MTC Week 2

MTC Week 2

I am still well and learning tons everyday here.  This Wednesday we are doing an English fast where for the whole day we won't speak English. I think it will test our Thai abilities, but I think we should be able to go the whole day we have been told that we are way ahead of schedule in learning the language. The Thai missionaries that have been here for six weeks didn't do an English fast until like week 5. I can't wait to be able to speak fully fluent. 

I have seen Elder Rice and Sister Anderson a lot more than I saw Elder Waters, They are on the same schedule as me so I have gym time and meal times at the same time as them. I have gone running with Elder Rice one of the mornings during Gym time. I am currently trying to break the MTC's mile run record. It is a 4:28 and I have run a 4:45 so far since being here. I figure I will be able to break the record because I have lots of time to get in good shape. The altitude hurt my lungs at first when I was running here, but I am starting to get used to it.

In our residence recently we have been trying to adjust to the spice level of Thailand. We have been eating these chilies at night before we go to bed; they are the real deal when it comes to spicy. As you know I am terrible at handling spicy foods and the first time I ate one I really thought I was dying. I was crying for about 15 minutes straight! And was sweating really hard. I have gotten much better since then I can eat one without crying anymore. Last night I ate 2 peppers without crying. I felt my mouth could have handled another pepper but my stomach didn’t like the spicy food.

So I decided to be in the MTC choir. Apparently you don't get a nap time anymore if you are not in the choir. I have been having fun with it and yesterday at choir practice the director told us we needed to sing extra good this Tuesday because the devotional at the MTC would be broadcast to all the other MTC's around the world. I think that means we are going to be privileged from hearing from an apostle or a member of the first presidency! It would be really nice to get to hear from one of them.

I have been busy teaching Last Friday was our last day teaching our first investigator. Now he is our teacher during the second half of the day. This Tuesday we are going to start teaching our new investigator. I am really excited to start off with an investigator that we haven't messed up teaching so much. It is cool because the way they do the investigators is we are actually teaching RMs but they portray a role of someone they taught on their mission. So they ask questions the real investigator asked them. They are really good at staying in character as well. They only speak Thai no matter what. Our first investigator told us he was trying to learn to speak English but he only knew how to say "Cool dude". We joked with him about that like after he would keep a commitment we would tell him cool dude. We are starting to read the characters now. Up until this point we have reading what is called Romanized Thai which is basically Thai words spelled out in English letters. It still does not read the same though the different letters make different sounds then they do in English. I was thinking earlier today about right after I got my mission call and Brother Watson put some Romanized Thai up on the board and it was really confusing and nobody could pronounce any of the words on the board. I could do really well at reading through that now. It’s really going to be nice once I can read the characters because when we teach investigators we always have to have them read the scriptures for us because we don't know how to read. It was funny because during one of our lessons I had our investigator read a scripture and when he was done he asked what this word means. When I didn't understand the word he said he pointed to it in the scripture and there was no way I could read it out of there because of the characters so we had to write down the word and figure it out and talk to him about it during our next lesson. 

It’s good to have another teacher for our classes because a variety of ways of teaching helps us understand better then the same thing. Our new teacher will speak English every once in awhile when he is teaching gospel stuff because he wants to make sure we understand more of that. It is honestly weird to hear English sometimes because so much of my day is spent in Thai. My companion keeps telling me to repeat things again because I accidentally said them in Thai instead of English. The gift of tongues is so real here at the MTC. I was thinking back to when I got my mission call and after I had this feeling that I would be able to learn the language and so far that has been spot on for everyone in my district. I am really enjoying my time here. It feels like time is starting to go now. The first week felt like each day was three days.

I hope all is well at home, I was sad to hear about Brother Sandrich. I am glad I was able to serve him the Sacrament a few times at his home before I left. I hope you guys have a good week.

Elder Cheney