Time flies: MTC Week 3

Hola Familia y Amigos! 

This week has gone by so fast! This email might be shorter than usual, just because as I try to remember each day this week it all just melts together in my head. I need to be better about writing something down each day in my Journal so this doesn't happen :) 

In our district we were down 1 Hermana Arnold this week because she was super sick after eating some bad food. We gave her a blessing yesterday which was a pretty cool experience. She's much better today luckily. Other district news includes, way too much leftover Halloween candy in packages, more district volleyball, district spikeball, and translating Star Wars quotes into Spanish! 

One thing that was new this week is TRC. TRC is where me and my companion go and teach a 'real' person to teach in Spanish. (I say 'real' because they told us some are and some aren't. We treat them as real.) My person's name is Jerald. He's a younger guy from Bolivia who wants to know more about the Church. So far we've had 3 lessons, but they've been cut short each time due to scheduling issues in this TRC building. Jerald doesn't really like to talk so we're working on just getting to know him better so he feels comfortable talking to us. It's definitely good practice for all parts of being a Missionary! 

We're starting to memorize phrases for all the lessons in Spanish now. The pace we're supposed to keep is memorizing 60+ new words and 9+ new phrases per day soooo we're definitely always busy. I realized the other day that In class, I can understand 99% of everything our teachers say! The gift of tongues is real! We're also starting to get in to some more grammar-heavy works like past preterit, past imperfect, and future tense. It's a lot of new info but compared to English, Spanish is a breeze. I have so much respect for the missionaries that come to the MTC to learn English! I've met missionaries from China, Japan, Brazil, Switzerland, Korea, Thailand, and so many more! 

One thing we've talked about a lot this week is loving people. Charity is probably one of the most difficult Christlike attributes to develop, but is definitely one of the most important. There are so many people in this world that do bad things, say things that offend you, or maybe even just inconvenience you. I'm learning more and more every day how important it is to love everyone. Everyone has their own things they are dealing with in their life and people make mistakes. That's just a fact of life, but as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we carry a special responsibility to be representatives of Christ at all times. I believe that is one reason why President Nelson made the course correction for the name of the Church. Christ would never talk badly about someone behind their back, Christ would never dislike someone because of what they look like, and Christ would never turn inward on himself and label himself more important than someone else. 

1 Corinthians:13 is a great chapter about Charity. I invite you to read it and ponder about how you can be more like Christ. Similar to "What would Jesus do?" the scripture,  3 Nephi 27:27

 "Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am."

 is a great motto to live by. I'm learning more and more every day that life is to short to be sad, mad, angry, or depressed. You get this one mortal life... Live it as Christ did. Love others, serve others. 

I wasn't planning on writing this much about Charity, but I guess I just felt like it was right! I'll get off my soap-box now :) 

Los amo a todos! 

- Elder Thompson

Pictures this Week

1. Elder Fifita being cool as always

2. Me being....less cool as always :) 

3. District Temple Visit

4. Provo Temple

Familia! 

Just some other stuff that I didn't include in my group email....

At the MTC copy center they have a little Kiosk where you can order a T-Shirt for your mission. I just ordered mine and I should have it by next P-Day so I'll try and send a picture if I remember. Choir is way fun here! The director is really good, and he has lots of good stories to tell us. We sang a really pretty rendition of the Hymn "Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer" this week for the devotional. Probably just as fun, if not a bit more fun, is our Shower Choir. Pretty much our whole corner of the residence building likes to sing so when we are all in the showers we sing hymns, Disney songs, and whatever else comes up! It's pretty goofy but it's a blast. 

To answer mom's questions: Yeah I got the flip-flops, they are great. Thursdays Saturdays and Sundays are the longest days so I'm getting tired but I'm doing good. I played volleyball this morning and I usually have exercise time at like 7pm so it's throwing me off. My body thinks I should be asleep right now :) Thursdays we do 75min of service at like 6:15am. It's usually like sweeping or cleaning the residence bathrooms so not the most fun jobs. Then we have class right after for like 6ish hours with a break for food. Then we study till 10:30. Saturday is P-Days so we have class from 6-9:15pm. It's just a little hard to be working all day then suddenly sit down right as your body wants to sleep. Then Sundays are literally 13 hours of church. We have Priesthood, District meeting, Sacrament, Doctrine Class 1, Doctrine class 2, Choir, Devotional. Most of those things are more than 2 hours and none are less them 1 :) it's also mostly in English which is quite a trip when you spend all day speaking Spanish. Nothing bad though these days just seem to go slower. 

Calmarse Diligentemente: MTC week 2

Buenos Dias familia y amigos!

Well, the rumors are true. After the first 4 days, time flies past so quickly, it's hard to remember everything that happened this week!

Most of my time this week has been spent on Language study. Espanol es una idioma muy bonita! A lot of people in my district are getting frustrated how they 'struggle' with Spanish, but we've only been here for 10 days now and everyone can pretty fluidly converse in Spanish. Most of the people here are too hard on themselves! I had to memorize Moroni 10: 3-5, The Missionary Purpose, The First Vision, and probably close to 2000 words and phrases. It's a lot of work, but I enjoy it quite a bit. Taking a break and playing some Volleyball helps to keep us focused :)

Speaking of my district, we are super close friends even in this short period of time. We pretty much do everything with the 10 of us. We have so many inside jokes and things, I thought I'd let y'all in on some :) The first one is we shout "Wo-eye-knee" at eachother all the time. One of the Elders in our district lived in China for a bit and that means "Love ya" in Chinese.  I'm not sure when it became a thing but we say it all the time. Another is Calmarse Diligentemente (The title of this email). A translation of this would say "Diligently Chill" or something along those lines. Our Branch President said that in a district meeting this week and we liked it so much we made it our "motto" of sorts. He said it to us because again, some people were being hard on themselves with how much of the language they new and he just said "You aren't expected to know the whole thing by the time you leave The MTC! Diligent study is required to learn the language, yes. You also need to Diligently CHILL. It's fine!" It was a pretty funny but also profound moment. 

We also had our first choir practices. We practiced and sang "Be still, my Soul" for a Tuesday night devotional. The choir director is pretty funny, he tells lots of stories from his mission/life. The assistant choir director is my Uncle Blair's dad! I recognized him from some family stuff we had before and on Tuesday I introduced myself as he asked me to say the opening prayer! Just a funny connection, it really is a small world. 

Some funny language mistakes this week from various missionaries in my district were, "Where is my body" instead of "where is my notebook",  "We want you" Instead of "We want to get to know you", "Canada is a woman" instead of "Canada is better." Never a dull moment in language class!

One of the coolest things this last week was on Sunday. Each Sunday all the missionaries have the opportunity to watch a "Sunday Movie" right before bed. The one they encourage all new missionaries to watch is called "The Character of Christ" It's a talk Elder Bednar gave to the MTC on Christmas Day a few years ago. People say it's a MTC Exclusive thing but If I were you I'd search everywhere for some bootleg version of this talk because it was amazing. Elder Bednar explained some amazing things about how one attribute about the Character of Christ is how he always tuns outward to serve others while our natural inclination is to turn inward and think about ourselves. He shared some heart-wrenching stories about some people that displayed the Character of Christ, and I wish I had the time to recount everything about that talk because it seriously was life changing.

Focus on turning outward and thinking of others first! Selflessness is hard but it is so rewarding to serve others. The Savior was the perfect example of that and we need to identify and take upon us the Character of Christ. 

Los amo a todos! 

Elder Thompson

Fotos: 

1. Our district's makeshift dinner when the Dinner line was an hour long (Mostly provided by Hermana Arnold's suitcase of food and other people Halloween treats)

2.This is Elder Gato, the MTC cat

3. The Elders of our District

4. Everyone in our district

5. The hour long line for Pizza Night

6. My companion and our Substitute Lang. Teacher

 

(Additional info to the family this week)

It really does feel like I've been gone longer than 10 days, mostly just because everyone in our district are super close friends at this point. We have soooo many inside jokes and stuff. Elder Freeman does so much funny stuff, I'll tell you guys one thing that I didn't put in my big email. 

For Espanol practice we're supposed to speak it as much as possible, of course. When we do need to use English we're supposed to ask permission with something like, "Mi permite hablar ingles?". One morning we were super tired and just deliriously getting ready and from the corner of the room we hear in a weird voice "Mi permite..... FART" the 3 of us just yell, "NO NO NO NO" then it happened. I don't know if that will be funny to you guys or not but it was so hilarious in the moment!

MTC Choir

Chayse's Uncle Blair texted us a picture saying, "So it seems Chayse is singing in the MTC choir. My dad (the choir director, Elmo Keck) called on him to say the prayer and Chayse told him that they were kind of related, and explained how. My dad said he seems really happy." He also said that his dad says he usually feels tall, but not standing with those two!

MTC Week 1

Well my first week at the MTC is nearly coming to a close. Saturdays are my P-Days for the next 6 weeks so that's when I'll send emails!

Everything is going pretty well so far, I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the work sometimes :) My first companion is Elder Freeman, he's from Santaquin and he's going to the Wisconsin, Milwaukee mission (also Spanish Speaking). The other 8 people in my district are all Spanish speaking going to places like Orem, Yakima WA, and Milwaukee. A cool 'Small world moment' was an Hermana in my district who is going to the same mission as me. Hermana Hopkins met my cousin Bridger on his mission in Virginia a month or two ago so it was cool to make that connection!

Our first day was pretty crazy, they fed us so much information in half a day. It's alright though, 95% of the other Elders and Sisters who have been here longer are super nice about questions about how stuff works around here. I think I'm getting the hang of it for now, but apparently there are still more procedures we'll learn about. 

Most of our days so far have been spent in Language study. The people in my district had different starting skill levels in Spanish so It's nice to have people that I can help, but also people I can learn from. 2 Hermanas have 6 years of Spanish experience each so they are my and Elder Freeman's go-to for help. We're trying to speak as much as possible, even around our rooms and between class. I can tell some really don't like it, but I have really enjoyed speaking the language as much as possible.

The rest of our time has been workshops and classes on loving the people in our area, our purpose as missionaries, and different powers and gifts we have as missionaries. They had one class where they brought in some 'real' investigators. (There are rumors that some of them might be actors, but either way it was a powerful experience.) They would have the classroom of new missionaries talk to the investigators and ask them questions about what they needed in their life. The whole point of the lesson was to focus on loving "Joe" or loving "Dwane" and not worrying about teaching them everything about the Gospel in that moment. 

Yesterday we learned how to pray in Spanish which was muy dificil. Going from a very basic knowledge of Spanish to memorizing a bunch of phrases and words that are Church/Religion specific was pretty hard. All of us were super low energy and tired after our brains were crammed full of new material. We've got another section of phrases and words we have to have memorized by 2:00 today so that should be interesting. 

The only complaint I have about the MTC is that their beds are made of metal. I stubbed my toe pretty bad on day one right after I took off my shoes and I've been waiting on it to heal since then! In all seriousness though, I'm really enjoying everything so far. My teachers are great, my companion is great, and The Lord is great :) I can already tell he's helping me with Spanish and helping me understand new things from the Scriptures. 

I love you all! Gracias por sus oraciones!

Elder Thompson

Pictures:

-My view from the classroom

- Roommates/ companion. Left to right: Me (with a weird face) Elder Freeman, Elder Wall, Elder Fifita. 

Familia, 

Just sent my email for everyone so most of the good stuff from this week will be there :)

Just a few things I've wanted to tell you, Yes, the showers have curtains, it's honestly about as nice as a residence hall bathroom could be. Yes, I left my toothbrush at home (oops), and Yes, I'm doing the fasting thing well so far. I'm not sure if there's anything else to write, I think I've covered most of it but if you have questions/things in particular you'd like me to tell you I'd appreciate if you let me know! I wish I had a template to follow or something because what I have in my brain and my journal isn't enough sometimes :) 

Me gusta hablar espanol! Las personas en mi distrito estan bien!

(I know that might be wrong I'm getting better though :) )

If you get the chance I'd love it if you could send me some cheap flip flops for showers and my toothbrush! Apparently the best way to send packages is with some companies that specialize in packages to the MTC. I'm not sure what they're called but I'm sure a google search would pull up some options :)

Love you guys, I think about you a lot. Tell Ruby I said, "Hi" and I'm excited to see the pictures she drew. 

Elder Thompson

Officially a Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Elder Thompson was set apart as an Elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the evening of Tuesday, October 23, 2018, by his Stake President, President Marty Stephens of the South Jordan Utah River Stake. He reported to the Missionary Training Center at 1:15 pm on Wednesday, October 24, 2018.

We checked out the kids from school and went to lunch as a family, minus dad, to Chayse's favorite burger place (JCW's) on the way down. Dad and Chayse got to spend the whole day together on Tuesday. They finished the last of his shopping needs, went to lunch and also did a temple session together at the Draper Temple. We took some family pictures after the temple, had dinner and then Grandma Henke was able to join us at the stake offices for his setting apart. The MTC drop off was literally drop and go. We pulled up, gave hugs and good-byes, snapped one quick picture and he was off!

We were surprised to receive this email that evening and hear from him so soon:

I made it to the MTC! They took me right up to my room (all the way on the fourth floor) and then I made it straight to Spanish Class. I feel like I instantly forgot everything I practiced. Anyway, just wanted to let you know I made it. My P-Day is on Saturday so be watching for emails then. 

Love you!

Elder Thompson

Farewell

We had a really nice Sunday with friends and family that came to support Chayse and hear him speak in our ward sacrament meeting before leaving on the mission.

Chayse gave a really nice talk about the attributes of Christ, focusing on charity, having the pure love of Christ. His younger brother, Brady, was also the youth speaker that day and gave a talk about the word of wisdom, and mental and emotional health.

We had a very enjoyable day visiting with friends and family in our home. We didn't get pictures with everyone but were very grateful for everyone who took some time out of their day to be with us! It was so fun to see and visit with several friends that came down from our old neighborhood in Layton.

Living Endowment

Chayse received his temple endowment on Thursday, Sept. 13 at the Jordan River Temple. It was a lovely evening and we were grateful for the family members that took the time to join us.