February 21, 2011

The first week has been lots of fun but lots of work, too. We found out when we got here that our district is a pilot district, which means that we are basically rats in a maze that they are trying out the new program on. Most missionaries wait until week 6 to begin teaching "progressing investigators" in a foreign language, they go to the TRC to teach volunteers but they spend most of their time just learning basics of the language, including church vocab. We had our first Chinese lesson on Wednesday night where we learned to introduce ourselves, our second on Thursday where we learned to say things like God is our father, we are His children, the Book of Mormon (Mo'ermenjing) is the word of God, Joseph Smith is a prophet, Jesus Christ (YeSuJiDu) is God's Son, etc. On Friday we met with Brother Liu, our "investigator," and taught him a lesson in Chinese. Later that day we learned how to pray and bear testimony, and on Saturday we met with Brother Liu again and prayed with him and shared part of lesson 1 with him, in Chinese. It is insane. I am TERRIBLE at the tones, but I am picking up the vocab and the grammar ok and the Spirit is DEFINITELY playing an enormous part in how much we are able to learn and retain so far. Tomorrow we will meet with Liu again and we are going over the phrases and words we will need to know to teach him the rest of lesson 1. The neatest part about teaching him on Saturday was that we felt the strongest spirit in the room while we were teaching him and bearing testimony that what we were sharing with him was true. It's amazing that even these staged situations are so spiritual, but it just goes to show what an incredible place the MTC is and how much the Lord wants us to share that Spirit with His children when we go out into the field. Yesterday was a nice break from all of the studying, we did still have personal and companionship study but we also were able to watch Music and the Spoken Word, go to a devotional and then watch Legacy afterward. Relief Society, Sacrament Meeting, and the devotional were all centered around obedience and the Holy Ghost, how the two are so intertwined and how important they both are as we serve and teach. Sacrament was in Chinglish- prayers, hymns, the Sacrament prayers and short talks by two elders in Chinese and then talks by one of our branch presidency and his wife in English. I loved it. We got to walk up to the temple too, and we took some great pictures with our district. My companion's name is Sister Reid, Ren Jiemei, and she is from Nebraska. She already speaks a lot of chinese because she's been taking it at BYU for a few semesters. It's such a blessing because anytime I have a question about how to pronounce something or I need help remembering a word she almost always knows the answer and she is really patient and doesn't act annoyed when I forget things over and over again. The other sisters in our district are Sister Lee, Li Jiemei, and Sister Lethco, Cao Jiemei, and then we have Elder Thatcher, Tao Zhonglao, and Elder Baker, Bei Zhonglao. We all work well together and are good at different things so we can help each other when we're studying. I don't really care much for the food, but they have lots of fresh fruit every day which is super nice. Mostly I just love the Spirit that is here in everything we do, confirming that this is where I belong and this work is the Lord's work. I really do love it so much!

-Sister Smith