Tuesday, July 2, 2013

June 17, 2013: Hyrum's Weekly Letter #5

This week was awesome! Our investigators are really progressing well, and both my companion and I are making great strides in the language! Chinese is hard, but with the Lord it is possible! 

So I kinda forgot to take notes on what I wanted to tell everybody about this week, and by Monday, the beginning of last week gets kinda fuzzy.

It's really fun being district leader and having the opportunity to serve the missionaries in my district! Yesterday, we set a lot of goals for this week of things we can improve on. We're going to keep pushing forward so that we can be awesome missionaries before we even leave!

Yesterday, for our devotional, it was the first time in history that they broadcast the MTC devotional from a different location than on the campus. It broadcast from the Wyview chapel, so for anyone who knew that chapel it was a bit weird. Unfortunately, they had some technical difficulties and the video was about 3 seconds behind the sound for the whole thing! It was alright though, entertaining at the least!

We are all getting super pumped for the broadcast next Sunday! My whole district will get to sing in a giant 2000+ person choir for the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve on a broadcast that the whole world will see! It's going to be really fun! We had the General Music Coordinator for the Church come to our rehearsal yesterday. I hope everybody gets a chance to see the broadcast! Me and my district are going to attempt to sit in the optimal camera range so that we can get on TV while we sing!

Chinese is the coolest. We should all just speak Chinese instead of English; it's a language that makes so much more sense than English! For example, the word for "meeting" is "jianmian." Jian is a word that means to see or perceive and mian means face. So a meeting is a "see face." It just works!

Chinese is also great because except for three or four concepts, the grammar is super simple. Unfortunately, those three concepts are pretty integral, and are nothing like anything we have in English. We started learning the first of those this week, and our minds were sufficiently blown.

I really love the MTC, but I'm more excited to get out in the field! We hit our halfway point two days ago, and it feels like we'll never leave! It's okay though; we're learning all the things that we need to in order to bring the people of Taiwan unto Christ!

So other news on the choir front: I put my name in for a smaller group that would rehearse more, and I was blessed to be accepted! It's a lot smaller than I expected; there are only 32 missionaries out of the 5000 or so that are here! I'm so grateful for the opportunities I had in high school and for the voice lessons that my parents paid for that gave me the skills I can use to bless others! I'll write more about the small choir next week!

Thank you so much for your support! I always appreciate your letters, and even I don't get to replying to them every week, I read each of them at least 3 times and I always feel your strength and support and prayers. The MTC is a difficult experience, but with my companion, my district, my family, and the Lord, I can do anything!


Elder Richardson

No comments:

Post a Comment