Sawadii khap! Sad to here about the Brooklyn situation. Here at the MTC, the teachers whenever it's getting tough say Suu Suu or keep fighting in english. So let's talk about the MTC. It's not as much of a prison as I thought it would be. There are guards but there isn't that much supervision. Prison food is probably better though. My district is so cool. One of the missionaries in our district is Elder Kekoua (I think) and he has me dying all the time. My companion's name is Elder Holland. Not the apostle one though. He's played basketball at southern virginia and is a ginger. He's funny and we get along well even though i ball him up in the gym.
The first couple of days were really hard. I'm not used to waking up this early. 850 missionaries came in that day and there are 3000 missionaries here so it's packed. Sometimes we have to rush to eat because the lines are so long. The first day we got put into a classroom and started learning Thai right away. I thought this language was gonna be hard but not this hard. There is 5 tones and if you say the tone wrong you can be saying the word wrong. Like dog is the same word as mom but a different tone. Oh yeah another thing at the airport they pulled my carry on off the thing and checked it. i have no clue why it was filled with scriptures and books about Jesus. Anyways I didn't have a companion till the end of that day because they had to split the missionaries because there was so many. The older Thai group is crazy. They been here for 7 weeks and they all came into our rooms at night. The whole day other missionaries were saying welcome to the MTC to us all day and it got annoying. someone put glow in the dark stars in the room which was cool and there's a voice at night that says lights out.
the next day we learned how to pray in Thai. a lot of gospel words aren't in the Thai language so they say like for God it's phraphupencaw which means like holy person who is the main boss. The prayers are so long and there's a specific order you got to say it in. i also can bear my testimony in Thai. We have to learn 300 words, 50 phrases, 2 verses, the baptisimal interview questions, the missionary purpose, and the first vision in Thai by Monday. than we start learning thai script. Anyways the food is bad the only good food we had here was Chick fil a. The third day we had to teach a fake investigator named phii cee or PJ in english. we read a script because we hardly know any thai. we have a lot of time on our own for personal study and language study and companion study. I thought we were just going to be in a classroom all day. My teacher is named brother Yuen and he speaks thai pretty much the whole time. Our first lesson with the investigator went really bad. we didn't know what he was saying so we couldn't answer his questions. I felt really bad because i wanted to talk to him but i couldnt. everyday we teach a lesson except sunday and tuesday and each time we got better and started to understand a little of what he was saying.
i play basketball during excercise time. a lot of these elders played ball but i still be ballin. the other missionaries here kept on saying just make it to sunday because people leave in the first couple of days because its really hard. sunday was awesome. we have the biggest branch in the mtc with over 100 people. our zone has a bunch of elders going to southeast asia and some going to vietnam. Elder Holland spoke to us in a devotional. Also not the apostle one his son. he talked about Joseph Smith. it was really good. I was in the Choir and there was like 1700 other missionaries, the biggest in the history of the MTC and we sang praise to the man. My favorite part of the day was Sunday night when you can watch movies. we watched Elder Bednar's "Character of Christ" and it was the best talk i ever heard. he talked about focusing outward and not inward. it helped me out with my studies because i was focused on me learning the language and not doing it for the people in Thailand that needed me. i love it here and miss you all. Choog Dii khap!
Elder Decker
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