MTC Week 2:
So since being at the MTC I've seen a lot of old High School friends and a lot of my college friends. I have been getting pictures with them and last Sunday, all of the AFHS 2011 Elders took a cool picture by the big map at the MTC. I'll hopefully be able to send that picture soon. I've heard from Elder Rasband and Elder Zwick at the devotionals and those have been an awesome thing to attend. As of May 24th, I have gained 6 pounds since being in the MTC. I haven't weighed myself since then because I spend all of my gym time playing soccer outside. I'm hoping I've added another 5-6 pounds! During the week, my companion got really really sick. He thought it was strep throat or something. So I gathered all of my district in our room and I gave him a blessing. It was a really cool experience. He ended up having an ear infection but he recovered extremely quickly!
As for the investigator I was talking about last week, we were told that this guy moved to Utah from Hungary, had some interest in the church because he was hearing about it and that the MTC asked if he would be taught by Missionaries at the MTC. Which he agreed to. They wanted to make it as real as possible for us, so, our teachers had us actually convinced that he was a REAL Hungarian investigator. So we treated him like one and it was a really cool experience! (We later found out he was the teacher for the class that is leaving to Hungary soon and he's a return missionary who went to Hungary. He is also occasionally our Language teacher) ANYwho, so last week I said we were going to challenge him to be baptized. When we asked, he said he was already baptized as a baby. So, my companion was quick and had him read from Moroni chapter 8. He read it then asked us some questions about it. (All in Hungarian which we obviously don't know very well at ALL yet) And we were able to pick out a few words so we just replied with "igen" which means "yes". Come to find out, when he revealed his true self, he told us that his question was something along the lines of "So, since I was already baptized as a baby, with out the proper priesthood, I'm just going to go straight to hell?" ... which we just looked at him and answered "yes" to. So that was a good learning experience for us.
We now have 2 "Hungarian Investigators" (our teachers) and 1 English Investigator. We have quite enjoyed the English one but the Hungarian is coming along for us. I have quickly learned that my name badge isn't the only thing that's backwards in Hungarian. Basically, the entire language is backwards to English in the aspect of sentence structure. So in English, It sounds like we're all speaking like Yoda. "Alldredge Elder, I am" or "The late-day holy followers Jesus Christ church." They also don't have the word "of". So we have to say "Wisdom's Word," and stuff like that. Also, in prayers we say, "Thank you this day for" etc, etc. So everything translates over super funky. One difficult thing is you have to know exactly what you're saying before you say it. Because before you speak you have to first decide if your Direct Object in your sentence is definite or indefinite. And whether it's definite or not creates two different conjugation charts for all of the tenses to what verb you're using. And then, in every sentence you have to add a "t" onto the what ever the Direct Object is. If the word ends in a vowel, you have to add an accent over it. If it ends in a consonant, you have to add a vowel and a "T" according to something called "vowel harmony." Vowel harmony is really cool because it's used solely to make the language sounds pretty. But anyway, that's what I've been learning in class lately.
Other than that, everything else is just grand! I am enjoying my time here and I will leave you all with this cool quote I heard:
"As a missionary, I am not only changing lives--I am changing eternities"
