Nimen hao pengyou he jiating! - 4/17/2017

April 17, 2017

First week on a mission and I'm already EXHAUSTED! I guess that will teach me to go to bed at 2 in the morning every night. I'm emailing a little late today because we just got back from the temple, one of the elders in our district just got his own endowment done! It was such an amazing opportunity to be apart of such a momentous time in his life! Anyway, to start, the MTC (Missionary Training Center, for the uninitiated) is so great, and I've already learned so much! The first day we arrived was insane! As soon as we got to the MTC, we got out and they immediately walked us through the MTC so we could get our name badges and our 12,000 pounds worth of language books. After that we headed to our rooms, and had enough time to set down our belongings before we went to the classroom where our district will be living for the next 9 months. It's a lovely little room about 12 feet by 15 feet, and fits about 10 of us and our teacher. Then our language teacher came in, and immediately she had us start learning the language. The language teachers here speak as little Yingwen (english in Zhongwen ((Chinese in Chinese))) as humanly possible, which makes understanding a single thing they say to be the true test of our faith. After we all introduced ourselves and said where we were from (Wo shi Shi Zhang Lao. Wo shi chuanjiaoshi. Wo cong Yalisangnazhou lai. Wo qu Taiwan Taibei chuanjiao), we attended a fireside welcoming us all to the MTC. The spirit is so strong here, and I absolutely love it! After the fireside we ate and went back to our classroom for more blank staring (except Sister Bettridge, she's taken four years of Chinese... Lucky), and then headed for bed. This concludes chapter one.

  But I'm sure the question on everyone's mind right now is... "How's the food???" Well, I can attest that MTC food is by far the most average food I have ever had!! As for the language, I have learned more in 5 days than I ever learned in 4 years of high school! That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we have honestly learned so much in such a short time! I already can say simple prayers and bear testimony in Zhongwen! It's so amazing how the spirit blesses those who are doing the Lord's work. It might help a bit that on our third day here, we had to teach a lesson to an investigator... in Chinese. Our first lesson went poorly, but the second lesson we had we followed the spirit, and had our own little miracles performed! We understood most of the questions our :"investigator" had, and at the end we were showing her how to pray, by folding your arms and bowing your head. She asked us "Weishenme?" ("Why?") and my companion, Elder Raty (Tian Zhang Lao) and I both looked worriedly at each other. Neither one of us knew how to say respect in Zhongwen! We sat a moment thinking, and at the eaxact same time, we both said "Women ai Shen": We love God. It may not seem like much, but I can testify that the spirit was blessing us at that moment with the gift of tongues. We weren't  speaking words we didn't know, but the spirit brought to our remembrance things we did know and things our investigator would understand. Outside of that experience, I have had so many testimony building experiences in such a short time!

  Yesterday, for Easter, we had Dallin H Oaks from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speak to us on the Resurrection. He shared how because Christ was resurrected, it guaranteed that each of us would be resurrected as well. He also shared that personal, simple, profound testimonies of Christ, his birth and ministry, and ultimately his Atonement and Resurrection, are absolutely central to our beliefs as Latter-Day Saints. Everything else in our church are appendages to those truths. I wish I could share every amazing experience I have had in the MTC already, but they are too numerous to count, and this email is already longer than any essay I've ever written. Suffice it to say I know, without any doubt in my mind, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is true. Joseph Smith was and is a prophet of God, and the Book of Mormon is 100% true. I cannot be swayed in my testimony. If you do have any doubts, I invite you to take them to the Lord, to ask Him, to act on His answers, and he will confirm truth to you. I love you all so much and miss you dearly. I'd love to hear how everyone is surviving now that we've declared war on ISIS! If you've made it this far, I approve you using this email for at least one book report.

Love,

Elder Logan Shope