December 12, 2006 (Last Letter from the MTC)

At 6:00 pm on December 19, 2006, I will finally, finally be pulling out of the MTC on a magical shuttle bus that will whisk me away to the SLC airport. From there I will fly to LA, from LA to Soeul, Korea, and from Korea to MONGOLIA! I can’t believe this is happening! Oh, wait, yes I can, and I’m so excited.

The MTC has been great and completely necessary. I have no ill-feelings towards my time here (except for maybe the food). I’m definitely going to miss my teachers, the Referral Center, all the Mongolians we teach in the TRC, BUT …

You know You’ve Been In the MTC Too Long If ….

• .. you have the entire 3-week rotation of meals memorized;
• .. you’ve had new zone leaders called in your district TWICE;
• .. Alan, the meal-card-swiper-guy, recognizes you and remembers how to say “you’re welcome” in your language;
• .. you’ve seen repeat devotionals;
• .. you start off a lot of your stories with “Hey, remember two months ago when;”
• .. the MTC Presidency almost recognizes you;
• .. you’ve seen 4 groups of English speaking missionaries come and go;
• .. you’ve had to buy a second box of laundry detergent;
• and finally, if you think it’s a pretty hilarious idea to make a “You Know You’ve Been In the MTC Too Long” List.

We made a goal this past week to share our testimonies 500 times in Mongolian between the eight of us. It’s especially fun because once again we are doing a week-long English fast, and we can’t even tell people what we’re trying to do. Luckily, we’re in the MTC, and everyone is used to being practiced on by missionaries.

Yesterday was Elder Johnson’s birthday. Our teacher had all the other classes of missionaries on our floor come in and sing Happy Birthday to him in their languages. We heard birthday songs in Samoan, Fijian, Indonesian, Malagasy and finally, the two Mongolian sisters serving here in the MTC sang him one of the many Mongolian birthday songs. That’s right. Mongolians don’t have a birthday song; they have tons. Our teachers said their favorite things to write songs about are 1. mothers, 2. love, 3. fathers, and 4. birthdays.

I finally got my Mongolian warrior name! Now, keep in mind that the intent of the warrior name is to fit you personality (literally or ironically) while at the same time sounding as unwarriorlike as possible. Also, you can’t choose your name. It has to be given to you by your horde (district). So far only 3 names have been officially assigned. Elder Loveland is now [Mongolian letters] which means “Cabbage Pants” and Elder Johnston is “Frolicking Minstrel” (we haven’t translated it yet). I am [Mongolian letters], or “Laughing Gypsy.” It was really hard to find the word for “gypsy.” They actually don’t have a word for it in Mongolian, which is a shame because “gypsy” is a really awesome word. The closest thing they had in Mongolian was “clown,” (no thank you), so we went with the Russian word.

Anyway, now that I have my warrior name, I’m pretty much good to go. I probably won’t have time to write next week, so the next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Mongolia! I feel like I’m leaving all over again, even though by the time I get to there, I’ll be done with almost one sixth of my mission.

I love being a missionary. I love the work, and I haven’t even started doing real missionary work besides taking calls in the Referral Center. I had a lot of good experiences there, and some crazy ones like last week when I spent 20 minutes listening to this crazy man from Georgia who wanted to share this theory about how apes really descended from us because they were being punished by God.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I know I will because I’ll be in Mongolia wearing a del and eating sheep face.