MTC week 2
Hello Everyone,
I made it through week two of the online MTC, Hooray! I'm becoming more and more grateful for my glasses that have blue-light lenses because I'm spending upwards of 8 hours everyday on my computer. Here are the highlights of the week: Me and my companion taught our first Russian-only lesson; I memorized "Our Purpose" (a missionary mission statement) and Moroni 10:5 in Russian; This week the mental effort required for learning so much in so little time has been stressful but every night I'm excited to go to bed at 10:30. This next week will be the last week our MTC trainers speak english (for the most part) to us so I'll have to soak in all the learning I can before we are thrown in the deep end of the pool and forced to stay afloat.
How my desk looks after a busy week
Long Version:
What a week it has been. Today has been the first day I've been able to take a nap and it was well needed. Waking up at 6:30 hasn't been too rough on me but learning all day has been mentally exhausting so once 10:30 rolls around I'm ready to sleep. Since I’m on Zoom calls all day long I get antsy, my hands start looking for something to do and my legs want to jump up and run around. When I want to get up and move, I try to refocus by taking a drink of water. While it has been pretty effective, I’ve never had to pee so many times in one week. I will be trying a new refocusing method this week, one involving much less water.
Monday was the first of many days to come where I was overwhelmed with the language. Monday morning we had a workshop about the gift of tongues and they told a story about the four missionaries who opened the Hungary mission. Those four missionaries had a goal to learn 100 words per day which is crazy, but they were able to achieve their goal because they worked hard and were being righteous missionaries. At first I thought 50 words sounded good but decided to start out lower because I tend to be overly ambitious when setting goals. I set the goal to learn 25 words per day which felt reasonable at the time since the previous two days I had learned more than 25 words per day. However, Monday happened to be the day when I started memorizing words that were longer and unfamiliar. I pushed myself all day Monday studying vocabulary every chance I had but by the end of the day I still hadn't met my goal. It was so disappointing to exert so much effort towards something and not succeed, but I'm sure it will not be the last time I feel that way on my mission. I adjusted my daily word goal, but I'm hoping to improve my goal as I get better at Russian and the sounds begin to be more natural for my mouth to say and ears to hear. A scripture I really related to this week was 2 Nephi 3:17 where God is prophesying about Joseph Smith and he says: "I will raise up a Moses; and I will give power unto him... Yet I will not loose his tongue, that he shall speak much, for I will not make him mighty in speaking." God very easily could have given Joseph the ability to be a good speaker but it was a very intentional decision to not loose his tongue and there's something to be learned from that. While I know the gift of tongues is a very real thing, I also know that God allows us to have weaknesses.
Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the idea of empathy and how I can become a more empathetic person. It came up multiple times in class so I decided to devote a few days of my personal study to the topic. In general, I feel like a glass-half-full kind of person. I still have days when there seems to be no water in my cup at all, but for the most part I feel like I tend to look on the bright side of things. During a workshop, we talked about connecting on a personal level with people and one of the ideas they emphasized was showing others empathy. They made an interesting point about avoiding the phrase "at least" when people are talking to you. If someone tells you "Today was hard because...." instead of saying "well at least...." they recommended saying "Thanks for being willing to share that with me..." That had never occured to me before but made a lot of sense. A common phrase I found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John while studying later was "Jesus had compassion on them." I can confidently assume that Jesus’ compassion for the blind man didn’t sound like "Well at least your legs work. Your ears work too. Aren't you grateful for that?" Most people aren't looking for you to solve their problems or cure their sadness, but they are looking for someone who will listen and show compassion. It should also be noted that we shouldn’t wallow in sadness because "men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25). While we should do our best to live after the manner of happiness, we should also remember to show compassion and empathize with the people around us as well as we know how. Here were some of my favorite talks I listened to this week that talk about this topic better than I can:
Living After the Manner of Happiness- Jefferey R Holland, The Merciful Obtain Mercy- Dieter F Uchtdorf, Are We Not All Beggars- Jeffrey R Holland. If you do read one of them, Are We Not All Beggars is by far my favorite. It's one you can listen to 3 times in a row and still tear up in the same part of the talk. 10/10 would recommend.
Well, week 2 of 9 of the MTC is under my belt. I'll leave you with another fun Russian tidbit. When you write a smiley face in a text or in writing, Americans write it ":)" which I believe to be the correct way. However, Russians just write ")". It takes away a lot of the variety that you can use to spice up your smiley faces. ;) :-) XD :( =) :/ :{ I still prefer smiley faces with eyes.
пока пока,
старейшина Smith
PS- I found out that a couple missionaries didn't get my email from week one. It turned out that I entered a few emails incorrectly so if you hear of anyone else who wants to get my emails but hasn't yet, please let me know. Also I apologize for any spelling errors, I got a new Russian/English Keyboard (pictured below) and I'm still getting used to it.
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