Hey!!
This has been a really fast week! When they say that the
days go by slow and the weeks go by fast, they really mean it. I cannot believe
that today is my eighth day being here at the MTC. The spirit that is felt here
is absolutly amazing.
Let me walk you through a typical day:
6:30 Wake up
7 - Personal Study time (I generally study language even
though we aren't supposed to because its that hard)\
8 - Breakfast
8:30 - 11:30 - Classroom time (Teaching
"investigators" and grammar lessons)
11:30 - 12:30 - Language Study
12:30 - 1:00 - Additional Study
1:00 - Lunch!
1:45 - 4:45 - Back to class for another 3 hours
4:45 - 6 - You guessed it... more study time
6:00 - Dinner!
6:45 - 9:30 - Either study time or devotionals or sometimes
gym time.
9:30 - 10:30 - Personal time etc. get ready for bed
10:30 Bed!
Its a pretty crazy schedule to have. I am so grateful for
the opporunity to be here though.
So on Tuesday we are being moved to MTC West. This is what I
know.... We are leaving Tuesday, rumors are living in Wyview and classes in
Raintree. Tuesday Devotionals are being moved to the Marriott Center starting
June 11. Sunday devotionals will be traded off between the two campuses. One
week they will brodcast from the one, and the next week they will broadcast
from the other. They are really trying hard to do everything they can to give
both Campuses equal opportunities for everything. Rumor has it that we are
going on Tuesday so we can be ready to host all of the new missionaries who
will be going over there on their first day on Wednesday. We still don't really
know anything else. I also found out today that on June 23, aka the day before
we leave the MTC, there is supposed to be a worldwide broadcast happening I
think from the Marriott Center, and they want the choir to be 1100 people!!! I
can tell you this, singing in the choir this last week with 600 people was
absolutly a remarkable experience. It is hard to sing when you are shaking with
goosebumps. We sang Jesus, Once of Humble Birth, and the arrangement had a nice
piano interlude with a modulation that led straight to a unision verse
fortissimo. And the loudest we had sang up to that point was like a mp. It was
SO COOL! Even though the choir had a lot of people that can't really sing, its
all good.
I really have enjoyed all of the mail that I have gotten!
Thanks mom for the little package of goodies, I got it last night and I am
wearing that kravaty today. I say kravaty because it is the malagasy word for
the thing that hangs around your neck, and the english word for that is a swear
word there so I am trying to cut it out of my vocabulary already. I have also
gotten some mail from Dear Elder and evertime I get mail I get happy which is a
very good thing. The MTC has its ups and downs and they are pretty big swings.
I love all of the teachers here for the Malagasy districts
they are all wonderful. We had our first lesson yesterday to Jean-Jacques,
where we didn't use any notes at all. It was so hard, but it was a really good
experience to stop reading sentences from a piece of paper, and kinda memorize
them/form them on the fly. It will get better I am sure becuase our lessons
right now are super simple and are filled with one liners that don't even make
sense. The language pick-up is slow, but it seems pretty steady. My district is
4 elders and two sisters and the other two elders are really really really good
at learning languages. They both never stop studying, like ever, and they are
excelling really rapidly. The one already speaks 8 languages so I understand
why he is so fast. He also is super determined. The teachers every once and a
while say "and this is a concept that you won't really understand until
like 8 months out on the mission" and that makes Elder Lee even more driven
to master that concept. The teachers have referred to him as a prodigy. The 13
missionaries here going to Madagascar make up about 1/6 to 1/5 of the total
mission which is crazy! They haven't had any Malagasy missionaries in the last
like 2-3 transfers, and after us they will have like 6 weeks off and then they
will start having a steady stream of missionaries. So it looks like hopefully
the number of missionaries in the mission will increase. We are the first set
to try and go through in 6 weeks and we are even ahead of their new lesson plan
that covers everything in 6 weeks. They keep telling us that we are the fastest
learning districts they have ever seen, and they have been teaching here a few
years. And this leads perfectly to my spiritual thought.
At choir rehearsal on Tuesday before Devotional, the
director gave a very nice spiritual thought. He likened our progress in life to
a ladder. Imagine that you are on the top of your ladder and you are always
trying to get higher up. We are all trying to get to the height that the Savior
is at. Imagine your ladder, it is probably about 5 or 6 feet off of the ground.
Now look at the Savior's ladder. It probably about 500-600 feet tall. So how
far are we on the path to being like the Savior? Now you happen to turn and see
someone else's ladder and they are like 7 feet off the ground. What do we
naturally do? We compare ourselves. It is a natural thing, He gave an example
to the sisters. If two girls show up to an event and they both have on the same
dress what do they do? They compare. Each sister would look at the other and
think, "Do I look better in this dress than her?" If the answer is
yes, you keep it on, if the answer is no, you go and change. We all compare,
but should we though? When we compare all we are doing is trying to drag them
down, and then in the process drag ourselves down as well. But now look back at
the Savior's ladder. Is it fair to compare ourselves to each other when the
Savior is that much above us? How much farther along are they? You are at
6 feet and they are at 7, but the Savior is at 600. Don't compare it does
nothing good.
Now for the funny stuff real quick. I am quickly running out
of time and I want to attach some pictures.
In learning a new language there are some funny things that
happens.
The people in my district have made the following mistakes:
"Drink you" instead of thank you.
"Joseph Smith restored the gospel last Wednesday."
"Joseph Smith was breast-fed by an angry mob" -
This one is actually quite common because to breast feed and to kill are only
off by one letter.
Well I am going to send another email with some pictures in
it.
I love you! Tia anao aho!
Elder Scott Weber
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