Week 4

I sit across from my teacher, beside my companion.  We have been role-playing, and we butchered the lesson we just taught.  We have been taught to respond to questions in such a way as to satisfy the investigator, but also to lead the discussion.  We have done neither for this lesson, leaving us off-course and the investigator more confused than before.  I desperately try to bring the discussion around, but leave off at a weird place.  I have nothing more to say, but there is still an awkwardness in the air.  What do I say?  "Okay," I say, "bola lekcia."  Translation: "That was the lesson," or "That's all."  My teacher bursts into laughter, and I have never before seen him break character nor laugh so hard in all my time at the MTC.  Then I start laughing, and then my companion.  We can't stop for a full minute.  

The speaker for last Tuesday's devotional stated that everything we the missionaries expect of our investigators, God expects of us.  We want them to study the scriptures more diligently?  God wants us to study the scriptures more diligently.  We want them to pray more often and sincerely?  God wants us to pray more often and sincerely.

Thurs (15 Feb)

What a boring day, hope something exciting happens this week.

Fri (16 Feb)

Excerpt from journal: I'm tired.  Today was fun.

Sat (17 Feb)

Got a new pen :)

Sun (18 Feb)

Elders serving in the North Adriatic Mission leave today, things should get quieter.

Mon (19 Feb)

Stay up a bit late talking with the other Slovak Elders.  We talk about each of our strengths with the Slovak language.  We each have different strong points, but what matters is that each of us will someday learn the language well enough to teach.

Tues (20 Feb)

The speaker for this devotional is Elder Holland.  This is a big deal, as he is one of the 12 Apostles.  He says the missionaries are the first message of the church.  That is to say, the lessons we teach are great, but they won't make much of an impact if we aren't on our best act.  We are what people see first, not the lessons.

Wed (21 Feb)

Had a debate regarding whether color existed in real life before The Wizard of Oz.  That went well.  All in good fun of course (but everyone knows color didn't exist in the early 20th century.)


Slovak Flag

Two Towers Challenge (forgot to mention, did it on Sunday).  Our zone takes down two cereal towers before the North Adriatic District leaves.

 

Slav Squat

(Here's Miles's response to my letter):
Language: Good.  It's like your eyes adjusting to the dark, it'll happen naturally.  But you still need to try.

Comrades: United.

Spirit: Here.

Prayers and Pondering: For my comrades.  I want to help my comp anyway I can, he's picking up on the language now.  It's not only me teaching the whole time now.

Food: Aight.  I like Monday's food the best, they bring in food from the outside world.

Accommodations: Nonexistent.  Be more specific?

Coat and Hangers: Left them in front.  

Mall: No.

Packages: Everyone gets them, everyone shares, so they don't need to be so frequent.  I liked the candies.

Thanks for the update.  My time here has been great, can't wait to leave.  Here's a picture of last night's slumber party.

Week 3

If I ever again take a Sunday nap, it will not be in the common room.  

As missionaries, we expect those investigating the church to have true intentions of seeking truth, which is a good expectation to have. However, do we the missionaries also have true intentions? For example, we're taught to ask questions and get to know those we teach. In doing so, are our intentions true? Do we care about them, or are we as robots following a method? Do we want to help them come unto Christ? Teach people, not lessons.


Thursday (8 Feb)
For class, the opening song we sing is Hymn 58, Come, Ye Children of the Lord (Hymn 4 in the Slovak Hymnbook). It's a pretty good hymn.

I go door-to-door preaching with one of the Polish Elders, Elder McArthur, this time on the 4th and 1st floors of our dorm. As everyone on this campus is a missionary, this activity is just for fun. We speak our different languages, Polish and Slovak. The missionaries we teach can't understand a word of what we say, but our message gets across somehow. I wonder why.

Friday (9 Feb)
Again, the song we sing for class is Hymn 58.

Saturday (10 Feb)
And again, we sing Hymn 58, this time for both the afternoon and evening classes. It's becoming somewhat of a tradition at this point. My companion, Elder Rasmussen, is not happy about singing the same song 3 days in a row.

Sunday (11 Feb)
The entirety of my zone is on board with singing Hymn 58, and each district in our zone sings it in every class as the opening song. If we could sing it in Sacrament Meeting, we would, but we can't.

Devotional: this is when all missionaries in the MTC meet in one building to hear a guest speaker. Wouldn't it be cool if, by some extraordinary odds, we sing Hymn 58 for devotional? The man conducting the meeting steps up to the podium and says, "Our opening hymn will be Hymn 58, Come, Ye Children of the Lord." The whole zone is exuberant, except Elder Rasmussen. He looks ready to die, but even he finds some humor in it.

Monday (12 Feb)
Elder Ames! We were good friends before the mission. He will serve his mission in Utah, so he'll be out of the MTC before me.



Zone?



Zone?


Zone?


District?


Provo Temple

Week 2

"Scissor me," says any one of the four Elders in my Slovak class.  In reply, another Elder yells, "Pozor!" ("Warning!") which is what we say when we toss scissors at each other in class.  Klasický.

I reflect on the day that will come that marks the end of my mission in Slovakia.  What will I want to say I have done?  What kind of person will I have become?  I'm less concerned with how many people I baptize and more concerned with who I become, so that as many as are sincere in their pursuit of truth will see my example, that they will have an opportunity to have the same conversion as I.  That isn't to say I don't have a long way to go.

Thursday (1 Feb)

Elder Smith, what a character.  He ruins his book with water then claims to have fixed it by ironing it.  One of our teachers doesn't believe him, so they have a bet: if Elder Smith could prove the number 21 didn't exist in Polish, she would admit he fixed his book.  To everyone's surprise, 21 does indeed exist in Polish, so he admits to buying a new book and pretending as if he'd fixed it.  Klasický.

Friday (2 Feb)

Missionary drama: it exists.  We're all still people, but it's best not to get involved.

Saturday (3 Feb)

Role playing is when one Elder pretends to be an investigator, then the other fills his role as a missionary by teaching.  I'm the investigator, playing a character named Miles, a heavy smoker.  I don't know how Elder Smith keeps a straight face as I laugh to the point of tears.  I'm not good at this.

Sunday (4 February)

I discover my favorite phrase: Chcem premôcť ľudí (I want to overpower people.)  My fellow Slovak missionaries are becoming increasingly concerned.  All in good fun, obviously...

BYU Noteworthy, one of the best female a capella groups in the nation, performed for us at devotional.  Amazing.

Tuesday (6 February) [I'm aware that I skipped Monday]

Couch Tennis is getting heated.  Two couches face each other, two people on each couch.  Hit a bouncy ball back and forth, don't let it hit the ground.  Same scoring as Tennis.  Who says the MTC can't be fun?

Wednesday (7 February)

New missionaries arrive, and I host two of them.  That means I'm their introduction to the MTC.  For the first new Elder, I pretend to be from Norway.  My accent is probably off, but he wouldn't know.  He asks me tough questions, such as, "What temperature was it in Norway when you left?  You use Celsius, right?"  I replied, "Ja, vi use Celsius.  Also kilometers.  Vhat even is a mile?"  He asked me what I thought of Finnish people.  I told him, "Finland isn't technically a Scandinavian country."  That answer satisfied him, for some odd reason.

I go door-to-door to the other Eastern-Europe missionaries in my same dorm, spreading the gospel.  Some say they don't believe in God, others were interested in the message.  One even committed to baptism!  Haha, I didn't think any of them would play along, but all of them did.

Week 1

Ahoj!  What a week it's been.  First, I should explain where I am and what I'll be doing for the next 8 weeks before I'm off to Slovakia.  Here in Provo, Utah is the Missionary Training Center (MTC) campus.  Each day I arise at 6:30 a.m., eat breakfast, study, exercise, study, eat lunch, study, etc.  Some missionaries are immersed in whichever language they learn (in class only), but my class took a different approach.  The students speak Slovak when we can, but the teachers speak mostly English while teaching principles of grammar.  I study flashcards vigorously throughout the day, fluency will come in the mission field (Slovakia).

As a missionary for the LDS church, I will teach people the principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ for the purpose of helping them come unto Him (repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end).  It would be ineffective for me to memorize a series of lesson outlines, then proceed to recite those to investigators of the church.  Usually, this approach confuses investigators and they're left wondering how it's applicable specifically to them.  Instead, I must strengthen my understanding and testimony of that which I teach, then I can draw upon my knowledge as a foundation to help others onto the path toward eternal life.

Day 1:

I arrive in the evening of Tuesday, January 23.  I do not count this as the first day.  All the foreigners arrive this evening as well so I am outnumbered as an American.  There are Elders (a title given to missionaries) from Peru, Australia, Germany, Haiti, Jamaica, and many other countries in my temporary dorm.  The next morning, we all go to a couple welcome classes and have a tour of the campus.  During a bathroom break, the Elder from Germany asks, "Why do American toilets flush with such power?"

First-day missionaries get an orange sticker on their name tags, identifying them as newcomers.  The greetings become quite repetitive.  "Welcome to the MTC!"  Ugh.  I vow that in a week from this day, I will bug all the new missionaries with that same phrase.  The cycle continues.

Day 2:

My companion is Elder Rasmussen from southern Utah.  District is small, but good.  Two to Czech, four to Slovak.  Usually the other way around.

Zone is crazy, but I love it.  There's not a single person I don't like (all heading to Eastern Europe except Russia).

Teachers are cool.  Brat [means "Brother" which is how LDS address each other:  "brother" or "sister."  I thought Miles had done a typo and meant "Brad" but when he told me "brat" meant "brother" I wrote back, "So, I've been calling you brother your whole life?!] Driskill, while he served in Slovakia, joked with his companion about tackling people off a bridge and saying the baptismal prayer on the way down.  

Stress catches up at last.  I have feelings of inadequacy, but so did Moses, and look where he is.  Dead.  [Technically, LDS doctrine has Moses as never tasted death, which means translated.  It's a state of being changed in a twinkling of an eye to retain a physical body that will not die, typically to serve some higher purpose, and receive a proper resurrected body later.  The rest of us have to wait for resurrection to reunite body and spirit.]  But look what he did, he did pretty well.  I'm now senior companion because my last name begins with A.

Day 3:

Quote of the Day: Set your goals low and your expectations higher.

Day 4:

I love my district and zone.  My dorm level consists of missionaries serving in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria, etc.).  My companion and I have ups and downs (typical), but we learn from each other.

Day 5:

I realize I'll put on weight by the end of my nine weeks here.  Not the worst thing.  I haven't heard my first name in such a while that I'm going crazy.

Day 6:

Nothing too interesting here.

Day 7:

My companion's Southern Utah catch phrases are making their way into my repertoire.  Not good, they're kinda weird: "Oh my heck," "I don't give a care," just to name a couple.  My whole dorm level stays up just before quiet time and "sings" (shouts) Battle Hymn of the Republic.  All three verses.  Then a missionary from below is sent to put an end to it, but he ends up joining us for a repeat of the first verse.  Hilarious.

1. Me + my companion under Slovakian flag

2. All Slovak-speaking Elders

3. Random doll we found in ceiling

4. 1st edition of Book of Mormon in Slovak