Week 8: Getting Ready for Take-off

Week 8 in the MTC:

Hello family and friends!!

So week 8 has been interesting. It was my last normal week in the MTC. This next week I have a big in-field orientation thing on Thursday and the classes are a little different so it'll be interesting to see how it feels.

I hardly got to teach investigators at all this week. We only got to teach Lu Dixiong once and he said he was still smoking, though he said he'd stopped drinking alcohol and tea. We told him that he should smoke one less cigarette each day until he got down to 0 and then we'd throw the rest of them away. He said it'd be hard but he'd try it. And then we don't have another lesson with him until this Saturday. 

There was a funny teaching story though. We're teaching another missionary in our district pretending to be an investigator right now. His name is Gan Dixiong. He's a single father with a 9-year-old daughter and he's pretty sensitive. Anyway, we were teaching him and the lesson went really well, I thought, and then we asked him to say the closing prayer. He agreed(this was our third lesson with him or so), and he started praying. Right as he started, I could feel that tickle in my nose that is unmistakably a sneeze. I tried SO HARD to keep it in, but to no avail. It was so loud. The room we were in was small and really echo-y so I feel like the sound of my sneeze reverberated off the walls for a solid 5 seconds. I look up and Gan Dixiong(Elder R.) was laughing so hard. Then I started laughing. We got control of ourselves pretty soon after that and he stumbled through the rest of the prayer. I felt so bad. The lesson was so good and then it was just trivialized in a split-second. So note-to-self, sneeze before the prayer or after the prayer. Not during the prayer. Not that I could have helped it. Maybe I should learn to stifle them, but it's always ended up being worse than if I had just sneezed normally when I've tried before so...I don't know.

Anyway, I can feel my Chinese getting better all the time. Things just click for me. I don't know. I truly believe in the gift of tongues because when I think about a grammar rule like I normally would, I realize it makes zero sense. However, if I just live the way I'm supposed to and I don't think about it too much, it just makes sense. It's logical to me and I can use that grammar principle or I can use that vocabulary right away. I mean, it takes real practice to get comfortable with it, but at least I know how to use it if I think about it. I'm probably not making as much progress as I could be making because my district (myself included) is really bad at SYL. It's hard because if everybody's not with the program speaking Mandarin, then the people who are often get cut-off or ignored because the other people don't want to try to understand it or respond in kind. I'm hoping that today, as everyone's realizing it's the last week and it's time to get down to business, we'll all realize that SYL is a super great idea. I'm going to start, at least. I can communicate just about 75-80% or what I want and hopefully I'll be able to set an example.

We got our travel plans! I leave at 6:30 AM on Tuesday October 22, and get to Taiwan at 9:05 PM the next day Taiwan time. So I have a 2-hour flight to LA and then a 15-hour flight to Taiwan. I'm getting pretty excited and I'm also getting focused. It reminds me a lot of what it was like the month or so before I came to the MTC. I realized that this was actually happening and I needed to take it seriously. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've been taking it seriously this whole time, but it's a lot more real now. It just focuses me more on what I'm really preparing for which is awesome! I'm hoping this week will be extremely productive and hopefully, before I know it I'll be in Taiwan, feeling like I'm practically starting over again. Wow! This is happening!

Anyways, I'm super excited. That's about all for this week. I love you all so much and I pray for you! Next time I talk to you, it'll be the day before I leave. AAAHH!

-Elder Brendan Smith