Our cute Elder Chizzy is doing great in the MTC. He and his Companion Elder Frazier (from Georgia) are doing well together and seem to be good friends. He is also loving his other roommates, from Canada (YAY!!!) and Hawaii!!! He says his goal is to have 1500 Korean vocab words memorized by the time he leaves. (His estimated departure date is October 22). He is happy to be able to say quite a few phrases in Korean now and can bear his testimony easily! I am amazed at the progress he has made in 4 short weeks. I asked him how the food was in the MTC. He says, "The food is......well, it's food. The best part is that I mash up 4 chocolate chip cookies in a bowl and put milk with it, yea, it's really really good." WOW!!!!!!!!!!! I guess that says a lot for the MTC food!! Ha!
We miss him and think of him every day, but we know he is doing a great job and are so proud of him.
He missed the BYU home game opener last week. He actually had outside gym time during the opening kick off and he said that he was a little sad, but "I know I'm in the right place!" This coming from a serious DIE HARD cougar football fan, who hasn't missed a BYU game since he was 2 I think. Wow, my little boy is really growing up!!!
Go Elder Chizzy!
"Prayers are answered everyday here. I have definitely never ever prayed harder in my life. The feeling I get from prayer is like no other feeling because I feel like Heavenly Father helps me so much everyday. For instance, The other day we were teaching a lesson to our investigator (teacher) and we invited him to come to church. It was like the 5th lesson so we decided that that would be a good commitment for him. When we extended the invitation to him though, he seemed very hesitant and what he said was, was that he was scared. So with my very limited Korean, I didn't know how to answer. So I said a really quick prayer and just started flipping open the scriptures. (The english ones:) ) and I opened to 2 Nephi 22:2 which talks about if we trust in the Lord, and he is our salvation, we don't need to be afraid. So I shared it with him, ( In Korean:)) and he seemed much less afraid. So I think he committed to coming to church next Sunday which is super cool! But yeah, that was a way cool experience and I know Heavenly Father answers prayers, even small ones."
"Mail is definitely the best part of the day because it is the only part of the day that you get a quick little escape from the MTC. The same routine everyday gets so old but I still like it a lot. The spirit is strong and its amazing how close to the spirit I feel. In last weeks devotional, Neil A. Anderson came and talked to us and that was so cool! He talked a lot about stories the prophet told and some of the interactions he has with the prophet on a daily basis. It was a super cool talk and we sang a way cool song that was called Behold the Nails in Jesus' Hands. It was a great song about the atonment and I really enjoyed it. This week we are singing Jesus once of Humble birth, which is also a great song!
But I am doing great! My throat has been all the way better for the whole week which is such a huge blessing! The Korean is hard, but I just feel so blessed by the Lord with learning it. It is coming easily and I understand what I am learning and my memory is amazing. I know that the Lord has helped me a ton and that is such a cool feeling. I feel like I am learning how to study considering we study the BOM for an hour a day and every time I am just sitting around, I am just studying vocab like crazy. I try to memorize at least 20 words a day so that by time I leave here, I will know at least 1500 korean words. The grammar forms are the hardest part but those are coming too and I feel like I understand the general base of Korean. So It is coming and it will continue to get better!
One of my new teachers, Brother Wade, just got off of his mission 2 months ago and he is so sick! He is an amazing teacher and we taught him a lesson in Korean last night and it actually went really well! I just made some sentences up in my head which really helped me realize how far I have come already. The fact that I can make up sentences in my head is amazing."
"Absolutely everyone I talk to says that Korea is just the most amazing place ever. My one teacher, Bro Hatfield, talked about how he played basketball almost everyday there which made me happy and they also play a lot of soccer over there. They say the people are so incredibly nice and I totally believe it! This week, we had 8 native Korean missionaries come and they all are just so insanely nice. They help us with our Korean all the time because we kind of just look foolish around them! They are all going Korean speaking so they will only be here for 3 weeks but it is a really cool experience to have them here."
"I am amazed by the Book of Mormon. I have taken things out of it this time that I have never taken out of it before. The gospel is so simple, yet it is so amazingly powerful. I feel so grateful for it and for Heavenly Father and Jesus for blessing us with it. "
Josh is doing amazing. He looks great. What fun experiences in the MTC. I can't wait until he gets "out there" and has even more amazing experiences in a foreign land. It's going to be wonderful for him and you.
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