Last Week at the MTC- 8/27/14

 I got my travel plans!!! I leave on Monday, go to Minneapolis, then to Amsterdam, then to Stockholm! We are all a little worried though, since our layover in Amsterdam is only 50 minutes. So hopefully it will work out. Our travel leader is Sister Allred, who has never flown before, so she is a little nervous, haha. But we are all helping out so it shouldn't be too bad. 

     The Danish and Icelandic missionaries left this Monday for their missions. It is weird not having them around during meals and gym. But this week we get 9 new Danish missionaries, 7 of which are sisters. So that will be crazy. And when we leave they will get 16 Norwegians and 15-ish Swedish missionaries, as opposed to the current 1 Norwegian and 9 Swedes. So that will be interesting. 

     This week for TRC we got to skype a man from Sweden. He lives in the Southwest part I think. It was super cool to be able to talk to someone who is actually in Sweden right now. He was super nice. It was kind of funny when we couldn't understand words. But he speaks English, so after a few minutes of guessing he could just tell us, haha. 

     Tonight our district has been chosen to be the missionaries for a thing called "People and our Purpose Part I", where the brand new missionaries learn about an investigator's background, then watch a mock lesson with them. So we will be the mock lesson missionaries. We are slightly nervous, because we haven't ever taught in English before, and we have to look professional and seem like we know what we're doing so we make a good impression on the new missionaries, haha. So hopefully that will go well. We have a meeting beforehand, and it's not a full lesson so it should be okay. 

     We only have 1 or two more lessons to teach in the MTC, and only 3 more class days. It is so weird. It feels like I have been here forever, haha. We have to start packing today, so hopefully everything will fit in my bags and they won't weigh too much. 

      This Sunday after devotional we watched a movie called "The Life of Thomas S. Monson" I think, and it was super good. President Monson has had an amazing life. He has done so much for so many people throughout his life. It is no wonder that he has been called to be a prophet of God. 

     It has been kind of cloudy and rainy a lot here, which is really weird for Utah, especially in August. But it is also pretty nice. It's funny when elders in our district complain about the cold in the morning when we go to gym in shorts and t-shirts, and we're all thinking "this is what Sweden's going to be like, when it's warm", haha. So hopefully we will all be good at adjusting to that.

     We have decided as a district where we think everyone's first areas will be. Mine was decided to be Northeast, where there is a sparser population of people. But I hear that in the North they talk nice and slow and pretty clearly so it is really good for new missionaries. So that would be fun, besides that the North will be really really really cold for the winter months. 

     On the first day we get to Sweden, we will be doing street contacting. Most people in our district think that will be hard, but I am actually looking forward to it a bit. I think it will be fun to be able to talk to actual Swedish people, the people we are going there to teach. So hopefully we will be decent at speaking, haha. This week I had a dream where I had a Swedish BYU class, and the professor said we had an upcoming test on how to order food in a restaurant and shop in a store, or something like that. And I got super worried because I had absolutely no idea how to do that, so I was trying to find a way to drop the class or something like that, haha. But I'm really not too worried about that kind of stuff. I'll have plenty of time on the plane to review vocab.

     Last night's devotional was great. Mostly it was about diligence and hard work. President Ezra Taft Benson has a quote where he says the secret to missionary work is... Work! So I will have to "work" on that, haha. 

     Thank you so much to those who have sent me mail and packages. I am so glad to hear from you all. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

    Äldste Smith

Week 4: 8/20/14

Hej!

     Sorry, no pictures this week. We didn't really do too much that was new and picture worthy, haha. But it was an awesome week. Last Thursday for TRC (where we teach member volunteers), I taught a woman named Sister Smith, who is originally from Lakeridge! It was really cool to talk to her about the ward. I think she has not lived there for a while though. She was super nice and told us all about her mission. She served when there were only 88 missionaries in Sweden, and only 6 were sisters. She also told us a lot about getting used to the language and stuff. 

     Something exciting this week was that I finished reading the dictionary!! Haha. I went through and wrote down all the words I wanted to know, within reason. So, now I have a list of 1,480 vocab words. When I finished I thought "what will I do with my time now?", so now I am going back through and writing down which verb and noun conjugation groups they go to. So now everyone thinks I understand Swedish, but I still don't, haha. But I learned a lot of interesting words. 

     Either today or tomorrow my district gets our travel plans! I am super excited to find out what our flight will be, whether we will all be on the same flights, etc. I had a funny dream where everyone got to leave at around 5 in the morning, but I had to wait til 2 for my flight and I got really anxious to go. But that won't happen in real life. Another exciting thing that happened was that Aldste Heiner and I finished our weight loss challenge. We started last Saturday and finished this Saturday. Aldste Heiner lost 6 pounds, and I lost 5. But I wasn't as dedicated to eating only salads as he was, so most people have agreed that I won in reality, haha. When we did the final weigh-in we took off our watches, CTR rings, meal cards, and name tags (just for a second), haha. 

     For Sunday devotional we had Jenny Oaks Baker, who is Elder Oaks' daughter, and is a super good violin player. She and her kids played a bunch of songs in between experiences that she shared from her life of how she learned to listen to the Holy Ghost and find answers in the scriptures to present day challenges she had. So that was pretty cool. And last night for devotional we had Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, who is the General Young Women's President. She and her husband have served as Temple President and Wife for the Stockholm Sweden Temple, and possibly as the Mission President and Wife for the Sweden Stockholm Mission (I don't remember if that's what she said for sure, but they were at least the Temple President and Wife). So she asked all the Swedish Missionaries to stand up, so that was kind of cool. She shared a ton of mission experiences of her children and their spouses. They have all served missions in really cool places, like Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Italy, and stuff like that. It was probably my favorite devotional, besides the one from John H. Groberg. 

     Something else cool this week was that we looked up some of our family history during free time. Me and Aldste Heiner found out we are both related to Sister Allred through our Allred lines to a man born in 1788, so that was cool. Also Aldste Heiner is related to Aldste Hemmingsen through an ancestor even earlier than that. Aldste Heiner was able to find a line that went back to Adam, so that was cool to see. And I found a lot of French and some Roman/Italian on the Smith side of our family that I didn't know about before, so that was pretty fun to learn about. 

     It has rained a few times here the last few days, but it isn't too bad. For gym time everyday we have been playing volleyball with almost the whole district, which is fun. This week me and Aldste Heiner were teaching a lesson to an investigator named Johannes, and it was very hard for us. He is very busy with work, and we haven't been able to figure out how to show very well how important scripture study and prayer are for us. He believes a lot in Christ, so we have been trying to focus on how God the Father is the most important, but that Christ is also extremely important to us. It has just been hard for us to bring the Spirit too. So we taught him the Plan of Salvation, then asked if he would be baptized. He said sure, so we told him we would help him prepare to be baptized. We invited him to come to church, and explained that this is important to show God we are following Him and trying to follow His commandments, but he said he has work so we attempted to help him know that through prayer he can find a way to come. But it was weird. After the lesson we both just didn't feel good about it, even though he is going to work towards baptism. Afterwards our teacher took us aside and tried to help us out. Also our lesson in class that day was about having the Holy Ghost in lessons and helping the investigator be converted through the Holy Ghost. So that was a very good learning experience for me, and has helped me strive more to have the Holy Ghost in lessons. 

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you to everyone that has sent me letters!

   ---Aldste Smith

Week 3: 8-13-14

Hej!

    It is so weird to think it has already/only been three weeks! Haha. My sense of time is way off here. I got a haircut last week. I only have a few minutes left of email time so I will try to be quick. 

On Thursday we had TRC, which is where Swedish speaking members come to the MTC and we get to teach them a family night type lesson. It was fun to get to teach people who already know the gospel is true. we taught this super nice man and his 11 year old daughter. It was very humbling to have his daughter help us to remember words when we got stuck while speaking. 

    I am now the "senior companion", which means I just talk to our district leader one more time a week than Alste Heiner. Also, Aldste Van Alfen, my friend from BYU, is no longer our third teaching companion, since we switched from two teaching threesomes to three twosomes in class. So there are some nice and some hard things about switching to just two of us teaching. 

    We got new Dutch missionaries this week. One of them is the younger sister of one of our teachers, so that is cool. We also got two new teachers, so now we have five. We still mainly have the first three though. I think the new two are more of part-time to fill in for the others for the most part. But they are all nice and cool. 

    My Swedish is steadily progressing. Lately I have been reading the Swedish-English dictionary, and writing down all the words I want to learn with their definitions. I think I am at H so far. There are some funny words. 

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you to those who have sent me dearelders and letters!

     --Aldste Smith  

Week 2- 8/6/14

Hej everyone,

    This week has been great! It went by a lot faster than last week, it seemed. But we have been busy. Part of why it seems fast I think is because we are starting to get the hang of the schedule, which is very similar every day. 

     This week we implemented a district fashion schedule, haha. We had casual Friday (we rolled up our sleeves), Sweater Saturday, Suit-up Sunday, Tacky Monday, and Eurofresh Tuesday (we actually all looked the same as normal, but everyone pretended they looked more European, haha). So that was fun. Aldste Heiner and I have a ton of the same clothes, since we both have CTR clothing, so we usually match our clothes almost exactly. We even have one pair of the same shoes. Aldste Heiner is also mostly color blind, so he has me pick out his ties most days, haha. He's like, "which tie matches this?" and I just say any of them, haha. So most days we try to match our ties as best as we can too. 

     Aldste Bouton almost broke his foot during gym time this week. He was playing soccer, and tried to kick the ball really hard but hit another elder's shin. The elder was fine, but Aldste Bouton had to get X-rays and crutches. Luckily it is just a lot of soft tissue damage, so he can walk again soon with just an ankle brace I think, and he will still be able to come to Sweden as scheduled. All our classes and stuff are on the second/third floors, so a lot of times Aldste Bradley would carry him up and down and give him piggy back rides, haha. When we walked to the temple grounds on Sunday he gave him a piggy back ride the whole way, and everyone we passed was impressed, haha. Aldste Bouton said he felt like Tiny Tim from that Christmas story with Scrooge, haha.

     Our investigator, Lennart, became one of our teachers this week. When he first came in and spoke a little English, we were all freaked out a little. But he is super nice and is a good teacher. So from now on all our teachers will be mock investigators, and we teach them until they are baptized, then they give us a new investigator to teach. So that will be fun. I am getting pretty good at the first lesson now that I have taught it a bunch. Sometimes in lessons it is funny because we are in a triple companionship in class, so all three of us have kind of different views of where to take the lesson so we have to kind of figure it out as we go, haha. It can probably be helped a lot by a little better planning, but it is hard. 

     On Sunday President Worthlin, the BYU president, spoke for devotional. I was super sleepy during it though, so I didn't take great notes. But right after that we watched a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and it was great. He talked about how blessed we are to live in the latter days, and how we can probably not even comprehend how blessed we are for that. He also talked about how in all the other dispensations the prophets knew that the people would eventually all fall away, and had to carry that burden, but we know that we will "win" this time. And that is awesome. He also talked about how we really only ever had the one temple in Jerusalem before Joseph Smith, and even that was only fully built for a few decades before it was destroyed each time. So we are so blessed to have HUNDREDS of temples now, and there are so many people who can have their temple work done now. 

     Today we get 13 new Dutch missionaries in our zone. Six just left on Monday, so it is weird to have them gone. We are almost some of the longest here in the zone now, haha. They are going to try and squish all thirteen "Dutchies" into one classroom, which is pretty crowded for us with nine missionaries. So that will be interesting for them. 

     Last night we had an emiritus general authority, Elder Hafen, speak to us. He talked about why we go to the temple before missions, and how it is because the promises we make in the temple bless us with power and protection, which are very nice, especially when we go away from home for 18 months or two years. Also, he shared a letter from one of his grandsons who was in the MTC back when the flood of new sister missionaries just started. He said, referring to the sisters: "If you don't look once, you're not a man. If you look twice, you're not a missionary." So that was really funny, haha. 

     Swedish is going alright. I am trying to start learning the grammar, but it is kind of tough because the only way to know which conjugation type applies to a word is to use it. There are four groups of conjugations for verbs, but you can't tell which one applies to a word unless you just use it, since it's kind of random. But it's not too bad. 

     I am getting a haircut in about an hour and a half, so wish me luck! I've been told they like to just shave off a bunch of hair on the elders, so hopefully it will be able to look normal, haha.

     I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

     Aldste Smith

p.s. Here are the picture of Aldste Heiner and I, and of first Nephi 1

p.p.s. (is that the right way?) Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me letters and/or dear elders! They have all been really nice and I really appreciate them!

Also here is Aldste Bradley carrying Aldste Bouton, with Aldste Van Alfen photobombing, haha.