...Also, the church is true. Amen.
***************************
People, I'm coming at you live from the MTC.
Ok, well that isn't totally true. I'm going to spend some time reviewing, but I am in fact here. Answer promptly.
Side note: the apostrophe key doubles every time for some wierd reason. Right now I'm going to push shift and apostraphe with the hope that a quotation mark appears. And...shazam! "" I have lost not the will to live, but the will to press the delete key, so deal with it for today I guess.
I''m not going to lie. I miss you guys, but it was a lot easier than I thought to cut myself off here. Don''t take that personally, I just think I was really ready to go.
Or at least I was until I was brought to my class room.
The class room could be described as a hobbit hole. It''s underground and everything is about half the size neccessary to fit us in. Especially considering that I''m the size of two Frodos at least.
Side note the second: I keep running into people from New Zealand and one of the guys in my district/room is also a huge LOTR fan, so maybe that''s why I feel at home here.
That all said, we get really comfy chairs that flex a bit to make us comfortable and have the capacity to lean backwards given a wall that is farther than two inches from my sitting back. I was the last guy in my district to arrive besides a sister from Australia who just got here today.
Side note the third: Things would be much easier for everyone if all the sisters were hideous. That is all.
As the last guy to arrive, I climbed over an elder into my seat while being greeted by Sister Lee, my Korean teacher. The first day I don''t think we got a word of English out of her, and none of us really understood what she was trying to say beyond my titular phrase which means hello. (I just barely switched computers and the apostrophe key works, so life makes sense again) I think the primary purpose of the lesson was to scare the crap out of the lot of us so that we would study harder. Mission accomplished.
Now that I think about it, maybe that phrase has a bit too much irony for me to use.
We finished off with an activity where we had three investigators who were either real or astoundingly good actors. Either way, in the activity the "investigators" were bombarded with testimonies and doctrine with no real thought or creativity by missionaries adventurous enough to participate. Which makes it sound like I didn't. Ok, I involved myself without trying to show off or stick out. I asked a question or two but didn't try to take over the discussion. The lesson I learned was that our job as missionaries is to teach people rather than principles.
I really like the guys in my district. We get along super well and all of us are really focused. While most of the guys are yelling around and goofing off in the bathroom somewhere (which is exactly as awkward as it sounds), we are studying scriptures, saying prayers, or writing in our journals.
I may redact this statement, but as of now, the food here is most excellent. There are three or so main lines with a soup and salad bar, drinks of all juicy, milky, and carbonated varieties, and the best part is it is all limitless. I'm going to get so fat here it's awesome. Between that and my oriental experience, I might end up working at the Happy Sumo someday.
The best news is that I'm not a district leader. The choices have been made and God loved me enough to not put any more on my plate. I'm having a rough enough time handling the 3-4 hour straight classes in Korean with no English spoken. Throw scripture study, staying close to fit, and writing home into the mix and I'm barely afloat. At this point I've got that Just Keep Swimming song that Dory sings stuck in my head right next to the entire Tangled soundtrack.
I still can't believe I didn't get another run at the Princess Bride in before I left.
Oh yeah, also coming up are I have to prepare a talk on Baptism in Korean by Sunday and I have to prepare a lesson in Korean for an investigator by Monday.
Terror.
I should probably get back to that as soon as my laundry is done. Oh yeah, my P-day is on Friday, at least while I'm here. I didn't unleash ninja Josh and sneak onto some computer somewhere.
Forgive me if pictures are a long time coming. A day may come when I take pictures but it is not this day. (For those of you who didn't understand that reference, do yourself a favor and go borrow my LOTR dvds. For those of you who don't know what that is, that means Lord of the Rings. That's how you should be spending your time, not reading this.)
Also, the church is true. Amen.
Whitlock out.
