G'day Mates!It's been just another grand week in the MTC. The rain has been wonderful, it's been cool and cloudy almost everyday, which I love. Apparently last Saturday there was a pretty intense storm, we had to stay inside our buildings an extra hour or two and all sorts of things were thrown around- a few trees were torn up and some gutter pieces were lying all around. Pretty cool.
The oldest group left on Sunday, and I'm officially in the longest-at-the-MTC group!! Kind of a weird feeling. It was really hard to say goodbye to everybody, especially since we're all going to different missions. On the bright side, one of the missionaries, Elder Judd, passed down a way sick Korean Book of Mormon to me! It's from the 70's and has pictures all over... can't really understand it, but still neat to look through. On Wednesday, we got about 33 new missionaries! The most surprising part is it was almost exactly half elders and half sisters. It's been fun to get to know them, although they're still trying to adjust to the MTC. They all seem kind of scared and anxious.. I feel like I wasn't that way when I got here, but maybe I was! Haha regardless it's been great being the oldest and having everyone look up to us, as if we know Korean (joke's on them- none of us still have a clue!). One funny thing though, they always ask us how to say EVERYTHING in Korean... at first it's fine but after a few hours of "How do you say this?" or "How do you say that?" we decided to tell them everything was pronounced like this: Cho-nun pah-bo eem-needa, which is to say "I'm an idiot". Was it the nicest? Perhaps not... but it'll be hilarious when they say it to their teacher tonight! Haha. Speaking of Korean, I feel like I'm starting to make progress in it. We have covered all the material they teach at the MTC and for the next two weeks we just review and practice, which is nice. The trickiest part really is just memorizing. One thing that helps me that my teacher said is, "Nothing is hard, only new". I just keep reminding myself Korean isn't hard, just unlike anything I've ever done, and that's really helped me try to focus on making it known! If that makes sense.. Yeah basically just a heads up, as my Korean improves I feel like my English is getting worse and worse.. so I apologize if none of my writing makes sense! Haha.
So here's the latest news about Australia: I haven't been able to check on my visa status yet, but a batch of Mandarin speakers on our floor were called to Sydney South and none of their visas came in time, so they all got temporarily reassigned... I'll know in about a week where I'll be headed for sure, but chances are I'll be reassigned somewhere in the US! So everyone take your bets!
On Sunday I'll probably be released as Zone Leader. It'll be nice to have some time again, to be able to use my language times and actually get to bed on time, but I'm kind of sad that I won't get that opportunity to really get to know everyone anymore. Ah well! It just means I'm that much closer to heading out, right?! It still seems like yesterday I got here. The saying is SO true- "Every day feels like a week, and every week feels like a day!" Time sure flies by.
Okay, so spiritual thought for the week: The past few days I've had a lyric from Les Mis stuck in my head: "To love another person is to see the face of God". Talk about powerful! For one of our class-times, we studied about Charity with each other. This quote I think goes perfectly with the idea of Christlike love. When you try to love others unconditionally, to even just try to see them how Heavenly Father sees them, then it brings you that much closer to our Father in Heaven, to feeling the Spirit and being spiritually in tune. Okay, I get it, it's a really big charge- to love others unconditionally- and no one's going to be able to just snap into doing something like that, but I still think it's a great idea to keep in our hearts. The more we try to forgive others, to let things go and desire to help them simply because we know God loves them and we love God- then that makes a HUGE difference. Just a thought.
Oh! Exciting news! Yesterday, we all got our Korean nametags. I was kind of worried mine would be in English (at least my name) because of where I was going, but it turns out everything is in Korean!! They're super cool, I'll take a picture of them this week and try to send them to you.
Well everyone, thanks again for your letters, gifts, and most importantly your prayers. I am loving this work and am so thankful to be a missionary! Talk to you all next week.
Keep it real,
Elder Easton
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