Kamusta Kamo? (How are all of you?)
It has been another great week!
We had the awesome opportunity to help the new missionaries yesterday. So what we would do was help them get there luggage out of their car take some pictures of them and their family and then we would take them to get their name tag and all their other stuff. After that we would take them to drop their things off at their residence and then show them to their classroom. It was such an awesome experience because I know exactly how they felt 4 weeks ago. And I guess I should clear something up, Elder Wasden isn't my companion, haha, he is just an awesome Elder in my district and in my room. We get along really good and he was just helping the same Elder as I was so that is why we took that picture together. My companion is still Elder Moore, we share a room with Elder Wasden and Elder Wallace though.
It was so great to hear from all of you this week!! I love getting emails from you guys.I also really appreciated the dear elders about the game and the newspaper clipping about the game. I would love it if you could do that every week! It was great to hear about the Utes game and the St george trip! It sounds like you guys had an awesome week as did I. And I am glad you guys played spikeball, I played that all the time with my friends back home. I actually played it a couple of times this week at the MTC, it was awesome. Me and Elder Stauffer (from a different district, but speaking ilonggo and we are in the same zone and residence) dominated the other Elders in spikeball and are now know as the spikeball champions! okay well self proclaimed spikeball champions haha!
So I guess I will give you a rundown of a typical day here at the MTC.
6:30 wake up,shower,get ready
7:15 Breakfast (the breakfast is actually really good)
8-10 Personal and companion study (we study over at the nice new buildings in these music rooms, it is so nice)
10-11 Exercise time (we usually play basketball,4 square,or spikeball)
11-11:45 get ready again (shower)
11:45-12:45 Language study (recently we have been working on memorizing the first vision and I am so close to having it down)
12;45-1:25 Lunch
1:30-4:30 Class (Usually teach one of our "progressing investigators"(which is just one of our teachers))
5:15-6 Dinner
6:30-9 Class (unless its a tuesday,then we have a devotional)
9-10:30 go back to residence, get ready for bed,write in journal, study, ect.
10:30 bed
Thats about as exact as I can get. Thats the schedule that I write in my planner everyday. We are always so busy, but it is great!
To answer some of your questions, I surprisingly did not get any comments about wearing my Utah shorts, haha it is awesome. I heard about how bad BYU is, haha that is great!!! A few other Elders in my district are BYU fans and we have fun joking around. Oh and your other question about calling at the airport,I'm not sure about that yet. I have heard that you do get call from the airport from other Elders, like Elder Horton said he gets to call (he left on monday),but I don't know if I do for sure yet. I will let you know. I get my travel plans tomorrow, so I bet that a lot of my questions will be answered tomorrow and I will let you know in the e-mail next week. It is so crazy to think that in 13 days I will be on my way to the Philippines. I am so excited and nervous at the same time! I am so excited to go and see the Philippines and meet some amazing people, but I am also very nervous because of the language. I have improved a lot and my teachers understand what I'm saying in the lessons, but thats because they speak English and Ilonggo and they understand what I'm trying to say. But I know that if I am patient I will be given success,it has been promised in the scriptures(Alma 26:27, I think, I may have switched the numbers) I am so excited though, all of my teachers served their missions in the Philippines (obviously thats how they learned ilonggo) and they have told so many stories and showed us pictures of how awesome the Philippines is. So 2 of my teachers served in Bacolod and the other one served in Iloilo. Bacolod and Iloilo are the only missions in the world to learn ilonggo, which is pretty awesome. So there are only basically 2 islands in the whole world that speak the language I am learning, which is really cool. Sure my language is going to be useless when I get back, but it is going to be awesome and it already has been awesome to learn!
I would like to share a few experiences that I have had this week. On Saturday we were having an investigator review, which is where we talk about how our teaching is going, how the MTC is and really about everything. It is just me, Elder Moore and our teacher Brother Mariano. And we got talking about how our teachers knows that we don't have perfect Ilonggo,but he said that he can really feel the spirit in our lessons, which is awesome. It was really a great experience for me. I know that even if we can't speak the language that well at all, the spirit can still get our message across and I learned that, that is what the gift of tongues is. The gift of tongues isn't the ability to be able to learn and speak the language with ease, it IS the ability to get our message across through the spirit. Also in this investigator review meeting we talked about why we serve missions and earlier that day I was reading in Alma and I decided to share a scripture that I read in Alma 36:24. The scripture basically says that Ammon wanted others to feel of the exceedingly great joy that the gospel brings, so thats why he shared it. And when i read this scripture with my companion and my teacher, I started to cry because that is why I am serving a mission. I want others to feel of the exceedingly great joy this gospel has brought me. Another awesome experience I had this week was, we were teaching one of our investigators about keeping the sabbath day holy and our investigator expressed to us that he couldn't because his Dad left and he has to work on Sunday's to be able to feed his family. Even though this was just one of my teachers saying this, they told us that this happens a lot in the Philippines. As he expressed these concerns a scripture came to my mind 1 nephi 3:7 (which was not in our lesson plan, but I shared it anyway) and I testified that God doesn't give a commandment unless there is a way to accomplish it, and our "investigator" said that he would keep the Sabbath Day Holy. It was an awesome experience! Okay I have one more cool experience this week. So on Sunday nights after devotionals we get to go watch a video of previous talks and this week we watched "missions are forever" by Elder Holland. This talk really changed my perspective on a lot of things about a mission. The thing that stood out most to me was the part that he talked about how we are representatives of Jesus Christ and nothing was easy for him so why should a mission be easy for us. wow. It really changed my perspective, missions are suppose to be hard. I am so grateful for that talk and the opportunity I have to be a missionary!
Well Thanks for all the Emails! You guys are the Best!! I love you all!!!
Have a great week! Palangga ta ka!
Halong!
-Elder Degen
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