October 10, 2017
I am now on my second P day. All has been going well. I will admit it right now that after the first two or three days I was really discouraged, as they were really tough, but now that I am on day fourteen, I feel much more confident, and time really seems to be flying by! Vietnamese has been really tough, and the teachers have high expectations, but I feel I am doing fairly well. We currently have a vocab sheet of over three hundred words and phrases that we are supposed to memorize by next week. I am not sure if I will have all of them down by then, but I am getting fairly good at other parts of the language. I am able to give a decent prayer fully in Vietnamese, it is simple, but it works. I can also give some basic testimonies. I have also noticed that while I have some difficulty with the vocab, the grammar comes to me naturally. We were going over some sentence structures and grammar words yesterday, and they all made perfect sense to me off hand. I really feel the Lord is helping me as I learn the language.
Most days are going fairly well, with my favorites being Sunday and Tuesday. On Sunday, we have church meetings and then some really cool devotionals, and Tuesday of course is P day, and we also have devotionals on Tuesday night! In particular, I really enjoy the videos we get to watch after the Sunday devotional. You get the option of either watching a special MTC talk, or a movie like "Meet the Mormons" and "Legacy". Last Sunday, my group wanted to watch one of the more fun movies, but the rooms were all full so we watched a talk by Elder Bednar which I think I mentioned last week. It was a really awesome and inspirational talk. It was so good, that my district (7C) decided to watch another talk yesterday. We watched one from Elder Holland titled something like "Missions are Forever". Once again, it was a very sobering but motivational talk! We have decided to watch one of the other two talks next week. Some people in my group do want to eventually see one of the more fun movies, but we have all agreed the week before we leave we are watching the Elder Bednar talk again. By the way, I think I also mentioned this last time, but in the talk Elder Bednar impersonates the cookie monster from Sesame Street as being the natural man, and ever since then, my companion Elder Morris has learned to say "I want cookie now" in Vietnamese and says it all the time.
I have also been trying to do well in the other things that have been happening. In class, we still teach investigators on an almost daily basis (i.e. a daily basis, with a break before we get a new "investigator"). Elder Morris and I got better at delivering our lesson to An Thien, but we only gave a total of four lessons. My personal favorite moment was when we challenged him to read The Book of Mormon, and we didn't have a copy for him and on the spot I was inspired to have him look up lds.org on his phone (I didn't know how to tell him to do so in Vietnamese, so I pointed at his phone and then wrote lds.org on the board). We then figured out how to get it to be in Vietnamese, and found The Book of Mormon in Vietnamese! We didn't get him to agree to be baptized by the last lesson, but he agreed to continue to meet the missionaries in San Jose where he was supposedly moving. It turned out the next day that he is actually one of our teachers! His name is actually Thay An, and he is pretty amusing. He is a really good actor, and when he came in as our teacher he acted like he had never heard of An Thien before and said that he sounded like a complete jerk. I have also learned that all four of the Vietnamese teachers are actually converts! I think they are all from the US, except for Thay An who is from Vietnam and who was converted in Australia when he was nine. Elder Pattillo, the one who is going to Australia, thought that was pretty cool. In my district, we have one elder going to Australia (Elder Pattillo), and two elders going to Cambodia (Elders Bowler and Beauchamp) the rest of my district is going to Vietnam, but we are all speaking Vietnamese. We now have a new investigator named Em Tien (a.k.a. our teacher Thay Vahn) who we will teach on Wednesday. I feel much more prepared for that lesson. By the way, Thay means teacher in Vietnamese for guys, and our teachers have a different Vietnamese name than their English name. We will also get our own Vietnamese names before we leave for Vietnam. Also, it won't be hard to call investigators brother and sister, since in the Vietnamese culture you almost automatically do so. You call people younger than you Em (younger sibling), people around your age Ahn (brother) or Chi (sister), people around your parents aunt and uncle (I don't know these in Vietnamese), and older people Ba (grandma) and Ong (grandpa). Yes, a lot of these are missing tones and accent marks, but I don't know how to type that either.
As for other things going on, I have been trying to work out a bit more. The MTC food is really good, but everyone says you will gain your MTC 20 because of it. As a result, and also wanting to be more able in Vietnam. I have been working on the elliptical (that is what I am told it is called, it is the thing where you run and move your arms as you run) in the gym. I have actually been able to run more than I thought I could on it. On Thursday, I ran for a full fifty six minutes straight. I would have done a full hour, but gym is only an hour and the first few minutes consists of reviewing gym rules. I had to get off at fifty six minutes. I ended up burning over six hundred calories! I tried to do the same on Saturday, but didn't quite get as far because I took a five minute water break halfway through, but I still did fairly well. Most of the Elders and Sisters do volleyball, basketball, four square, spike ball, or some other sport, but I have decided that I will try to use the workout machines. I may occasionally join in another event.
And speaking of food, I have enjoyed every meal so far except for one. Sometime this week we got meatloaf, and it was bad. It was so bad that now whenever any of the missionaries in my district eat something we don't like, we all say at least it isn't MTC meatloaf! Most of the other food is pretty good. Every Friday is pizza day, and every Monday is catering day. Yesterday was Taco Bell night, which for some reason everyone but me seemed disappointed about. I will say though, after I ate it I was a little disappointed too. We just got a bean burrito and a soft taco. Oh well.
Overall, I have really enjoyed my MTC experience so far. For any new missionaries coming in however, I would warn that the first three days really are hard, and that they should make sure to watch the Elder Bednar talk on their first Sunday.
Thank you guys so much for all of your support! I love you!
Elder Watson
P.S. This is something my family will understand more than anyone else, but I will tell you all anyways. Over the last few days, I have been getting really bad dry skin to the point where my skin would actually crack and bleed, especially if I would clench my fist. It first got bad on Saturday, but the store was closed early, and on Sunday the store does not open. I wasn't sure what kind of lotion the store would have, but I did not think they would have the Eucerin Creme ( I am not sure if it is creme or cream for lotion) I usually use when I have dry skin, but I wasn't counting on it. I went to the store on Monday, and they had exactly one four ounce bottle of Eucerin Creme on display! I feel the Lord was really looking out for me, because my hands were getting bad. When I bought the creme, another elder in my district, Elder Hodson, was telling me to buy the cheap brand of lotion that was one quarter the price ($8 vs $2 not including the 30% missionary discount on both), but I told him that this stuff worked really well. I told him that my hands would fully heal in about three days, so I am taking photos of them each day to prove to him how effective it is. They are already a lot better today after using the lotion yesterday. Most of you reading this won't really understand, but I thought my mom would get a kick out of this P.S. comment at least.
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