Week 3 in the MTC

你好！

This has been another amazing week, full of different activities.  And it has been such a blast.

To begin the week off, my P-day was spent trying to get some medical scans done.  We had to take the shuttle bus off campus, and on the way, we had to pick up up two other elders from the dentist.  This was another one of those times where a valuable lesson was learned.  As we were picking them up, there was a mother that asked for a blessing.  She hadn't been feeling very well, and saw the two elders at the dentist and asked them for the blessing, but neither of them had oil they could use for the blessing.  To our luck, our driver had some oil, so we were able to give her a blessing.  So the important lesson that I learned was to always have oil that you can use for a blessing with you at all times.  After that, we got dropped off at the health center that was going to be doing the scans for us.  It felt like the longest scan of my life.  They wanted us to hold our breath for 60 seconds while the CT scan was running.  I only lasted 20 seconds, but they said it was ok.  After that, we came directly back to the MTC, at which point we had twenty minutes to get ready for dinner.  So there wasn't really a break for me on that P-day.  But on the positive side, today is looking like a really fun P-day.

Tuesday was really cool.  At the MTC, we have devotionals every Sunday and Tuesday night.  On Tuesday, Elder Cook talked to us.  The biggest things I got from his talk were: "Don't feel concerned about not being good enough."  He then went to talk more about how as long as we are trying our best, the Lord will make us good enough because he knows we are trying our best.  "What you do here will help you in the field."  As long as we are preparing here, we will be ready when we get to the field because we have learned what we needed.  Lastly, he said "The lessons you are teaching are Spiritual Lessons, not Worldly Lessons."  For Sunday Devotional, Sister Sheri Dew also talked to us about this, how we should be teaching by the spirit.  It is amazing how Elder Cook and Sister Dew's talks were similar on how when we use the spirit to teach anything becomes possible, even the conversion process for those who may not believe it is possible.

And then Wednesday, we also got a new district in the zone, along with another sister in our district.  The sister that was put in our district was originally in the fast track program, but her visa to Taiwan, had not come through yet and her district had just left.  Her Chinese is really good.  For the new district, there are four new sisters and six new elders.  The interesting part of it though is that seven of them have already studied Chinese for two years.  They are a great bunch of missionaries and it is definitely going to be cool having them in our district.  The only sad part about all the new missionaries coming in is that we are now losing the oldest district.  They are leaving today and tomorrow, going over to Australia.  They are all really excited, but at the same time, they are all kind of sad to be leaving the MTC.

This week, we have been teaching two investigators who are both our teachers, but it is all in Chinese.  The lessons are getting better, but they definitely need some work as we are still forgetting a few of the Chinese words that we would like to use during the lesson.  The exciting part of teach though is that we are picking up two gold tags this week.  The gold tags are people who are actually investigating the church, but are being taught by missionaries here in the MTC.  We are all really excited about being able to teach in English once again.

On Saturday, we also started TRC, which is where we teach people from the "out side world" who have come in.  It is done all in Chinese, so we are pretty much teaching by the spirit because the people who come could be at any point.  The only thing though is here in two weeks, it will be us skyping people in Taiwan.  So it really will be a good experience, but I also see it being quite the experience as the people we will be teaching will actually be Taiwanese instead of return missionaries (TRC) or our Chinese teachers.

My time is about up, so I will email you again in a week.  Thanks for all the letters and prayers.

Love,

Elder Okeson

P.S.  I have attached a photo of the entire zone as of Sunday.

P.S.S.  Happy (be-lated) Fathers Day Dad :)

Hey,

To answer everyone's questions, the gym time is our time to do what ever in the gym.  As long as we are in the same area as our companion, it is ok, but there are no set activities of what we have to do during our gym time.

TALL is a program on the computer that the MTC uses to help the students learn another language. It was designed by students atBYU to help missionaries, but it is only really set up to help missionaries learn gospel terms.  It really doesn't teach any other vocabulary.

About my Visa, I gave them all the information they needed to send it in on the second day I was here.  I don't know when they actually are sending it in, but they have it all.

As for my companion's and district's Chinese, they are all doing really good.  All my companions came in knowing zero Chinese, but in the entire district, 4 of the 9 came in with some Chinese background, including myself.

For my mission president, President Day has already been serving for 2 years, so I will get a new mission president half way through my mission.

Love,

Elder Okeson