Hello everyone!
As it says in the subject, I'm still alive! My world is now only a few acres wide, but I've been so busy I've hardly noticed. So far, I've only left the MTC to go to the temple and to BYU urgent care. (We needed x-rays for visa purposes or something.) However, I have extremely important news: I have been fast-tracked! The normal time for Mandarin speaking missionaries is 9 weeks, but since I've already been doing this for 7 years, I'm only here for 3 weeks. Of course, no one thought to inform me of this fact, so I didn't realize until halfway through my first class.
The first day at the MTC is really confusing because they don't tell you anything. When you're dropped off, there's a missionary waiting to take you on a whirlwind rush through several different buildings where smiling people hand you badges and books and cards and point you on to the next person. Before you even have time to figure out what you've been handed, you're taken to your room to drop everything off, then taken you straight to your first class. After class, there was a welcome meeting where they talked a lot about how great a work you're doing, and how it's gonna be scary but you can do it, then sent us off to dinner. At 4:30. After dinner we finally got a bit of a tour, but our tour guides didn't really tell us much about the buildings we were visiting, so we didn't learn much. Finally, at like 9 pm, everyone heads back to their dorms where we tried to wrap our minds around everything we'd just been told. Thankfully, everyone's super nice, so we can just ask them what's going on and if they know they'll help us out.
Now that I've been here a full five days, I've figured things out a little better. We're divided into zones, and the zones are divided into districts. When I'm actually in Taiwan, the zones and districts will be based on geographic area. Here, it's based on language. We're in 3 classrooms all in a row, studying Chinese. No one else uses our classrooms, so we get to leave all our stuff in there, and we can go study there whenever we want.
All of the missionaries who are fast tracked are in the same district. There are only four of us: two elders and two sisters. Our district is tiny! For reference, the other districts are around 12 people. Since we already speak Chinese (ish), we mainly get to focus on how and what to teach. It's fun, but also daunting because even though we speak Chinese, we've never learned words like 'Atonement', 'Prophets', Priesthood' etc. We're figuring things out, but slowly.
My companion is Sister Fisher, or Xie Jiemei. She's wonderful. Her mom's from Taiwan, so she grew up speaking Chinese. We compliment each other really well, because she knows more spoken Chinese, but I have a better grasp of grammar rules and written Chinese. She's also super funny and kind. She has taught me a lot about thinking of others first, and always asking the Lord when we have questions. She's also taught me to put pepper in my ketchup, which is actually really good!
I've felt the Spirit so much here. Whether I'm teaching, studying, singing, or talking with friends about the gospel, the Spirit is always right there testifying of Christ and of missionary work. I feel like I've just had the love of Christ dumped on me in heaping amounts. I feel so much more love for the people around me, and I know it's not coming from me. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to feel the Spirit and know of God's love.
This emails already ridiculously long, but I have one more story to tell. Every Sunday we have a devotional, and usually it's given by a church leader. This Sunday, it was Donny Osmond! It was actually really weird. If you don't know who he is, he played the voice of General Shang in Mulan. He was very insistent that we know that fact. It was rather hard to connect a 60 year old white guy to the most attractive man Disney has ever produced. He spent most of the devotional telling self-congratulatory stories that were loosely based on gospel principles. I think he's spent so long being a celebrity, that he's forgotten how to be a real person. It was cool to see him though, and he did make us laugh a lot.
Anyway, that's all I have for today. Sorry it's so long! Next week I'll work on streamlining things a bit more. Hope you have an amazing week!
Hull Jiemei
Photos:
1: My zone. This is about 2/3 of the people at the MTC studying Chinese.
2: My nametag's in Chinese and it looks super cool.
3: I found Ireland! We don't see each other a ton because we're not in the same zone, but we do keep running into each other in the bathroom.
4: My district's tiny, but we have a lot of fun together. The elders are Elder Rich and Elder Bean
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