Merry Christmas!

안영하 새요, 여러분!

Hello, all!

This week has been a fantastic week! Christmas was a huge party, and we've all been having so much fun! We didn't end up having two apostles, but we did have two general authorities (one of which was an apostle). We had a devotional by a member of the Seventy (whose name I apparently neglected to write down on my list of things to talk about. Oops!), and the Elder Bednar came on Christmas day! And oh my-lanta, I need to tell you about Elder Bednar's devotional!

So when it was his turn to speak, he got up and said hello and all that, then he shared a brief spiritual message that literally consisted of a sentence. Then he said, "Okay, now we're going to do something historic."

Everyone BOLTED upright in their seats. Then he said: "So we're going to do a Q&A, and we're going to do it in a way that has never been done in the history of MTCs EVER. You're going to text your questions to this iPad of mine," *queue the confusion on all our faces* "and in order for you to do that, we've got about 200 phones that we're going to pass around to you." And the Auditorium erupted. Now, that was the BEST devotional that we've had yet. Not everyone's questions were directly answered, but everyone that I've talked to had obtained an answer indirectly. It was FANTASTIC. I got almost three pages of personal revelation in my journal from that devotional, and from the devotional review that our district had afterwards, collectively. It was THAT good. It was so good, because we got to have an Apostle of the Lord talk about things that we wanted to hear about. Personally, even though I didn't text him a question, I got to hear him talk about something that I definitely needed to hear, even though I had no idea that I needed to hear it. I hope that they keep doing that. It was seriously the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in the MTC so far.

MTCs around the world got to participate, too. They all got phones that could email the iPad. A question from a missionary in the England MTC got answered. Also, we were closely watched so that nobody would try to call home or take a phone. Elder Bednar said that if we did either, that he would "personally hunt you down and do terrible things to you." He's a funny guy. We love him so much. His devotional called "Character of Christ" was spectacular too.

THAT REMINDS ME: for any and all of you that are coming to the MTC soon, or ever, NEED TO WATCH THAT DEVOTIONAL. "Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar. It's one of those videos that you get to watch after Sunday and Tuesday night Devotionals, and it literally ALWAYS gets played in the gym. It's LIFE CHANGING and you MAY NOT COME HERE WITHOUT WATCHING IT. I will send the guilt monkeys after you if you don't. Armies of them. Seriously.

Another good one to watch is called "Missions are Forever" by Elder Holland (my absolute favourite Apostle ever!). That one is also very life-changing and will seriously alter your perspective on how important your mission is. Plus, it's Jeffery R. Holland, so it's fantastic just because of that anyways.

Back from that tangent: Christmas was a party. K-Town (Korea-bound missionaries) went a little crazy in the Residence halls on Christmas Eve. I guarantee that there is nowhere else that you will find so many men singing Disney songs at the top of their lungs while acting them out. All the party junk came out too. Christmas hats, SO MUCH CANDY, my district got lip whistles with Santa beards on them from Elder DeMille's mom. We went nuts. Then we opened presents early on Christmas morning. Some people got some sweet stuff. I loved everything that I got. It was great!

Oh! Sidenote! A bunch of Pacific Islanders banded together in the main square-type place and did a Hakka. There was a huge crowd there taking pictures in front of the Christmas lights, so it was CRAZY! I managed to get in the front row with a bunch of fellow Korea-bound missionaries. Oh man! It was SO COOL!!! When you have a group of huge Polynesians about a metre-and-a-half in front of you doing a Hakka... I'd never felt so intimidated and simultaneously awestruck by the sheer power and energy they put into it. SO cool.

The talent show was amazing. I got in it, so that was fantastic, and there were so many awesome acts that happened. There were a lot of talented musicians, but I think the people that deserve special mention was the Elder that did what he called a "Yiddish Bottle Dance." Okay, so he was about to start, and we were all thinking that he was going to do something super-legit and maybe mind-blowing, but no. He put a bottle of orange juice on his head and carefully did a bunch of dance moves that I guess looked like they could have been Yiddish. The thing was that he did all of the music with his own voice. It was such a ridiculous spectacle, and the whole crowd was just dying of laughter.

Then there was a Mongolian Elder that did a magic show. It was REALLY good. He was a great performer, and his tricks were really impressive.

That's all the really exciting stuff, I guess. Once you get to a certain point here in the MTC, everything is just routine and gets kinda boring because it's literally the same thing all day almost-every-day. But I guess my Korean is getting better and better every day, which is good. I mean, it's nowhere where I want it to be, but I'm not complaining. It's still super fun to speak it to everybody I run into. I said 'thank you' to a cafeteria staff the other day, and he responded back in Korean. It caught me so off guard that I couldn't do anything about it until after he had left. It was funny. The only thing that bothers me about Korean right now, is that there is no word for 'you.' Honest to goodness. I mean, I hear that there is, but that it's super-rude unless maybe it's among friends, so we're not going to learn it in class. Also, there is no word for 'please.' I think I've mentioned that before, but it still drives me nuts.

Also, just in the past couple of days, I've been speaking in French, which is NOT helping anything. Seriously. I'm juggling between three languages now. It's ridiculous. AAAGGH!!!

Anyways. That's all I really have for today.

여러분을 사랑합니다!

I love you all!

Without Wax, 

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