Crazy Crazy second week! The MTC is still really awesome. We got to see the new MTC dedication. It was pretty cool. Everyone here really loves the new building. It is huge, there are tons of awesome pictures of Christ's life, it is really tall so you can see all over the city and mountains, peaceful music plays out of the chairs! and they have a couple of pianos also. It is an awesome place. They have these really nice rooms called ponder rooms...this is where me and my companions usually go to study.
One cool thing about the MTC is that every night, they take down about 50 flags, and then every morning at like 7:00, they put back up completely new ones. We all feel like they skip the Finnish one sometimes, the other Scandinavian countries seem to be up more. Every Saturday, we have to wake up at 6 and then do and hour and a half of service. Our job is to clean the new building. Both Saturdays so far, i have had to do bathrooms.
Every Tuesday, we have a devotional, which is usually a guest speaker from the 70 or the 12 Apostles. This week was elder neilson from the 70. It was pretty good. He served his mission in Finland which was pretty cool...he gave us a nice shout out. His wife spoke about running. She said that one time, she decided to run a 10k. She wasn't very good at running though, so she planned to run some and then walk some. After the first mile though, she felt determined not to stop. As she got farther and farther into the race, she became more and more determined and she tried harder every step. She finished the race without stopping, and had the most fun she has had in a really long time. She related this experience to serving a mission, or it can also relate to any calling really...she said that the more you try, the more you will desire, the more you desire, the more you will not want to stop. You will have so much joy serving a mission, because you are focused on doing Christ's work, not your own. You put forth your best effort, Christ will fill in the rest.
As missionaries, as we do our part, are all entitled to the gift of tongues. Some missionaries think that someday they might just have a dream and wake up and *boom* they speak the language, or that heavenly father will just shove all that good language into their head. This is HöppöHöppö (nonesense). That probably will never ever happen. Trying to explain this to my companion, I read a page and scripture in preach my Gospel that says this, "The gift of tongues will come with MUCH labor and struggle." Learning a language is not supposed to be easy, missions are not supposed to be easy. You will try and fail multiple times.
My companion elder Homer has been struggling basically since he got here. Really homesick and stuff. We have been to the counselors for at lease 12-14 hours since we emailed last. While he was in his meetings i got to watch the Joseph smith history video and replay it quite a few times. It is really good though. I also worked on a really hard puzzle of Salt Lake city. I thought that I would be lucky to even get one piece, but slowly it came together. My companion did end up going home on Tuesday...but hopefully he comes back. We had to skip class that night, so we went on a walk...I asked him what his patriarchal blessing said about his mission. He waited like 1 whole minute before responding, but ending up saying "it says I will serve a full time mission." He was crying and the spirit was so strong. He knew he had to serve a mission, and that this is where he needed to be. Hopefully he will be back stronger than before.
I got kicked out of my dorm with the two Danes. I still hang out with them whenever I can. There is only 2 of them in a 6 person room. I got moved to a room with some or the other finns. Elders viitanen and Reed are my new comps, and elder englun (the swede, my fav) and elder Lewis. Their room is way gross. They have like a moldy cheese farm. they collected milk from like the first day of MTC and kept it in a container...all the oil and juicy stuff floated to the top and the bottom is all chunky...it turned yellow too. Smells decent though. Also some rotten bannanas.
My new comps are good though. we taught our first two lessons at TRC yesterday. TRC is when random people come to MTC to be taught. they were some Finnish members. It went alright. It is a little different because you are teaching members, not investigators (even though they are all fake).
Every wednesday we get new missionaries. In our zone, we have finland, denmark, norway, sweden, dutch speaking, and mongolia for some reason. we are all good friends, we are here so long that we will see 3 different sets of sweden norway and dutch, and two denmark and mongolia. we will outlast them all. We got new dutchies (dutch elders) yesterday. 4 of them. one is asian, he is really funny. elder leung.
We get to go to the temple on Thursdays. We all did sealings for the first time. It is pretty cool. The Provo temple is also really nice.
Everyone says to just make it to sunday...that is väärä! (ä = a from apple...means false) In our zone, we all have to prepare a 5 minute talk and 40 minute priesthood lesson each week in our mission language. But you don't know until they announce it after the sacrament who is speaking and giving lessons. you have like 5 seconds to prepare yourself. We are now the senior missionaries (we have been here the longest because everyone keeps leaving!) so we will probably get picked next week. other than that though, sundays are good.
The church is true!
Love elder christensen
My two new companions!!
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