RoseE writes,
"Okay, in a rush today, they changed the rules on temple times, so we can't go in the morning anymore.* We must go last thing in the afternoon and be late for dinner, which we are, and hence late for the devotional, which we cannot be because, as mentioned previously, I am supposed to sit on the stand and pray, for which reason I am wearing a suit jacket which I found in the sisters' giveaway box and had dry-cleaned, as it fit very well and looked professional and cute.
So.
We have two new sisters: Ogelvie and Peterson. I, being from Minnesota**, can pronounce Sister Ogelvie's name correctly. I am the only one. They are both handling the MTC with much more grace than ever I did, which is good for them.
Our North-Carolina-bound roommates are leaving tomorrow. This is the second set of roommates to whom we have bid goodbye, and here we remain, still. Twenty-seven days and counting! We theorize and suspect that when the new Korean-from-Korea sisters arrive next week, they will be rooming with us, so that they will have some roommates who "speak Korean." Which we don't, really. But we try.
My district is now playing a "paper clip game," wherein if you speak English when you were supposed to be speaking Korean (which is most of the time now) you must surrender one of four paper clips you have assigned to you at the beginning of the day. Yesterday I was the only person to lose a paper clip. Tomorrow I am putting the smackdown on the others and actually calling them out when they slip up. So there.
We have not yet received our flight plans or anything like unto them, but I am fairly sure that when they arrive, there will be a rule printed in big letters that says something to the effect of 'if you were scheming to meet somebody in the airport, you can just forget about it right now, Elder/Sister.'*** We have a lot of rules like that. But we are allowed to make phone calls from the airport to our families, which is good.
Brother Thiel took each of us aside this week and had us repeat the First Vision after him so he could correct our pronunciation. When it was my turn, he had me repeat back the first line or so and then just recite the rest. He said my pronunciation was genuinely surprisingly good and that he was very impressed. (Sister Pace, the teacher down the hall, assurred me that this would happen if I read aloud from the Book of Mormon every day. So I did. And so it did. Aren't miracles handy?)
A billion billion thanks for my package! Sister Linford was really excited to have cookies that she could eat. I was just excited to have oatmeal scotchies, as they are the most delicious cookies known to man. I am very smug about my small and efficient carryon, and will be more smug when packing day comes. Everyone else will have their trains of bags and I will have . . . just my stuff. That I can run a block while carrying.#
To Bethe: I do miss Doctor Who and Avatar a lot, but there is nothing here to watch them on and no time to watch them in, and for a while I have more important things that I have to be working on. But when I get back it will be summer and I fully plan to just veg on the couch for a week and catch up on my shows, probably at peculiar hours of the night as I will be jet-lagged out of my blessed mind.
To Teancum: I laughed my head off at your letter. Yes, they have been a bit short -- I really liked hearing more from you. The more you write me, the more I can write you back and tell you some of what it will be like when you go on a mission. (It will be like wearing a suit coat all the time. Next question.)
On the lds.org chat this week, I talked to a man named Wes who was A. not crazy and B. not looking for a fight, which is a big step up from most of the chats that we get. I committed him to go to church . . . and now I'm waiting anxiously to hear back from him to see how it went. Real investigator! Yaaay!
Um, what else is news this week . . . hm . . .
I knew I should have made a list, now I can't think of stuff . . .
Oh, Grandma Rosie wrote me a letter, and I wrote her back, and then realized I had thrown away the envelope with her address on it, which was stupid of me. So I will probably write a letter to Cat and stick them both in one envelope and make her write the address on it and pop it in the mail. If I can do that before next P-Day. I find I do not correspond much between P-Days anymore.
Excuse me . . . juunbi nal. We are strongly encouraged to say "Preparation Day" isntead of "P-Day." I feel that this is a losing battle, but in the spirit of the thing we have all learned to say it in Korean and thus avoid the issue entirely. Nobody knows what we are saying in Korean anyway. Although one of the new sisters tried to say something at dinner the other day and I was like "Huh?" Because she said "moh-da" instead of "moh.-da". Um, the difference doesn't type out very well, but she missed the t-shaped glottal stop at the end of the verb stem and I just could not figure out what she meant. So I guess that's good, if I'm beginning to hear things like stops and dipthongs correctly. And can differentiate between things like "sa-da" which is "to buy" and "SSa-da" which is "to be inexpensive." My favorites are still "i-da," to be, and "i.-da," to exist. Two different verbs that sound almost exactly the same and mean almost exactly the same thing but which cannot under any circumstances be mixed up. Fun times.
Oh, and I have learned the word for "to sparkle." Pik.gaban.dja.KKada. It's a sparkly-sounding word. Just . . . trust me.
Eurm . . . oh, the printer is fixed now, so I can actually print out e-mails, which is a great convenience. Still only on Tuesdays, though.
Aaaaaaaaaaand one night this week Elder Barzee came into the classroom wobbling around like he was drunk on the half-bottle of Raspberry Disani he had in his hand. Elder Gygi tried to wrestle it away from him and calm him down, playing along. "Come on, Barzee, you've had enough . . . you know you can't handle vodka . . . just give it to Sister Hadden, she's from Russia. She can take it." He pulled the bottle away from Barzee and handed it to me. I promptly wrenched off the top and took a big swig. Both elders just stopped and stared at me. Sounding awestruck, Elder Barzee asked, "You really thought it was vodka, didn't you?"
Fun times.
Anyway, that's what I've got for you this week. Cat W., I'm writing you longhand, because I have more time to do that. And I love you all, and all that jazz, the church is true, Joseph Smith is a [] PROPHET OF GOD, and I am out of time on this computer.
RoseE"
*Missionaries at the MTC attend the temple every week on their Preparation Day. (P-Day)
** RoseE was born in Minnesota, and lived there (excepting the few years we followed Todd and the Navy around the East Coast) until she was 15.
*** Todd has plans to fly to California on the day RoseE is flying to Korea. I will just cry, so I'd better stay home and take the phone call.
# Guidance from RoseE's Great-Aunt Bethe, who knows: Only bring as much baggage as you can carry around the block at a run.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Letter to Grama & Grampa Hadden 3/2/09
"Dear Grandma and Grandpa, (with Korean Characters)
One of the things that make Korean so hard is that it is a SOV language. All Languages are classified by how they arrange their sentences' subjects, objects, and verbs. English, Spanish and French are all Subject-Verb-Object languages, the most common kind. In Korean, the verb always comes at the end of the sentence, and it's packed with information. There's the verb itself, and then you tack on syllables to indicate that you want to do this thing, or can't or won't do it, or are in the process of doing it, and when you're doing it, and if the person you're talking about outranks you, and then you wrap the whole thing up with a sentence marker that tells the person you're talking to exactly how much you respect them. So most of your sentences addressed to any particular person will all end with the same sound. Which is why Koreans don't understand why rhyming is such a big deal in English - their language rhymes naturally, all the time. It's really quite pretty.
So add all that information to Joseph Smith's writing style, in which every sentence goes on for half a column and achieves a level of intricacy that makes most professional wordsmiths weep with envy, and you will understand why memorizing the First Vision in Korean is no mean feat. It feels a little like waltzing backwards while standing on your hands. (Not that either waltzing or standing on your hands is permitted at the MTC)
All the Japanese missionaries are endlessly grateful they don't have to learn Korean. We Koreans are all grateful we don't have to learn Finnish. And the Finns get to have Alma 31:18* all to themselves. (I'm just teasing; we love the Finns.) Korean actually makes a lot of sense when you get used to it - much more than English. It's kind of like switching from Windows to Mac. It's so well-organized and user-friendly that it's absolutely incomprehensible when you're used to nothing making sense.
Sorry for the page-long rant on Korean; it's been a long day of studying.
Anyway, Sister Bergeson says she's glad her brother did so well in his talk, and Elder Gygi, when I mentioned the ice cream, launched into Hank** ice-cream stories that would probably have lasted half and hour if our teacher hadn't insisted that he focus.
Focus has become a problem for us lately. We're six weeks in and we're going a little stir crazy. I'm trying to stay on task - my teacher, Brother Thiel (pronounce 'teal', like the color) told us that it's easy to spot the missionaries who goofed off in the MTC once they get to the field. I don't want to carry that stigma. No way. So I'm trying to keep my language goals really high and then meet them. I'm also reading the Book of Mormon in Korean, one painstaking sylable at a time, because I've been assured that missionaries who accomplish this have noticeably better accents and stronger reading skills.
We're expecting two new districts of Americans next Wednesday, and one of Koreans two week after that, so by the time I leave we'll be back up to ten Korean-speaking stisters. Right now the only Korean missionaries in the MTC are the ones who came in with me, and we seem to be very few in number. The Japanese are moving in on our territory in the cafeteria. Hopefully our reinforcements will rectify this situation.
Well, I have now written a very long, if not particularly interesting letter, and it's time for me to go to bed. Love you!
RoseE
(Korean Characters)
Ha den Cha Mei
Sister Hadden
It took me nearly a week to get that last letter out, so you get another page to answer your questions. Hopefully you've received the letter on Elder Gygi by the time you get this, and you are hinting to Heather and Hank that they should write to him, since he gets very little mail and deserves much more.
How's language? It's good. We taught in Korean for the first time on Saturday, which was stressful. But we made it through. The whole zone is going to speak only Korean from Wednesday to Saturday this week. Everyone else calls this (Korean Characters), English fast, but I call it super (Korean Characters) Korean, because A. That's what we call it at camp***, so it's what I'm used to, and B. It's too easy for me to cheat with French, and English-and French fast is not a catchy title.
We heard from our very first Twelve this week: Elder Ballard. He talked about his experiences managing PR for the Church during the Romney# campaign, and about what the world doesn't know about us but needs to. He was wearing a gray suit. I've never seen a member of the Twelve in a gray suit. He also told us that Elder Bednar can't conduct music to save his life.
Interesting things about my fellow missionaries...well, Elder Gygi once had a dream about camels that scarred him for life. Elder Kerrigan tried to bear his testimony to a Korean Temple Square sister and ended up asking her if she was handsome, and somebody in our zone can suck a spaghetti noodle up his nose and spit it out of his mouth. I've never looked long enough to find out who. No one in my district.
The Korean sisters, along with our older sisters, are all settled in Korea by now. They took an unbelievable number of strange and wacky pictures before they left.
The food is good. Except for the noodle thing. We have a box of junk food from packages that lives under our bedroom window, and the thing is like the basket of bread that fed the 5000...no matter how much we eat, it's never empty. I am not sure if this counts as a miracle.
Anyway, I will finally mail this letter.
RoseE"
*Alma 31:18 "And again we thank thee, O God, that we are a chosen and a holy people. Amen" This is part of a prayer that a people called the Zoramites said by rote every day from their church. They were a very prideful people, definitely uppity and they treated all those whom they felt to be beneath them accordingly, which included the prophet at that time, Alma. They were very surprised to get their come-uppance little later in the book, but you'll have to read it to find out how.
I'm afraid RoseE is teasing her fellow missionaries here.
** Henry "Hank" Hurren, RoseE's uncle
***Concordia College International Language Camps in Northern Minnesota. Specifically Lac du Bois, http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/Languages/french1.php the French Camp that RoseE attended at a camper for 3 years and as a counselor for 5 years.
# Marion G. Romney, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died in 1988, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_G._Romney
One of the things that make Korean so hard is that it is a SOV language. All Languages are classified by how they arrange their sentences' subjects, objects, and verbs. English, Spanish and French are all Subject-Verb-Object languages, the most common kind. In Korean, the verb always comes at the end of the sentence, and it's packed with information. There's the verb itself, and then you tack on syllables to indicate that you want to do this thing, or can't or won't do it, or are in the process of doing it, and when you're doing it, and if the person you're talking about outranks you, and then you wrap the whole thing up with a sentence marker that tells the person you're talking to exactly how much you respect them. So most of your sentences addressed to any particular person will all end with the same sound. Which is why Koreans don't understand why rhyming is such a big deal in English - their language rhymes naturally, all the time. It's really quite pretty.
So add all that information to Joseph Smith's writing style, in which every sentence goes on for half a column and achieves a level of intricacy that makes most professional wordsmiths weep with envy, and you will understand why memorizing the First Vision in Korean is no mean feat. It feels a little like waltzing backwards while standing on your hands. (Not that either waltzing or standing on your hands is permitted at the MTC)
All the Japanese missionaries are endlessly grateful they don't have to learn Korean. We Koreans are all grateful we don't have to learn Finnish. And the Finns get to have Alma 31:18* all to themselves. (I'm just teasing; we love the Finns.) Korean actually makes a lot of sense when you get used to it - much more than English. It's kind of like switching from Windows to Mac. It's so well-organized and user-friendly that it's absolutely incomprehensible when you're used to nothing making sense.
Sorry for the page-long rant on Korean; it's been a long day of studying.
Anyway, Sister Bergeson says she's glad her brother did so well in his talk, and Elder Gygi, when I mentioned the ice cream, launched into Hank** ice-cream stories that would probably have lasted half and hour if our teacher hadn't insisted that he focus.
Focus has become a problem for us lately. We're six weeks in and we're going a little stir crazy. I'm trying to stay on task - my teacher, Brother Thiel (pronounce 'teal', like the color) told us that it's easy to spot the missionaries who goofed off in the MTC once they get to the field. I don't want to carry that stigma. No way. So I'm trying to keep my language goals really high and then meet them. I'm also reading the Book of Mormon in Korean, one painstaking sylable at a time, because I've been assured that missionaries who accomplish this have noticeably better accents and stronger reading skills.
We're expecting two new districts of Americans next Wednesday, and one of Koreans two week after that, so by the time I leave we'll be back up to ten Korean-speaking stisters. Right now the only Korean missionaries in the MTC are the ones who came in with me, and we seem to be very few in number. The Japanese are moving in on our territory in the cafeteria. Hopefully our reinforcements will rectify this situation.
Well, I have now written a very long, if not particularly interesting letter, and it's time for me to go to bed. Love you!
RoseE
(Korean Characters)
Ha den Cha Mei
Sister Hadden
It took me nearly a week to get that last letter out, so you get another page to answer your questions. Hopefully you've received the letter on Elder Gygi by the time you get this, and you are hinting to Heather and Hank that they should write to him, since he gets very little mail and deserves much more.
How's language? It's good. We taught in Korean for the first time on Saturday, which was stressful. But we made it through. The whole zone is going to speak only Korean from Wednesday to Saturday this week. Everyone else calls this (Korean Characters), English fast, but I call it super (Korean Characters) Korean, because A. That's what we call it at camp***, so it's what I'm used to, and B. It's too easy for me to cheat with French, and English-and French fast is not a catchy title.
We heard from our very first Twelve this week: Elder Ballard. He talked about his experiences managing PR for the Church during the Romney# campaign, and about what the world doesn't know about us but needs to. He was wearing a gray suit. I've never seen a member of the Twelve in a gray suit. He also told us that Elder Bednar can't conduct music to save his life.
Interesting things about my fellow missionaries...well, Elder Gygi once had a dream about camels that scarred him for life. Elder Kerrigan tried to bear his testimony to a Korean Temple Square sister and ended up asking her if she was handsome, and somebody in our zone can suck a spaghetti noodle up his nose and spit it out of his mouth. I've never looked long enough to find out who. No one in my district.
The Korean sisters, along with our older sisters, are all settled in Korea by now. They took an unbelievable number of strange and wacky pictures before they left.
The food is good. Except for the noodle thing. We have a box of junk food from packages that lives under our bedroom window, and the thing is like the basket of bread that fed the 5000...no matter how much we eat, it's never empty. I am not sure if this counts as a miracle.
Anyway, I will finally mail this letter.
RoseE"
*Alma 31:18 "And again we thank thee, O God, that we are a chosen and a holy people. Amen" This is part of a prayer that a people called the Zoramites said by rote every day from their church. They were a very prideful people, definitely uppity and they treated all those whom they felt to be beneath them accordingly, which included the prophet at that time, Alma. They were very surprised to get their come-uppance little later in the book, but you'll have to read it to find out how.
I'm afraid RoseE is teasing her fellow missionaries here.
** Henry "Hank" Hurren, RoseE's uncle
***Concordia College International Language Camps in Northern Minnesota. Specifically Lac du Bois, http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/Languages/french1.php the French Camp that RoseE attended at a camper for 3 years and as a counselor for 5 years.
# Marion G. Romney, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died in 1988, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_G._Romney
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
P-Day Email 2/24/09
RoseE writes:
"Dear Mum, Dad, and All,
Thanks for the e-mails and news, and particularly Dad's letters. They are the best parts of my week, hands down.
It's been a quiet week here in Lake Woebegon*, my hometown. Really, not much very interesting has happened. The older sisters and Korean sisters are gone, leaving just the five of us girls and a total of four Korean districts. Elder Conley (the brightest and least grown-up of our districtmates) has been called as the new District Leader, stepping in for Elder Kerrigan, the oldest and most mature of our districtmates. So dynamics are changing a little bit. We're all getting used to it. Also my good friends the Thai sisters are leaving a week from today, which is sad. Sister Crepse is about my best friend here at the MTC. She and I are going to get English Master's Degrees together when we get home.
A week from today I will have a very good seat for the devotional. A very good seat. President Carlson asked me to offer the closing prayer. He had to interview me before he asked, mostly to make sure I knew the proper use of the language of prayer, the archaic informal. "President Carlson . . . I have an English degree." "Oh. Well, that's fine, then." They seem to be rather worried about an unanticipated 'you' slipping out on camera in front of several thousand missionaries worldwide.
Saturday, we taught in Korean for the first time. It was hard on all of us, in different ways. For me, it was once again lesson organization and flow that was my problem, although we did much better than we had in previous lessons on that. Being forced to simplify does wonders. My biggest problem right now is that I just don't have the vocabulary to understand what anybody says to me. And the vocabulary that I do have, I keep forgetting how to use. Playing an investigator on Saturday morning, I tried to say "I worry about my family" and ended up saying "I get nigh-on-homicidally frustrated with my family", which made my teacher convulse from shock in his chair. Yesterday, I left the classroom without my scriptures and had to run back for them, explaining breathlessly to my perplexed teacher, "My testimony does not exist." "Your what?" "Um . . . Scriptures! My scriptures do not exist!" "Oh, good. I was going to say, we can help you with that . . ."
Korean is a tricky language.
Tuesday night, Elder Ballard** came and spoke to us. I knew it was an apostle because everybody stood up in the middle of the hymn, which we have been strictly admonished NEVER to do unless a. the presiding authority tells us to or b. an apostle or higher enters the room, but I couldn't figure out who because a. I don't know Elder Ballard by sight very well and b. he was the only member of his party wearing a gray suit. I have never seen a Twelve wear a gray suit. My eye skipped right over him. But I was sitting in the front row of the choir, and we sang "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" and did a pretty good job. It's nice having all those basses and baritones. This week we're doing "Come Thou Fount" so I'll finally know all the words to that one, thank goodness.
The big news on campus today is that IT'S SUNNY OUTSIDE! AND WARM! It's cause for MTC-wide rejoicing. We haven't seen any significant amount of sunshine for sooooo long, and it's soooo depressing and sludgy and awful. MTC in winter is about the worst idea ever. But once we get into the field, it will be great. Sis. Copeland assures us we'll be arriving just in time for the cherry blossoms, and we will only have to endure one humid August and one freezing winter, enjoying the benefits of two lovely springs and two lovely autumns. Ha!
Our two new districts come tomorrow. It is very freaky that we're going to be the 'older' districts now. It's also freaky that we have nearly a month of training left. I am starting to get antsy. I want out of this MTC. I want to go to Korea. I want to talk to people about the gospel and stare blankly at them when they respond to me, and sleep on a mat on the floor and eat rice and kimchi every day. But I have at least another month to go--possibly a month and a week, if they decide to keep us here through conference. I wonder how flights to LA are going to be that week. Probably not so good.
So anyway, that's life these days. My pool of corresponders seems to be shrinking, so if anybody who's reading the blog had been intending to write me a letter while postage was still cheap, now-ish would be a good time because in a few weeks I'll be in the midst of prepping for departure and won't care quite so much. But right now I'm rather bored. And I'm having to learn to stop bouncing my knee when I think, because apparently this drives Koreans nuts.
So . . . the Church is true, Talmage is a good writer, Korean is fun to mess up in, my stockings have holes in them but so do everybody else's. Anybody found tag magnets yet? My un-magneted tag's pin-clasp is broken, so I only have one tag I can wear, which is a hassle in very variable weather. I love you all . . . write me letters or the wrath of God shall come down upon your head . . . it's true, I read it someplace . . .***
RoseE"
* Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, fictional town created by Garrison Keillor.
** M. Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been serving as an Apostle since October 6, 1985, traveling throughout the earth to instruct Church members and direct day-to-day affairs of the worldwide Church. http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/background-information/leader-biographies/elder-m-russell-ballard
***BlogMom note: RoseE can get snail mail any day of the week, but she can only get email on Tuesdays, and she doesn't have much time to read it, nor can she print it out. So sit down and write her a letter! It's good for you!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Email from 2/17/09
RoseE writes:
"Grandma & I already worked out that my Elder Gygi is Heather and Hank's* Cameron Gygi. He knows the cousins' names better than I do, and we have decided that we are sort-of-adopted-cousins-ish. Hey, works for us. I've sent G&G** a picture of my district, an an update on his family, so ask them.
Do we have a Costco membership? Pres. Carlson says a Costco card is a very useful thing to have in Korea.
Our "older" Koreans left yesterday, plus our "real" Koreans . . . all except Sister Lee and Elder Rodrigues, who, for reasons I do not begin to understand, are leaving on Wednesday and are traveling to Korea TOGETHER, BY THEMSELVES. I think they will be mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses at least three times during the trip. Sister Lee has told Elder Rodrigues that he has to sit at the front of the plane, while she will sit at the back . . . far away from him, but well positioned to keep an eye out for trouble.
I am learning the first Vision in Korean. It is crazy. This is how it translates:
"I my head directly above sun more than more bright light pillar saw and, that light pillar gradually came down a bit and to me arrived . . . this light me above rested when I literally express ability does not exist brightness and glory emitting two personages me above air middle in stand ing thing saw. That middle one person my name call while me to speaking semicolon different one person point speaking--this my loved son is, his word hear! said."***
Needless to say, it's going to take a while.
Yesterday, we were supposed to get a new elder in our district. However, nobody knew about it but President Carlson, and he didn't show up, so we're all a little perplexed and miffed that maybe we made a pretty welcome sign for nothing.
Melanie from camp and her daughter Sarah sent me some toe socks. They are joyous to my soul. :-)
My mission scripture (finally) is D&C 11:8. It's not listed in any index, more's the crazy.
I am thirty pages into the Book of Mormon in Korean. It is abso-dratted-lutely incomprehensible, but on we slog nevertheless. Last week we learned to conjugate adjectives (yes, conjugate adjectives), so that was fun, too.
I am Not Sick. I am Well Rested. I am generally happy and productive. This is good.
Dad, everybody in my district loves getting news of North Korea. I love getting your mission stories. Please keep them coming. Where is that stationery coming from? My companion would like to know what our new president is doing to pass the time until the next election.
Um . . . yeah, that's the news. I love you all!
RoseE"
*RoseE's aunt and uncle on her Dad's side.
**Grama and Grampa Hadden
*** English version of the First Vision: ". . . When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" Joseph Smith, History 1
"Grandma & I already worked out that my Elder Gygi is Heather and Hank's* Cameron Gygi. He knows the cousins' names better than I do, and we have decided that we are sort-of-adopted-cousins-ish. Hey, works for us. I've sent G&G** a picture of my district, an an update on his family, so ask them.
Do we have a Costco membership? Pres. Carlson says a Costco card is a very useful thing to have in Korea.
Our "older" Koreans left yesterday, plus our "real" Koreans . . . all except Sister Lee and Elder Rodrigues, who, for reasons I do not begin to understand, are leaving on Wednesday and are traveling to Korea TOGETHER, BY THEMSELVES. I think they will be mistaken for Jehovah's Witnesses at least three times during the trip. Sister Lee has told Elder Rodrigues that he has to sit at the front of the plane, while she will sit at the back . . . far away from him, but well positioned to keep an eye out for trouble.
I am learning the first Vision in Korean. It is crazy. This is how it translates:
"I my head directly above sun more than more bright light pillar saw and, that light pillar gradually came down a bit and to me arrived . . . this light me above rested when I literally express ability does not exist brightness and glory emitting two personages me above air middle in stand ing thing saw. That middle one person my name call while me to speaking semicolon different one person point speaking--this my loved son is, his word hear! said."***
Needless to say, it's going to take a while.
Yesterday, we were supposed to get a new elder in our district. However, nobody knew about it but President Carlson, and he didn't show up, so we're all a little perplexed and miffed that maybe we made a pretty welcome sign for nothing.
Melanie from camp and her daughter Sarah sent me some toe socks. They are joyous to my soul. :-)
My mission scripture (finally) is D&C 11:8. It's not listed in any index, more's the crazy.
I am thirty pages into the Book of Mormon in Korean. It is abso-dratted-lutely incomprehensible, but on we slog nevertheless. Last week we learned to conjugate adjectives (yes, conjugate adjectives), so that was fun, too.
I am Not Sick. I am Well Rested. I am generally happy and productive. This is good.
Dad, everybody in my district loves getting news of North Korea. I love getting your mission stories. Please keep them coming. Where is that stationery coming from? My companion would like to know what our new president is doing to pass the time until the next election.
Um . . . yeah, that's the news. I love you all!
RoseE"
*RoseE's aunt and uncle on her Dad's side.
**Grama and Grampa Hadden
*** English version of the First Vision: ". . . When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" Joseph Smith, History 1
Thursday, February 12, 2009
12 February 2009
RoseE writes:
"Dear Family,
I hope you get this soon, or the enclosed Valentines won't be any good (they had boxes and boxes of them in the health clinic, up for grabs, so I got a whole sheet of Star Wars ones for my district and these for you. I don't know how appropriate it is for sisters to give Elders valentines, but none of them actually say "Will you be my Valentine?" so I guess it's all right.)*.
Anyway, I hope you had fun in Europe! I can't wait to hear all about it. Not much happened while you were gone--I worked hard, listened to some good speakers (none with a name worth dropping, though--mostly missionary department leadership), spoke in only Korean for an entire day and hit Elder Conley on the head with a hymnal. I am NOT sick, but Elder Gygi is pale and shaky with 'flu so we are praying for him while warding him off with garlic and crosses.
Our senior and Korean sisters are leaving early next week, and we have heard tell that our incoming missionaries will be few in number, so we five sisters may be the only Korean sisters in the MTC for the rest of our stay. Freaky. Sister Bergeson next door is our new coordinating sister, thus answering the prayers of we three who have quite enough responsibility to be getting on with, thank you very much.
Try putting peanut butter cookies in the microwave for 15 sec--Sister Linford tried it and it's really good. Try leaving a peanut butter cookie in the microwave for 60 seconds--I tried it and it caught on fire.**
Love,
RoseE"
* The idea is to NOT have missionaries fall in love while they are on their mission, as it shortens the mission, diverts their minds from what they are supposed to be doing, and tends to have deleterious effects on the teaching and learning. Much effort is made to keep this from happening, including always having your companion with you, no hugs, etc. Valentines might be frowned upon in this light.
** This would not be the first microwave RoseE has destroyed by fire. She put a whole raw egg in one, and blew up both the egg and the microwave. We now have a shiny new microwave.
Friday, January 30, 2009
30 January 2009
RoseE writes:
"Dearest All,
Most pressing news First: we have three sisters here from Korea 'cuz the Seoul MTC got shut down. They're great . . . but the whole floor smells like KIMCHI!! They smuggled it through CUSTOMS!! Fortunately, somebody left a packet of hibiscus cherry tea in the giveaway box, so I'm breathing the steam as I write.
The tea's just for being delicious, because my cold is easing off, almost gone. I'm still hacking a little, but not nearly so bad. I am, however, humming in my sleep. I can hear myself doing it. I'll be mostly asleep and then I'll hear this "Mmmmmm" right next to my head and it wakes me up again. Weird! Did I ever do this before?
Korean is coming along swimmingly. Swimmingly upriver, of course, but I'm having a much easier time of it than some of the others in my district. Avatar* is helping a lot. Really. The word for 'Dad' is 'Appa' . . . and it's written in Hangul like this: [sorry, I can't duplicate it, but it has six sticks that stick up throughout the word] If you turn it upside down, it has six feet. I don't know if this is an inside joke or what, but it's helping me remember. Also, I think 'Haru' means 'day'. I think. Unfortunately, Koreans can't say z's, so the names of the entire Fire Nation are out.*
Bit [Bethe] and Bug [Teancum] have asked what the MTC is like. Well, I'll tell you. You get out of bed at EXACTLY 6:30 (a minute early is selfishness, a minute late is laziness) and have half an hour to get ready (stockings on) and get up to your classroom to quietly study your scriptures for 45 min. Then down to the cafeteria for 30 min of breakfast. Then (if it's Friday, which it is), you go change into pants and do 'service', which means 'chores'. (stockings off!) Service is great; you can let your brain disengage for awhile. Then back to class (stockings on) for lessons with Sister Lebaron until lunch. Korean practice all through lunch. Then four more hours of class with Brother Thiel. Then an hour of gym time (stockings off!) practicing Korean while doing two miles on the elipticals. Then dinner (stockings on) and hours of study, on Korean, teaching, and teaching in Korean, until planning at 9. From 9:30 to 10:30 is 'prep time', which today is a letter and a cup of tea (stockings off, set on fire, and thrown out the window). 10:30 is bed, on pain of eternal damnation if you stay up. So I hum myself to sleep. It's sooo crazy, but I'm starting to enjoy it. At least there's a cup of tea and a cookie at the end of the day.
I'm faithfully taking my vitamins, though the new ones are a little bit sketch (the Market Square sticker made me laugh my head off). And drinking lots of water and eating lots of salad. Sister Lee, Sister Choi, and the other Sister Lee liked the chocolate chip cookies and were very excited that my mom had made them. (This took some explaining; I'm still shaky on verbs like 'make' and I can't do past tense at all. But we got there in the end.)
I'm reading Jesus the Christ before bed. After 12 hours of reading Preach My Gospel, the complicated sentence patterns and fascinating, grandiose words are nourishment to my poor brain, which is swimming with Korean and has not been denied literature for more than twenty-four hours its entire life. Thank goodness for [James E.] Talmage. It's amazing how action-packed Jesus the Christ can seem.
And there's 10:30. I love you all! Have fun in Europe!"
*Avatar is an animated series about many things, but including a flying bison named Appa which has 6 legs. Involved in the plot are four nations: the Air Nation, the Earth Nation, the Water Nation, and the Fire Nation. Each nation can manipulate their own element. Of course the Fire Nation are the bad guys, and all their names have z's in them.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Letter dated 25 January 2009
RoseE writes:
"Chere Maman,
The Milanos went over well. My companion and coordinating sister are [?]ly devouring them as I write. I'm most excited about the Vitamin C--I've been chugging two orange juices a meal to dose myself, and it was becoming very old very fast. (I'm eating a lot of salad. I don't know why. I'll be so healthy I won't know what to do with myself if this keeps up.)
I'm glad that my blog is so successful, but unfortunately I can't read a word of it. The computers here will only access lds.org and myldsmail.net, and missionaries are no longer allowed off campus except to go to the temple. Maybe I'll have a little more freedom in S. Korea, but I doubt it. Word on the street is that President Jennings is very strict--nylons-in-August strict.
If you want to send me my blog comments (and I'd love to read them), try dearelder.com. It's a website where you can type out an e-mail to a missionary, and they'll print it and deliver it to the MTC free of charge. Save you all that wrist cramping.
I'm feeling better, though my head's still feeling a little pressurized, partly from the Korean and partly from the cold or whatever.
Sister Copeland's sinus infection is starting to recede due to the Super!antibiotics she got from the clinic here.
I'm reading History of the Church in my 4.5 minutes of pre-bed free time every day.
My district has taken to singing four-part acapella harmonies late at night when we're done studying. Elders Gygi and Lalatin started it--they're excellent singers.
Today we did our first stint in the phone center, following up on folks who have ordered free Books of Mormon or DVDs or such. I didn't achieve much or talk to anyone interesting, but Elder Conley got three referrals and Elder Gygi one. . . though he also got chewed out about polygamy by someone else.
. . .
You have no idea how hard it is to finish a letter in this place. It's now Sunday. I'm coughing constantly, like the tragic heroine of a Victorian novel, despite eating decongestants and Vitamin C like candy. But other than being on the verge of death, life's good.
I need to inform Bethe and Bug (and Nora) that the Korean word for gibberish, like "blah, blah, blah," is Momo. Let them make what they may of that.
Dad, write me again and tell me about your mission--your investigators, your companions, your adventures. I'd like to know. Maman, tell me about the missionaries who taught you. One was called Elder Garfield, right? I remember so little of that story.
When I get to Korea I'll get new tags, entirely in [Korean], so my current super-handy magnetized tag will no longer be useful. So if you would keep an eye out for those magnets . . .
Et Maman, il y a une petite boite que j'ai oubliee dans le WC des filles--creme de jarelle pour le visage. Puis-je l'avoir? Merci mille fois.
Pictures are included. I love you!
RoseE"
I was going to make digital images of the pictures RoseE sent along with this letter, but last night I dropped my (new) camera on the floor and broke it. So that will have to wait until I can get the warranty people to replace it.
"Chere Maman,
The Milanos went over well. My companion and coordinating sister are [?]ly devouring them as I write. I'm most excited about the Vitamin C--I've been chugging two orange juices a meal to dose myself, and it was becoming very old very fast. (I'm eating a lot of salad. I don't know why. I'll be so healthy I won't know what to do with myself if this keeps up.)
I'm glad that my blog is so successful, but unfortunately I can't read a word of it. The computers here will only access lds.org and myldsmail.net, and missionaries are no longer allowed off campus except to go to the temple. Maybe I'll have a little more freedom in S. Korea, but I doubt it. Word on the street is that President Jennings is very strict--nylons-in-August strict.
If you want to send me my blog comments (and I'd love to read them), try dearelder.com. It's a website where you can type out an e-mail to a missionary, and they'll print it and deliver it to the MTC free of charge. Save you all that wrist cramping.
I'm feeling better, though my head's still feeling a little pressurized, partly from the Korean and partly from the cold or whatever.
Sister Copeland's sinus infection is starting to recede due to the Super!antibiotics she got from the clinic here.
I'm reading History of the Church in my 4.5 minutes of pre-bed free time every day.
My district has taken to singing four-part acapella harmonies late at night when we're done studying. Elders Gygi and Lalatin started it--they're excellent singers.
Today we did our first stint in the phone center, following up on folks who have ordered free Books of Mormon or DVDs or such. I didn't achieve much or talk to anyone interesting, but Elder Conley got three referrals and Elder Gygi one. . . though he also got chewed out about polygamy by someone else.
. . .
You have no idea how hard it is to finish a letter in this place. It's now Sunday. I'm coughing constantly, like the tragic heroine of a Victorian novel, despite eating decongestants and Vitamin C like candy. But other than being on the verge of death, life's good.
I need to inform Bethe and Bug (and Nora) that the Korean word for gibberish, like "blah, blah, blah," is Momo. Let them make what they may of that.
Dad, write me again and tell me about your mission--your investigators, your companions, your adventures. I'd like to know. Maman, tell me about the missionaries who taught you. One was called Elder Garfield, right? I remember so little of that story.
When I get to Korea I'll get new tags, entirely in [Korean], so my current super-handy magnetized tag will no longer be useful. So if you would keep an eye out for those magnets . . .
Et Maman, il y a une petite boite que j'ai oubliee dans le WC des filles--creme de jarelle pour le visage. Puis-je l'avoir? Merci mille fois.
Pictures are included. I love you!
RoseE"
I was going to make digital images of the pictures RoseE sent along with this letter, but last night I dropped my (new) camera on the floor and broke it. So that will have to wait until I can get the warranty people to replace it.
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