October 10, 2006

Well here it is, the letter that will answer all of your questions and hopefully give you an idea of what my life is like here at the MTC.

There are seven of us in my district: two sisters (Sister Balli and I) and five elders. We’re getting another elder this week who was delayed because of “personal problems”, meaning we don’t really know why, but we’re going to greet him with open arms and help him get caught up.

In our district, Elder Nielson and Elder Loveland are from Utah, Elder Romberg is from Alaska, Elder Allred and Sister Balli are from Colorado, & Elder Johnston and I are from Maryland. I don’t know where our new elder is from, but his name is Elder Johnson. Yeah, I don’t know what’s with all the duplicate names, but I’m pretty sure it means we’re the best district in the history of districts.

We’re the Mongolian horde, and we’re in the process of choosing our Mongolian warrior names. We picked up that tradition from a group of ten elders who just left for Mongolia today. They don’t usually have groups overlap like that, but we’ve all been grateful to have them around. It has been hard sharing our teachers with the other group, though, and we’ve had a lot of time to try and teach ourselves.

Okay, Mongolian? It’s wicked hard! The hardest part is using the Cyrillic alphabet because a lot of the letters are the same as the Roman alphabet, but they make completely different sounds! “H” makes an “N” sound, “E” is “yay”, “Y” is “O” and the backwards “N” (И) sounds like “ee”. I am basically having to unlearn the alphabet I’ve known and loved and replace it with this crazy new one.

Wait, the alphabet isn’t that hardest part. It’s speaking the language itself! I’m learning to make sounds my mouth has never made before. The word for missionary is pronounced “nomlthogkch”, and the word for president is pronounced “yayrun (spitty-gutteral-sound) eghkeelthagckch.” It’s really hard, but it’s really cool, and seeing how well the other group of missionaries could speak has given us hope.

We have three teachers: one who served her mission in Mongolia and two Mongolians who served missions here in the States. Sister Infanger is this adorable skinny little girl and it always catches me off guard to hear her speaking such a harsh, angry sounding language. She LOVES Mongolia and its people. She gained 30 pounds jon her mission because she loved how happy it make members when she asked for seconds. She probably asked for thirds & fourths as well because from what I’ve heard the food there is so much less fatty than American food and everybody usually loses weight.

Sister Marta has the biggest happiest Mongolian cheeks and is the one we get most of our cultural information form. She has such a strong testimony and makes us all so excited to get to Mongolia and change people’s lives the way hers has changed.

Our third teacher we don’t see as much, but when we do see him we learn so much. The other group of elders talked about him in hushed, reverent tones, and when he finally came he just walked into our classroom, looked at us with his steely piercing Mongolian eyes, and all of a sudden we knew how to conjugate in the past tense. Badumjar is his name, and we don’t really kid around with him. He’s like the Chuck Norris of Mongolia. When he’s not there we all speculate on where he hides his Mongolian warrior blades. On his mission, Badumjar didn’t go tracting because “tracting” implies the possibility of failure. Badumjar went “baptizing.”

So my schedule here pretty much goes like this: gym, eat, class, eat, class, eat, class, sleep. I sit in the same chair 12 hours of my day. By the time I leave I will have spent a little over a month in a chair. We spend half our class time on “Preach My Gospel” and half on learning Mongolian. My days are surprisingly draining despite all the sitting I do.

I love it. Love it, love it, LOVE IT. I don’t want to be anything other than a missionary right now, and being in the MTC isn’t as horrible as people told me it would be. Sheri Dew came and spoke in Relief Society last week. Sheri Dew. How cool is that?!

I see Elder [Harris] Clarke practically every day. He’s doing really well.

One of my roommates is from Kiribati. She’s going to Fiji on her mission and is spending her first time in the United States in the MTC. We have a lot of fun telling her what America is really like. She said she went to Moroni High School, but I think it was after Grandma & Grandpa Johnson server there. She is so sweet and she sings us a song every night before we go to sleep. She is the only sister going to Fiji here in the MTC and her companion is the only sister going to Indonesia. Since Sister Balli and I are the only sisters going to Mongolia we figured our room is pretty much the coolest room in the whole MTC.

We open and close every class period with a song and a prayer, and so far we have sung “I Am A Child of God” in Mongolian every single time. We’ve almost gotten the first verse down. It’s a slow start, but God called me to learn Mongolian and I know He will help me get through these next couple of months. I know that this is the true gospel, and that living its principles will make you happy beyond your wildest dreams.

Би Бypний xyy xэт тoп. Бypxaн амьпрасан. [?No translation provided?]

Love,
Жонсон эгЧ
(Sister Johnson)