Monday, September 23, 2013

15th Letter from the MTC Sept 23

This week is a couple of emails grouped together.

It sounds like you guys are all really busy! Sorry about that! It also sounds like Weber is doing good! But BYU isn't.. we could hear it all night!  It was so loud!
Those were cool quotes.  I like to get quotes!  I miss hearing Ulu's piano playing! That is cool that he played for Tyler's farewell. OK I'll look up Alma 29:9 in a minute! I'll have to read it in Zhongwen!  That's my goal from now on! :)  OK I'll wait for more! I would love to talk to Ulu.  I could tell him so much! I hope I'll see Tyler at the airport. I'll email Monday when I am leaving exactly!!
Love you guys!
Qiu Zhang Lao
 
My week!
Mon
I have started to understand the Zhongwen scriptures.  Most of the time they bring new meaning to the scripture.  We have found tons of pictures to put in our room for the past couple weeks.  We really have made it a "sweet" room!  OK so try this and see if it works:  take dry ice, put it in the same cooler as grapes.  Leave it closed for a while! It should make soda bites AKA grapes that are carbonated.
Tues
Zhongwen is coming easier and easier.  Yinwen is making less and less since.  So I made these cool charts for my investigators.  They can see their progress and we can see their goals!


Wed
I learned 2 characters that are super interesting! The character for the word yi4 is me under a lamb and it means righteousness! Keep in mind these characters were made thousands of years ago.  So tell me how did the Chinese people know if we follow the lamb it would be righteousness? The other character is ling2 which means spirit and it has 3 mouth radicals.  But only 2 of the mouths have body radical under them! This character is used in words such as sheng4ling2 and ling2hun2 which mean holy ghost and soul respectively.  So you tell me how exactly a 1000 years ago they knew about the Holy Ghost?  I have my suspicions that the gospel was in Asia before we thought it was or at least part of it!
Thurs.
OK so we played soccer today and I was goalie... it was nuts we were playing Brazilian Elders. They are crazy good at soccer! But now worries they couldn't score on yours truly! I guess all those swat drills in football paid off! So we got our full Chinese name tags.  I'll send home a picture!
Friday
So jing laoshi is as old as the sisters in our district if not a little younger!!  That was kinda funny!!  Today we also had a sub and he went to Singapore Chinese speaking.  He basically talked the whole class about it!! We are so excited!  He said most of the Chinese areas are in East Malaysia.  Which is crazy, so we will most likely be over there!!  Oh and there is spiders the size of soccer balls and grasshoppers the size of footballs.  He told us to find out about Sun Bears and Mouse deers.
 
Sun Bear

Mouse Deer

Sat
The BYU game is on right now... and I am trying to not focus on it... it is hard though! So the the character for today is hui3gai3 which means repent, but the character written a thousand years ago means "heart everyday change"
Sunday
Our devotional was really good today.  We learned how to become great missionaries! So this week I am studying all the great missionary stories in the Book of Mormon and seeing how I can become better!
Oh by the way you have asked about what you can send me.  I cannot take beef jerky over with me.  They will take it.  You have even said that the beef jerky that gets sent in packages does not arrive.  I guess this means that I will not have jerky for 2 years.
I have to go!  Have a great week!
Love your son!
Elder Fletcher