinda translates into "We thank thee for our"). But I had forgotten the word for "new." So I just ended up saying "Women ganxie nin women de new pengyou." And switched out the Chinese word for new with the English one. So after the lesson my comp told me that "Nupengyou" means girlfriend in Chinese. So it sounded like I said "We thank thee for my girlfriend." So I then ran over to the members i had just taught and explained the misunderstanding and all but 1 of the 4 thought I actually meant to say "we thank thee for my girlfriend." So that was super embarasing. But my teacher seemed to love it and wouldn't stop laughing for like 10 minutes when he heard me trying to explain the mistake to the members.

This weeks TRC, however, went so much better. My mandarin has improved so much over the past week. Its crazy. But anyways the first lesson went great and both members in the room went to Taiwan on their missions so they were cool. But the second lesson was a little different. The member was a convert who just came from Taiwan to Utah to learn English. And so she didn't really know English. So this really put the pressure on me and i got soo nervous because I had to speak Chinese otherwise she wouldn't understand. But I prayed about it and I was blessed. We had a 20 minute discussion with no English. The discussion was about finding joy in our trials and I shared my experience here at the MTC learning Chinese and how I had to find joy in this. I told her about how much this changed my attitude and increased my faith in relying on my brother Jesus Christ. I then told her how much faster Chinese has started coming. She then shared her experience since coming here and learning English. She said she was really struggling with the language and couldn't understand most of what her friends say and struggles to communicate with them. But she said our message is what she needed to hear and I hopefully, by finding joy in her trials, she feels the same changes I've experienced in her life.