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| Garrett and Elder Tate Stroud, former soccer teammates |
This week has been pretty good. Not much happened after I emailed you guys. Friday night was TRC, which was the best one yet. We had two RM's who were easy to talk to and helped us out, and then one sister RM who has been back for 3 years now. One of them has been back for 2 weeks from Seoul mission, so that was cool to talk to him. After that we had comp inventory and weekly planning. I used to dread that, and I still hate planning the same thing over and over, but for comp inv. we actually talked and got to know each other. We are getting better at talking, and getting along better. That was the best hour we have spent together since getting here.
Saturday we didn't do much. It was more linking forms in Korean, and learning how to teach. Sunday was the last day for the older districts before they left. It was cool to get to know them these 5 weeks. The oldest district was in another building most of the time, so I didn't really care for them. These guys were right down the hall, so we actually got to know them, and talk to them. They were all pretty cool, except for one or two that bugged me. Sunday we took a big zone picture at the temple, then we went off to Sacrament. One of the native Koreans gave a talk in English, since that was her hard language, then Elder Tate gave a talk. He didn't have one planned, so he bore his testimony in half English half Korean haha. It was good though. I have never really seen the spiritual side of him, so that was a cool experience. Him and his companion were the funniest ones in the districts. That night we went and watched the restoration in Korean with the leaving people, except nobody was paying attention so me and Elder Hansen went to the classroom and watched Mormon Messages and such for the whole time. We also snuck over to the other building and switched our crappy desks, for some nice ones in the other building. They were nice for the day that we had them. We came in the next morning and saw a message saying to take them back. We were kinda bummed about that, since they were really comfy. I don't see the problem if they were just sitting in an empty room, but oh well. Hopefully we get nice desks before we leave. That night we stayed up until like 11:30 with the leaving elders, just talking to them. Hopefully I see them someday, but I doubt it. Not many of them were from Utah, or had plans to come back here.
Monday I wanted to kill something. That was without doubt my worst day here. Elder [name omitted] started it off by contradicting everything I said and trying to prove me wrong. Even if I said it was hot in the room, he had to oppose me. I about said something, so I got out of the class and just chucked my pen down the hall. I broke my pen and still wanted to smack him. He's been like that for days now, I'm about to just let him have it.... For class we started learning gerunds, and I didn't even know what gerunds are in English, let alone Korean. I couldn't get the hang of it, and the teacher couldn't help since he just talked Korean. Everybody else tried to give me advice, which didn't help me at all. We reviewed that in class later, and I was still lost. When we got back to residence I chucked another pen, broke that one, then grabbed a nerf basketball so I wouldn't go through all my pens in one night. I probably threw that for about 30 minutes before I stopped. It was frustrating not being able to get it down. Everybody tried to talk to me, but I just wanted to be alone and work it out myself. The one highlight of it was I got a letter from dad. That helped me out with a crappy day.
Tuesday was much better. I started to grasp the concept of gerunds, but it's still hard. I've been reading Jesus the Christ, which is a great book. I'm finally to his actual ministry, and it is interesting the points that Talmadge makes. Its a good book to read. I did that for personal study, then I tried learning the First Vision in Korean. Holy freak that is so hard to do. I can get about 2/3rds down on a good try. Class was reviewing gerunds and I got them down pretty well. At the devotional that night I fell asleep in the first half, and woke up with a stiff leg and stiff neck. My leg is still sore, don't know how that happened. But the speaker talked about how we need to be perfect, obedient missionaries. It was a good message, but Elder [name omitted] took it a step too far. I've been working on being obedient with like going to bed on time, and things like that, but he gets after me if I suggest grabbing new sheets the night before we are supposed to, just so we don't have to keep going up and down stairs. He always says "strict obedience, Elder". He doesn't even say my name. It's stuff like that that just bugs me. I feel like cases like that it doesn't matter.
Yesterday we did redundant service again (shocker), I mean, how dirty do the outsides of garbage cans get? They sit inside and never get touched. I would love to do actual service for once. We did personal study for about an hour before we went out to do traffic on the curb again. I love doing that. I just get to sit out there in the sun and not care about things for an hour. Even the hot chocolate is perfect, and can't go wrong. We did that, then learned about indirect questions in Korean. It's weird for a sentence like "Do you know why we are baptized?" In Korean it's "You, baptism why receive, know?" It's weird, but I kinda get the hang of it. I love Korean, and how it just drops stuff. You don't have to keep saying "you" every sentence, they don't have works like "do, of, the, a etc." All the pointless little words they just drop. Even when talking they don't say half the things, because they don't need to. I love that part of the language. My reading still is brutal, but slowly getting better. Our teaching lesson was a disaster, because we didn't really have time to learn the vocab for our lesson. Then the teacher asks why we lay on of hands for the Holy Ghost. I can't even answer that in English, let alone Korean. That part of teaching sucks.
Ya, that's been my week 6. It's crazy to think it's gone by so fast. Each day takes forever, but the weeks just blend. Like we just got a bunch of new Koreans yesterday, and I can't even really remember what we did for the first week. I've already been out a month and a half, it's weird to think that 2 years will be the same way. I haven't even really thought about the things I'm missing, minus music. No offense family, but I don't really miss you guys as much as I thought I would. I don't have much time to think about that though, which is nice. We will have to see how bad it is over in Korea with that. Don't forget to write letters. Those are more valuable than almost anything here. To get a letter just makes my day better, no matter what.
Love you all,
-Elder Garrett
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