Hey Everyone!
I'm already through a third of my time here at the MTC! Strange isn't it? It's funny, I have ran into David Boggs a couple of times since I've been here.
Everything has been extremely busy. We have two new investigators now (my companion and I have officially taught 7 lessons in Swedish now). Our first "investigator" was actually our second teacher, who's only been back from Sweden since Christmas, and now our new investigators are both of our teachers. How the investigator thing works is that our teachers think back to an investigator they had while in the mission field and act in that part while formulating answers depending on the spirit. We have two new "investigators." We've really only had the chance to just meet them, but it's interesting because we have to start completely from scratch with one investigator (who pretty much knows who Christ is, but otherwise doesn't know anything).
Mainly we've been learning more about how to study more effectively and how to begin teaching. One of our teachers was able to give me some good ideas on how to study the language better. It's a bit time consuming now, but it will become extremely effective once I get to know Swedish better. Basically I just need to read everything that my companion and I might need to talk about in our lesson (in both English and Swedish), then I need to come up with a list of all of the Swedish words I want to use (starting with what I already know, before looking up others). Then I need to write out what I want to say in simple English sentences before translating as much as I can without looking it up. Then I need to double check those Swedish sentences and practice saying that a billion, okay more like ten, times each. It's interesting though, I definitely understand a lot more Swedish that I expected. I can understand most of what our investigators are saying, but I definitely have a difficult time forming sentences on the spot. It's funny because the usual lesson dynamic is that my companion will be rambling answers (in a good way =)) in Swedish while I find the words that she needs while I interject with my testimony every now and again. I definitely know where to find everything, I just can't quite piece it together effectively quite yet. But it will definitely come with time!
Our Tuesday devotional speak was Elder Don Clark from the Seventy. He mainly spoke about the importance of conversion over baptism into the church. Basically, he said to remember the individuals, not numbers, which is what we have always talked about.
Otherwise, I've been a bit sick and I'm definitely allergic to Utah, but I've been doing my best to try to concentrate regardless. I wanted to share a brief scripture that I really liked this week. 3 Nephi 15:12 "Ye are my disciples; and ye are a light unto this people..." I actually used this scripture for my first spiritual thought in Swedish. I like it because it's example of what we are as missionaries. We are representatives of Christ and it is our responsibility to be that light to God's children. It's definitely a reminder of what I am here to do.
On an interesting note, if you click that "When do I serve?" link on lds.org, it opens to a page about missionaries. One of the missionaries is one of my teachers when he was on his mission in Sweden 2 years ago!
Even if I have my Rapunzel "Tangled" moments, things are certainly settling down and I'm getting into the swing of things.
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