End of my time in the MTC

Last P-Day in the MTC

So, in case you didn't get it from my title...today is my last P-day in the MTC.  This time next week pretty much won't exist for me as I am landing in Korea at 6:35 pm next Tuesday (and I'm leaving the US at 2:10 pm on Monday....I love time changes!)

 

So, not too many stories to share this week.  One of my teachers is on a vacation with his family for this week so our last day seeing him was on Saturday.  It was sad.  Ummmm...Sorry, not too many stories!

 

Well, mom and dad, I have some news for you.  I have a layover in San Fransisco from 12:18 pm to 2:10 pm and I'm aloud to call home at that time...so be expecting a call from me between either 3:18 and 5:10 or 4:18 and 6:10 (I honestly cannot remember the time difference between California and Maine...sorry) but yeah, I get to call home, so please don't forget!  Yeah, that's my exciting news.

 

I'm going to miss my district and my companion so much.  It's crazy how close you can get to five other people when you spend pretty much all day everyday with them for 12 weeks...ok, maybe not that crazy!

 

Our temple trip was good today...it was our last temple breakfast :( but wow, that food is soooo good!  I have loved getting to go to the temple a lot while I've been here!!!  It's been awesome!

 

Oh, I got a Korean name this week from my Korean companion! (Have I told you about her?  She's a solo sister with the natives and she's in my companionship..it's great!)  well she took what my name means in English and made me a Korean name.  Usually they take your initials (or really they do whatever they want)...Anyway, my name in Korean means "a lot of love" and it's Kim Ta Eh (I guess that's how you'd spell it in English...I don't know)  But yeah, Kim is my "family name"...but then she remembered a last name that's closer to mine "Ma"...but she likes Kim better (she is Sister Kim after all)  So yeah 김다애 is my Korean name...or 마다애....still haven't quite decided!

 

Ok, in language study this week we are finally learning "middle form".  As missionaries we will be teaching in high form because the gospel is an honorified subject.  We never speak in low form because you're not supposed to as a missionary. (If you don't understand any of this that's ok...I'm not good at explaining it)  But all of our contacting and conversational Korean will be in middle form...and we started learning it yesterday.  It's great!  There are a lot of vowels said in a row and it feels kind of funny to say.  It sounds so much more like how I imagined Korean would sound and less like Japanese...a little less.  I'm actually very excited to go out and teach in a language I don't know and then pretty much not be able to understand anything!  It's awesome!  I'll just have to rely on the Spirit a ton!  it's gonna be great!!!!!

 

Ok, so I don't have much else to say and I don't have much to respond to (my last P-day in the MTC and nothing mom and dad?  really?  :) I love you!)  So I hope everyone is doing well.  I love you all!  Thanks so much for all your support!

 

~McClellan 자매

TWO WEEKS LEFT....yikes!

So let me start off by saying that I'm leaving two weeks from yesterday...and I don't speak Korean :)  It's great fun and I'm so excited.  I can (slowly) bear my testimony of the Book of Mormon and the restoration and a few other things and I can teach all the lessons (again, slowly and with a lot of stuttering) so it's gonna be FANTASTIC!!!!!

Ok, so I spoke in Sacrament meeting this week...in Korean.  We have to prepare a talk every Sunday on a specific subject and then two missionaries get picked at random to give their talks.  It was really so much fun.  I don't so much enjoy learning Korean in a classroom, but getting to speak it and use it and try new things and mess up a lot is the best!  I love our native sister.  She's a solo sister and is in my companionship.  She is so much fun and it is great getting to speak Korean to her.  I was happy on Sunday, because she understood pretty much all of my talk :).  After we give our talks we then say something to the effect of "this is what I think/hope I said" and then give our talk again in English.  All the talks are very short, but guess what, 3 weeks from now I'm going to be giving a talk in Korea in Korean...it's going to be AWESOME!!!!!

So, this is probably my favorite news of the week:  My teacher, Brother Andersen, got engaged yesterday!!!!!  My class is sooooo excited!  He is such a great teacher!  So, here's the story.  Last week Elder Gillis (in my district) was getting coaching from Brother Andersen.  Well, they were working on asking "penetrating questions" to be able to better teach members.  Elder Gillis was doing a great job because all of the sudden the other three of us in the classroom heard Brother Andersen talk about this girl he'd been dating and "taking it to the next level."  Elder Finlinson, Sister Paul, and I all kind of stopped and stared and then after class we asked him about it and he pulled out this ring book full of post-its...we went a little crazy with excitement!  We had to promise not to tell anyone, including the two other sisters in our district who weren't there...it was really hard.  The next day he tells us that he's ordered the ring and it should get here on Wednesday (as in tomorrow) and he's also ordered glass slippers (yeah, GLASS SLIPPERS!) that will get here Friday/Saturday.  Well, then yesterday came and he was doing a teaching evaluation for her as part of her applying for a job to work at the MTC and after she bore her testimony (his words:) "she was just too cute" and he proposed right there with a CTR ring.  Yes, this is my teacher, and this is all only fitting.  Well, right after he came to my zone's table at lunch and announced to my district that he was officially engaged and that we were the first people he told...funny thing, we had just seen him about an hour before and now he was engaged...it's great fun!

Well, I love the MTC.  We have "progressing investigators" that we teach all in Korean.  This week we committed one to baptism and then found out that he might have cancer.  This one is being played by Brother Wells, and he likes to kill off the investigators he plays, and the fact that he's going to be missing our last week of class makes us all believe that he's killing this one off.  Our other investigator (played by Brother Andersen) is having a hard time with the idea of baptism, but we're working on it.  It's been so great getting to have "investigators" and this week we're getting two more.  Each missionary in our district had to come up with an investigator they were going to be and now we're going to teach each other.  We get to teach the Elders.  I am very excited!

Here's a bit of interesting news: I ran into two people from UCAS this week.  One of them is a missionary, Sarah Cowden, and she's going to somewhere in California.   It's cool because we basically see each other everyday.  I also ran into Mr. Nelson, my old high school counselor.  He's in the branch presidency of the Thai branch.  It's was a little bizarre.

I also got to do a Korean name at the temple again today...they're the best!  We always get so excited when we get to do them!!!

So mom, tell Rose hi for me.  I love her to pieces!!!  she is just about the cutest and sweetest person on the face of the planet and she is such a WONDERFUL friend!  I just adore her!!!!!

Well, this is my second to last P-day at the MTC.  So, if any of you want to try your hand a dear elders (and please do, I'm the only one in my district who has never gotten one...the others get them almost everyday...they seem fun :)  hahaha) you've got a little under 2 weeks.  Love you all tons!  Thanks for all the prayers and support!

~Sister McClellan

So....I gave myself a concussion!

Ok, so yeah, I'm 22 now!  It's pretty awesome!  It was great to have a birthday in the MTC (even if it was one of those really hard days that makes you cry in front of your teacher and your class...but whatever, it happens!  Still gotta keep on keeping on!) I loved all the cards from everyone.  And mom and dad, I LOVED your present!  My zone did too!  They all thought it was very cute and very me!  hahahaha And it was awesome, the sisters in my zone threw a surprise party for me and this sister who turned 21 on the 7th.  It was great fun!

So we just got back from the temple and while we were at temple breakfast (the mashisoyo highlight of the week) we ran into Sister Paul's mom and aunt!  It was soooooo awesome!  Her mom is seriously the cutest person on the face of the planet!  It was so fun!

Well, in other news, my district has this mechanical dolphin that's been passed down for YEARS!  Our teachers really kind of hate it, but when you're in one room all day every day doing the same thing all the time you need some sort of entertainment...and if that happens to be a cardboard dolphin that was made out of a Chirstmas present, has really old candy canes stuck to the back, and is pretty odd in basically all regards, it works!  We also have this sticky octopus toy that we usually keep on the ceiling, a ball of crumpled up yellow paper that we use to play end of the day "district volleyball" in the classroom (it has now been replaced by the octopus...the octopus sounds funnier when you hit it and it doesn't hurt as much when someone accidentally hits it into your eye twice...I may have had that experience...maybe) and lastly, we have our lovely hebaragi (sunflower).  We recently transported it to a really nice pot that Elder Finlinson's mom sent us and we have part of Alma 32 on a nice little card to go with it (also from Finlinson changnonim's mom).  Well...we have this one teacher, Brother Wells, who has tried to throw away our toys a few times...but no worries, we always saved the day. But this week he just walked into the classroom and without saying anything just picked up the dolphin (which also had our octopus and our paper ball in it...don't worry, the hebaragi is safe and happy and growing about an inch a day...and it's just about to bloom!!!!!) and walked out.  The Elders came in, saw our dolphin was missing and went on a mission to retrieve it.  They found it in the trash (it was clean trash though) and they saved it and hid it...now our teacher thinks he finally got rid of the dolphin, but little does he know...we're resurrecting it our last week at the MTC...it will be most epic!

Ok...now for the concussion story.  so, Thursday morning we were getting our room ready for cleaning checks.  I was a little on edge because I hadn't been able to find this shirt that I wanted to wear for a couple days.  Well, I went to make my bed and as I went to do that I hit my head on the bed frame of the top bunk and was pretty much automatically down on the ground holding my head and crying.  I was down for a while but I got up eventually and finished making my bed and went off to breakfast (we got a "huzzah" on our cleaning checks by the way).  We went to class and did that for about three hours.  I was alright, a little dizzy and nauseous (I'd hit my head pretty hard...and if you know me...yeah, it makes sense) and during the coaching time with our teacher I had a really hard time remembering how to write things.  My teacher and my companion suggested that I go to the clinic, so I did.  They were full so we got shuttled to the urgent care clinic at BYU. when we got there I sort of fell out of the van.  It was funny, because when we talked to the receptionist lady and I told her what had happened she said that they actually saw this thing a lot from missionaries...it didn't make me feel any less dumb :) Well, long story short...I gave myself a concussion from making my bed!  Fun stuff!

Well I love you all and hope everyone is doing well.  We got our first native last night and are leaving 3 weeks from yesterday...time is seriously zooming by now!  Stay Awesome!

~Sister McClellan

So....four days, and four weeks!!!!

Hello Everyone!!!

So, I have four weeks left in the MTC...in a way I am so ready to get out and get preaching!  Also, I'm getting a little nervous...but mostly excited!  I can't believe I'm going to actually be in KOREA!!!!!!

We got our new districts this week...they are so so so so great!  We got permission today to go, as a zone, with our Sister from Mongolia to get her endowments...it was AMAZING!  I thought it was just so cool that we all got to be in the temple together...and as a whole zone!  I honestly cannot express how much I love the temple!  We also were able to take Korean names with us from this Sister who is Korean but is learning Cantonese.  It was soooo cool!  Ok, and seriously, Korean romanization is terrible!  I was glad I could read the Korean...and I felt bad for the temple workers...they had no clue what to do with the name!  (funny side note, Korean women don't have names on their paperwork...they're just so-and-so's wife...so...that's interesting)

The four days...yeah, I'm having a birthday in the MTC!  It's a very very exciting time. Just in case you all were wondering.  Very Exciting!

I have been working so hard on the language.  I almost have the first vision down in Korean.  Pretty cool!  We now have two new "progressing investigators".  We've been teaching one, but now we have both of our teachers being that we're completely into the new curriculum.  It's kind of sad, we were getting our old investigator pretty close to baptism...it was awesome!  I am so excited for our new ones though, I love teaching in Korean.  I've noticed that the more I'm able to teach in Korean and share the gospel in it, the better I get at it.  I drill things and go over vocab and work on verb-forms all the time, but it never sticks till I'm able to use it in an environment where the Spirit is telling me what to say!  It's basically the coolest thing ever!

I wish you all could meet my district...like I really really do!  Over the past week we've grown exceptionally close...I think it's due to the newbies coming in.  It's been incredible.  I've been able to see testimonies grow and language abilities increase more over the past week then in my whole time at the MTC.  It's been so cool having the younger district come to us with questions about the language and the gospel, and knowing that we really don't know and having to trust in the Lord completely to be able to give good advice.  I've grown to love Preach my Gospel so very much.  The more I study it, the more I understand why we need to be studying it.  Same thing with the rules.  My whole district has gained a greater understanding of why we have the rules we do and why we really need to be exactly obedient in everything.  This week has been phenomenal!

Well, I got to sing in Sacrament meeting this Sunday.  That was pretty fun.  I sang How Great Thou Art (first, third, and fourth verses in English and finished with the fourth verse in Korean)  My Korean...well, it was fun.  I messed up a couple times which was embarrassing, but after the meeting, Sister Shin (the branch President's wife) told me that I did really well with the Korean and then she and her husband gave me this way too nice compliment in Korean that I didn't understand, but they said that it was a saying that you only said to someone with a really good voice...President Shin wrote it down for me and told me to ask my teachers what it meant...I haven't done that yet, but I will.

I am really going to miss the MTC at the end of these next four weeks...like a lot!  This experience has strengthened my testimony so much.  I didn't even know it was weak, but I look back at where I was on June 15th and it's crazy, it's like I'm already a different person...a much much better person.  I think of what I would or could be doing if I weren't here and the ONLY thing I can think is: EWW!  I mean, I love who I am and where my thoughts and desires are right now.  I love the direction I'm going and how I'm really just beginning to understand what life is really all about.  I can't wait to go and share this message of happiness and love with the Korean people.  And even thought a lot of people probably won't accept it...it's worth it for the few who do!

I love you all!  Stay Awesome!!!

~Sister McClellan