January 4, 2011

Hi, family!   

    This week has been just another week at the MTC for me. Every week is basically the same, which is good in some ways and bad in others. Luckily, our schedule is such that we have events fairly regularly to break the monotony.

     I found out that we are leaving a week early--January 25th is my new departure date! The reason is that the Korean New Year, which goes off the lunar calendar, is in the first week of February, and for some reason they want us over there before that occurs. I really don't know why it makes a difference, but I'll take any excuse to go to Korea a week early!

     We're all missionaries here, but we do things that you'd expect of 19-year-old guys too, like taking "action pictures" of us jumping off stairs, or pictures of people stacked up in the hallway. We've given our time to a mission, but we have to do things to vent our energy sometimes. :D

     We taught our first lesson in Korean on Saturday! It was really hard. The worst part was not being able to understand ANYTHING the person said back to us, because he was from Korea and spoke just like they do. That was kind of discouraging, but I still feel like we did an OK job. When the investigator asked me how I knew the Bof M is true, I felt a rush of the Spirit, and sentences I'd never really formed before were right there for me to say. It was really cool!

     My companion and I are getting two Korean elders in our room tomorrow! I'm really excited. We had four Korean elders in the room next to us for two weeks, and we all had a blast. They are very friendly and outgoing, and they knew enough English for us to get by. This time around, we might know enough Korean so they don't have to speak English as much.

     Have you sold my car yet? I hope you do soon, I don't want it to become a money pit on wheels, even though I miss it a lot.

     My companion and I were talking, and we think it's cool that the MTC is 100% LDS. It's probably the only place on Earth that is, other than the temple. It's really cool to be able to live among everyone who believes the same as you do.

     I'm really enjoying my time here. It's great to be able to be around other elders all the time, because we have a fun time, and I love studying the gospel. It's really great.

     I'm sorry I forgot to say Happy Birthday to Dad last week. Happy Birthday, Dad! I hope it was a good one. How old are you now...is it 49?

     I hope you had a happy New Year, I sure did!

~Elder Matt Dean