JULY 8, 2013 -- WEEKLY LETTER #8 FROM ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON

JULY 8, 2013 -- WEEKLY LETTER #8 

FROM ELDER HYRUM RICHARDSON

Last week, two weeks felt like a long time. But now, I only have 7 days left here, and it's way too short! There's no way I'm going to know enough Chinese before I leave to survive in Taiwan! I'm just hoping and praying for a great trainer who will help me out when I get there.

This week has been really busy, as I suppose every week has been here.

July 4th was pretty interesting for us. We had a special devotional for it, which I thought was a bit odd because this is really an international campus. It was still pretty good though. It was really funny to watch our Canadian's face as we sang Our Country 'Tis of Thee, which he knows as God Save our Queen.

At the end of that devotional we watched 17 Miracles. I don't know who else has seen it, but I loved it. It was really amazing to see the huge amount of faith that those pioneers had, and I only wish my faith were that strong! For those of you who haven't seen it, it chronicled the trials and miracles of the Martin and Willy handcart companies as they crossed the plains. It was so cool.

After the devotional and movie, we went outside and attempted to watch the fireworks from the BYU stadium. It was really difficult because there were a lot of trees and a lot of people, so not a whole lot of people had a good view!

On Friday, we had an AWESOME storm. It's the kind of storm that we usually get in Arkansas, but never get in Utah. I loved it! There were some really big thunderclaps and we got to see some cool lightning too.

I've also determined that missionaries in the MTC are some of the most excitable people on the planet. Seriously, the smallest thing happens, like it starts to rain, and every goes crazy and gets really excited. We don't usually applaud in our meetings, but in the July 4th devotional, they let us applaud for the musical number. We were applauding for about 5 minutes. Seriously.

Yesterday, on Sunday, we had a mission conference because it was the first Sunday of the month. We're so full here at the MTC now, that we have officially overflowed our overflows, and there are people who watched it in the cafeteria.

It's also interesting to notice that, because many of the Chinese missionaries here are going to different places, we all learn slightly different Chinese. Those of us who are going to Taiwan learn one kind, and people going elsewhere learn a slightly different kind of Chinese. The differences are just a few words, but it's interesting how we're already being prepared to talk to the people we're going to serve!
Last night, we watched a few Mormon Message videos and we watched the Joseph Smith movie as a district. There was one that I really liked and that really stuck out to me, and I'm going to ask my mom if she'll put a link right here. 

This video testified to me about how our society and culture emphasizes being busy and multitasking and doing a lot of things at once, but how that often detracts from the things we can learn if we sit quietly and listen. That's something I've learned so much here in the MTC. Without any electronic distractions and with out a bunch of different things to do at once, it's been so much easier to just sit and think. I really love that.

So we learned a couple of cool things about characters this week that I wanted to share. If you look at some characters, there are subtle references to the Bible and other doctrinal things which are really interesting. I personally believe that The Lord's Church was in ancient China at one point for this and other reasons. After all, at Christ's ascension, He did say: "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." Here's one of the cool things I learned.

始

This is a character that means "start" pronounced shi3.

The radical on the left means woman.

The radical on the right-top means snake.

And the radical on the right-bottom means mouth.

Which might be a subtle reference to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. That is of course complete speculation, but it's kinda cool to think about!

My next email will be the day before I leave, and then I don't know when I'll be able to email again!

We leave Tuesday morning at 7:30am. We fly to Portland OR, and then Tokyo, and then Taiwan Taibei! We are so excited!

See you next week!