But yes, this week has definitely been my favorite week at the MTC. Tuesday evening, Sister Benbrook, the Sister Training Leader (A new calling that they just created for all missons because of the huge number of sister missionaries now) and Elder Lee and I, as the Zone Leaders, got to all greet the new international missionaries as they arrived and usher them for the rest of the evening. There were six of them: a sister from Germany, an elder from England, two elders from New Zealand, and two elders from Australia. Simply stated, I love my calling. While all of the other Korean missionaries are studying, Sister Benbrook, Elder Lee, and myself all got to take the night off to spend the time with these fantastic international missionaries. Plus, Tuesday night was even better because as international missionaries, we all got to have reserved seating in the auditorium for the devotional that night and Richard G. Scott was the speaker. It was truly fantastic, the best devotional while here in the MTC by far.
So Tuesday was great, but Wednesday was even better. Why? Well, Wednesday is the day that all of the Americans arrive at the MTC and so we, as Zone and Sister Leaders, got to meet at of the new missionaries in the evening and give them a little orientation about the MTC. Once again, I love my calling. Then, on Thursday, it was the big "welcome to the MTC" meeting where the leaders speak to them for an hour about all of the procedures, rules, tips, ways to have fun, and other ins and outs of the MTC. Following that, we gave them an entire tour of the campus. Seriously, I love my calling. It's been so much fun to help all of the new missionaries during their first few days here. BUT, the fun doesn't end there, because yesterday, the Hanguk sarahm (Korean people) started to arrive and so this week will be a complete repeat of last week, but it will be in Korean. Oh my goodness, I love my calling.
Anyway, besides my Zone Leader duties, things have been going really well. I know so much more Korean now, it's really exciting. When I "teach" my "investigators", it's like I forget all of my Korean knowledge just because of the pressure of the situation. I've never really been good at role plays anyway. But the cool thing is, when I just talk to a Korean here at the MTC, I do so much better and I can understand and have simple conversations with them. So basically, I do bad in the fake situations but then I do good when it's real, so that's a good thing haha. The language is so different, for example, a few weeks ago when I showed an example of a sentence (which was slightly wrong, by they way. But it's fine, I was still learning) I kept putting "verb sentence ending" at the end of my sentences. That wasn't me explaining that there is simply a verb at the end of the sentence, but it actually is a thing. They have many different forms to end a sentence with and in whatever situation you might be speaking in, you have the end the verb a certain way. For example: kahdah means "to go". But if you were using it in a sentence, it would either be kahmneedah, kahyo, or karkahyo, or kahyahdwaymneedah, or kahyahhayo, or blah blah bah, the list goes on and on. It will never be just kahdah, that's incomplete. It always will need that "verb sentence ending". Yay for Korean. The cool thing is, I understand all of that now and am just to the point where concepts make sense so I just need to learn them all as fast as I can. Korean is way fun, I'm being serious. I'm so excited to be able to understand and speak it with ease in the future.
So I'm including are a little tour of the MTC, not everything is included. Pictures I'm sending include my dorm hallway, the bathroom where I get ready every day, the room where I sleep (and the messiness of my roommates), the cleanliness of my corner around my bed, the laundry room where I do my laundry, obviously, and some other pictures of the native Koreans, my companions Elder Hafen and Elder Ruff (Elder Hafen is on the right, Elder Ruff on the left. Elder Ruff, by the way, left for Vancouver a week and a half ago), and some other pictures of missionaries in my Zone. Also, I've been sick this week with a terrible cough and one day, I found these cough drops left on my desk. They're from my teaching telling me to get better. It was so nice, I seriously have the best teachers here at the MTC. You'll get more next week, there's a million to send.
Anyway, I've got to go, I'll write again next Friday because our P-day is changing, so don't freak out Mom when you don't get a letter on Tuesday haha.
Elder Graf
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