Slave labor and philosophical thoughts

So this week has basically been the same old same old. I've kind of been getting a little ansy about getting out of here but at the same time soo nervous too. I only have 12 days left and I should get my travel plans this Friday so it's starting to get real! I haven't got my visa yet though which is starting to become a little concerning....     :l

The language has been pretty tough and that's honestly the biggest thing that worries me cuz half the time I can't understand jack. But I'm trying to stay positive and know that things will work out.

Today we got to clean the temple. The sisters got to clean all the crystals on the chandeliers and we had the distinguished honor of cleaning the lockers for four hours!! I wouldn't say it was the funnest thing I've ever done in my life but it was kinda cool. We finished a little early so we got to take a tour of the temple a bit and see all the behind the scenes stuff you could call it and rooms that I won't ever see like the Brides room and stuff like that so that was something.

Also, if anybody needs help moving, doing yard work, or need some big service projects done. Just come on over to the MTC! You'll be able to get at least 100 missionaries to volunteer in about 2.7 seconds. You'll get it done in no time, I guarantee it.

Seriously though, the MTC has been such a blast. My testimony has grown like ten fold here and I've learned a lot of really neat things. I don't know, honestly not a whole lot has happened this week and I still have like half an hour to write so I guess I'll just write about some random crap I've been thinking about this week! haha.

So I read Moses chapter one this week and the first part of the chapter talks about how God showed Moses pretty much everything he created. All the people on earth and all the planets in space and stuff. Then that just reminded me of a documentary I watched in College about how fetching huge the Universe is. Basically it talked about how we are like the size of a grain of sand compared to the whole earth. The earth is basically the size of an apple or something compared to our sun. Our sun is like the size of a grain of sand compared to another sun called beattle Juice. Then it just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Then it talked about a black hole and how a black hole has enough gravitational force to smash the entire earth into the size of walnut or something but it still weighs the same weight as it would now. And Moses saw all of this. Basically, it just got me thinking how small we are. We are basically nothing. Despite all of these amazing things God has created WE are most important to him. "This is my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." That is the whole point of the gospel and the plan of salvation and everything. He just wants us to be as happy as possible here on earth and to eventually become as he is and live with our families for eternity. This has been an extremely reassuring thought to me and has helped me out everytime I start getting discouraged. God loves us more than anything and although we are so small, WE ARE WORTH IT.

Another random thought :) 

So my purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ. Something I've learned this week is that EVERYBODY needs to come unto Christ whether they are an investigator or a member or what. We all need to become disciples of Christ and become converted unto him. Not converted to the church but converted unto Christ. My teachers tell us that everytime we plan a lesson, we need to think how we can help that person come closer to Christ. All of us need to come closer to Christ. So now I'm gonna practice being a missionary and invite everybody reading this to find something they can do everyday to come closer to Christ.

Alright that's enough of my rant. I hope yall have an amazing 4th of July weekend!! I think they are  letting us stay up later to watch the fireworks from the stadium of fire concert and we might even get to hear Carrie Underwood singing from a mile away!! Totally pumped haha!! Anyway talk to yall next week!

Jeremy

Another Week at the MTC

So this week as been pretty decent, nothing much has changed too much.  Thank you all for all the love and support I've been getting.  It really makes my day!

Sunday was probably the most emotionally and spiritually crazy day at the mtc so far. We probably had the greatest devotional on the planet.  It was this old lady named Janice Kapp Perry and her husband who spoke.  This lady apparently lives like right across the street from the mtc and has written a lot of the primary songs like child's prayer, I love to see the temple, sisters in zion, the heleman army song, and a ton of others.  There was this one part where she was telling how she and her husband met and at the end of the story her husband like jumps up on stage and fetching plants this huge kiss on her! The whole place just erupted in applause and stuff.  Gosh it was the funniest talk ever! There were tons of hilarious things that they kept doing throughout the talk.  The best part of it was though that she really got all of us involved and had us sing all of her primary songs and stuff and the spirit was so powerful I nearly started balling.  Then afterwards we watched this powerful movie about Joseph Smith and the spirit was still just flooding the room that I finally just started balling like a baby.  It was kinda embarrassing but nearly everyone in there was crying so it was ok.  

The next morning we got up early to say goodbye to Elder Bonner who was the Zone leader and one of my best friends down here. He is going to the Netherlands.  We got a 2 new zone leaders and 2 new sister training leaders and their all going to Sweden so ya, basically the Swedes are running the place now.

Then on Tuesday we had the other devotional which was also pretty cool.  Min kamerat made me join the choir with him but now I'm actually glad he did.  We sang Praise to the Man and it was actually really good and the spirit was really powerful. We sang in front of about 150 new mission presidents and their wives, and 6 apostles and 15 people from the 70.  It was pretty crazy! All the apostles that came were elder Chistopherson, Russel M. Nelson, Dallin H Oaks, M. Russel Ballard, Neil L. Anderson, and David A Bednar as well as Elder Rasband from the 70 and like 15 other 70's were there.  Elder Christopherson gave the talk and it was really good. He spoke about the worth of souls. I also got to wave hi to Dieter F. Uchtdorf earlier that day so that was pretty cool.

So far I think the language is coming along ok, not as much as I would like but everybody has told me to just chill out about it cuz I'll learn everything once I get to Denmark so that's kinda helped me out.  I think the gospel stuff is coming along pretty well too in terms of learning the discussions and stuff.  I'm definitely no master on the stuff but hopefully I'll get it down good enough by the time I go to Denmark.  I also love my teachers.  They were/are probably the best missionaries I have ever seen and give us really good advice and stuff which has really helped me.

Me and Joseph Smith casually crying repentance to people

This pic is of my bud named elder Brett Bonner.  He was our zone leader and left to the Netherlands on Monday. He roomed with me and is a total stud!

Jeg elsker jeres! Vi Ses!

Uge To!!

Hey everybody! I hope everything has gone really well! Believe it or not, I've been really upset about not being able to watch the world cup or the nba finals or anything. ugh im dying!! haha ;)

This week has been pretty good but nothing terribly interesting.  All of the new missionaries in our zone came this past week.  It's pretty fun because I'm making new friends with some of them but it also kinda sucks because our zone isn't nearly as tight anymore.  Since our zone is so big now we just do everything as districts for the most part.  It's awesome though because my buddy from BYU named Jake Rolfson is in my zone now! He's going to Norway on his mission.

Speaking of BYU buddies, the devotional on Sunday I ran into like 8 of my buddies from school! Seriously it was like a 49th ward reunion!  We talked for like almost an hour before the devotional started it was great! 

 Buddies from BYU - me, Jake, Bryce, Nate, Andrew, Dani, Emily, Brenda

Companion, Elder Higby

The devotionals this week were really good!  On Sunday, we usually have some random person come speak to us and this time we had some chick named Sheri Dew who actually gave a flippin good talk.  Then on Tuesday we usually have general authorities and important church people speak to us.  It's been really crazy though because the mtc has had about 9 or 10 apostles come speak to us in the last 3 months which has never happened before!  Either we are like flippin amazing or the church is just extremely worried about us and we need all the help we can get! Yesterday though we had Elder M. Russel Ballard speak! So far I'm 2/2 for having apostles speak on Tuesdays since I've been here!

This week is supposed to be pretty chaotic.  They are training all the new mission presidents this week and all the apostles are supposed to be here this week helping train them! The main buildings are gonna be like shut down for 5 days or so but it's also cool because there's a good chance they'll speak at our upcoming devotionals!

So the studying has been going decently well I think.  The language is coming along ok and I'm finally starting to understand how to conjugate verbs and how the sentences are structured and stuff like that.  Also we teach like 2-3 lessons a day now and we're not allowed to use notes or anything to help with the danish so that is really helping learn the language faster I think. 

Anyway, things are still going really well over here! 

Hakuna Matata!

Jeremy 

First Week at the MTC

OK so I finally made it through my first week here at the MTC! It's pretty great, our zone has been so small we only had like 11 missionaries in our zone. 3 Swedes, 2 Dutch, and 6 Danes (including me).  This past Monday the 3 Swedes left so now we only have 8 but today I think we're getting like 26 more missionaries in our zone which is like the biggest it's been since they made the age change. Word on the street is that we're getting 16 Swedes, 9 Norwegians, and 1 more Dutchy so our zone probably won't be that close anymore cuz we're gonna have so many more people in our district.  

The language is a whole heck of a lot harder than Spanish! Holy crap there are like exceptions to every rule and so it makes it a nightmare to learn.  I am starting to pick out words here and there from our practice investigator and teachers and stuff but I have a really hard time forming sentences still.  Also this language is like physically a workout. My neck is gonna be freakin shredded by the time I come home.  If you wanna know what it kinda sounds like just watch Tarzan, when Tarzan is teaching Jane how to speak ape. Ya that's literally what it sounds like. For some reason though I totally love speaking it though, even though it's tough it's like the funnest thing to speak.

Yesterday was really cool too.  We had our first Tuesday devotional and Elder Quinton L. Cook from the 12 apostles came a spoke! He gave some really good advice and talked a lot about how everybody needs to stop thinking that their inadequate for this (which i know has been a big problem for a lot of people here especially in our district).  

My normal day consists of waking up at 6:30, get breakfast and eat outside which is like the only time I see the sun around here - It's depressing, I am so white now :(   Then I have gym which is really fun.  When we go play basketball everybody there just gets in on it and we have like a massive tournament and I always get to play with Eric Mika which is kinda cool. (Side note: it's kinda funny because all these amateur b-ball players think their so hot until they get stuffed soo bad by him haha)  After that we have language study for 4 hours, then lunch, then language and gospel study for another 4 1/2ish hours, then dinner, then more study for 3 hours then 1 free time (which really isn't free time it's just time to relax a bit) and then bed.  Rinse and Repeat

So my district consists of 5 other people.  Elder Higby is my comp and he is from Cedar City, Elder Vance is from Wiley, Texas (which is kinda by Dallas), Elder Saunders is from enterprise Utah, Elder Nielson (who I went to San Fran with) is from Virginia right near D.C. and then Sister Woster is from Sacramento. It's an interesting group for sure, lots of different personalities but we all get along really well and we have a lot of laughs.  

I leave the MTC on July 14 and I even have my proselyting license thing that says I'm coming home on May 17, 2016.  Not sure how accurate that is or what but thought that was kinda cool.  My P-Day is on Wednesdays.

Anyway, hope everything is going great! I love hearing what's goin on in everybody's life and out there in the real world! I pray for ya'll everyday and am so grateful for the impacts you've all made in my life.

I'm ALIVE!

Ok so it's only the second day here and they are letting me write you guys but they're only givin me like 5 minutes so I gotta go fast.

The first two days have been really great so far!! I actually really like learning Danish but it's flippin hard and I don't understand a word my teachers say but it's all good, everybody says that I'll start getting the jist of it within about a week.  It's sooooo weird though because the pronunciations of words are absolutely nothing like they are spelled!! Seriously, I think the guy who came up with the writing system for Danish must've been drunk as a skunk!  I mean like crazy things like d's make L sounds and vice versa and there's just tons of extra letters in words that are silent and/or make bizarre noises.  Anyways, everything is going so fast and I'm busy doing crap all the time.  Tomorrow me and my companion are supposed to teach an investigator all in danish already! ahhhhh!!!!  Speaking of my companion, his name is elder Higby and he's really cool, actually everybody in my district is really awesome and we do everything together so far.  

My zone consists of all the Scandinavian countries except finland and included netherlands and belgium.  We all talk and get along with each other really well so far!  Jeez everything just going fantastic so far! However, these first two days have been like trying to drink from a fire hose!

It's really awesome too because I've seen so many friends from high school and college! Seriously it's like a party at meal time!  Another thing I just wanna clear up about the food.  I think the food is just fine.  there's a lot of my friends and other people who say they don't like the food and that it's totally crap but that's just mostly from the super picky eaters.  Honestly, it's all you can eat ice cream, oj, and other delicious jams and jellies so I think meal time is flippin fantastic!!

By the way, my P-days here in the mtc will be on Wednesdays so that's when I'll get to write you all and next time I should have a lot more time to write and actually breathe a little bit.

Anyway, I hope everything has been going well for you guys back home!  I really miss everybody so much and hope you all are just having a blast out there in the real world!! Talk to y'all next week!! :)

See You in Two

Farewell