The Continual Grind (MTC 6)

 (Elder Cummings)

This week has been a blast! This was Week 7, so we oldies in the MTC only have about 2 weeks left.

When I have time I'm teaching my good friend, Ryan(previously known as Elder Fagergren) a piano arrangement of "Be Still My Soul" while he waits to be set apart and go into the field. We're making good progress, it's coming along nicely. Speaking of music my companion Elder Liang continues to amaze us when he played a musical number for our class one day and totally destroyed it on the cello. It was an amazing arrangement, amazingly played.

This week I tried to go at least one day without speaking English, only speaking Mandarin. Those who have seen me or talked to me this week are probably like "you did!?!" because it's just that hard. Especially when you're at home with family and you know very little Mandarin. I did really well one day until my second class where I kind of gave up without meaning to, it was late and it takes a lot of effort. Nevertheless, I can repent and try again. I will get it sometime before MTC ends. Even if it means I basically don't say anything one day, as long as it's Mandarin I'm good.

In one of our classes we were left without a teacher after he was unexpectedly preoccupied when it was time for our calls to start. So we started another zoom call and just started going over grammar and sentences and then did a GSR(Gospel Study Review) where we talked and bore our testimonies on prophets and apostles. It was awesome actually, I thought we were pretty productive, I don't know what those in my district think.

This week during one of our classes we discussed spiritual gifts. It was an amazing discussion. We read this verse from Moroni 10:

"8 And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God. And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the Spirit of God unto men, to profit them."

I don't think God made us like we make cookies. You put all the ingredients together, throw some chocolate chips, and mix it up and whatnot(I don't really know how to make cookies). When you take the dough and form the cookies, some cookies have more chocolate chips that others, some are bigger than others. God didn't throw a bunch of spiritual strengths and gifts into a big bowl, stir it nice and evenly till all the weaknesses and personalities looked pretty evenly spread throughout the "dough", and then guesstimate how many are in each person when he grabs a handful. No. He made us each individually. He gave us our spiritual strengths and gifts fully knowing that we would need them and that others would need them. He gave us our weaknesses so we would have to rely on Him, Christ, and Christ's Atonement. He knows us perfectly, and knows what we're capable of, even if we can't see it ourselves. We should "deny not the gifts of God" in ourselves. We are children of a Loving Heavenly Father who created us with love and meaning and care. What's great is that unlike after cookies are made they're stuck with the number of chocolate chips they have, we don't have to be content with the chocolate chips WE have. We can obtain more spiritual gifts and be strengthened through repentance and Christ's Atonement. Through our trust and devotion and effort to Christ, He will "make weak things become strong unto them"(Ether 12:27). I know that spiritual thought was all over the place but I believe it is true. If the analogy didn't make sense, think about it, go make some cookies, and think about it again. Christ is our Savior, He is the Living Son of the Living God, and because of Him, we can be made better and do better. In His name, Jesus Christ, Amen

Photos!

1. A nice healthy meal at home MTC...

1.       2. This week's view...it just gets better and better!

2.       3. Apparently Glasses Friday is a thing in our district, I had to grab some(those aren't finger guns, it's how Chinese people count 7 on their hands(for week 7 of MTC), they count to 10 with one hand using ASL looking stuff, pretty coooool)

Slade Sauce

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for,

This week has been a pretty interesting week. For example, we started teaching a schizophrenic dude. His name is Alex, and he says he's lived 533 lives, and dies at the age of 42 every time. He said he has lived as Alexander the Great, King Arthur, and Jesus. It was a very interesting conversation. The second time we met with him though, he was a lot more sane, so we think he took his meds.

This title comes from a new company I'm going to start, selling salsa. There's a non-member who tried some of my homemade salsa, and he was super impressed, and actually wants to buy some salsa off me. He says I should sell it to people, and call it Slade Sauce. Not a bad option if the whole chemical engineering thing doesn't work out. I have to thank my mom for the recipe though!

This week is transfer week, and Elder Thompson will be leaving us, but we will be getting another missionary, who is either finishing his training, or just our of training. Also, Elder Baron, the Elder that I trained, is going to be in our district! I'm excited!

It's been a good week, we've seen miracles, put a kid on date for baptism, found 3 people. The lord is blessing us! I also met a member this week that is actually a potato engineer. He has spent all of his lives, breeding and changing potatoes to make better french fries, or better potato chips. That's another option if chemical engineering doesn't work.

Love yall!

Pictures:

1. Us messing around as we prepare for filming a video.

2. District Picture

The grind continues to continue

 (Elder Cummings)

It's been another week of hard work, fun times and learning opportunities...

We're on the home stretch to the end of MTC(about 3 more weeks I think) and it's been awesome. You know the drill, it's a similar schedule every day, but I've never been this productive in my life. In 6 weeks I've learned more and advanced more in Mandarin than I have in the past 7 years I've been "studying" it. Yes, that says something about how I was studying the past few years, but it highlights the efficiency and amazing-ness of the MTC and my teachers, and the truthfulness of the Gift of Tongues. Young adults(basically old teenagers) from 18 years old to usually around 20 spend 6-9 weeks learning a language(often times brand new) how to effectively teach people, and then go and do it all in some foreign country for the next 18 months to 2 years of their life: there has to be some divine help or that would not happen.

I did get a bit out of my usual schedule this week, when the Elders(missionaries) from my ward invited me to play the piano as part of a video they're making as an attempt to spread some light and gospel through social media when quarantine makes in-person lessons hard. I don't know what their plan is with the video but all I know is when I walked into the room to record me playing, there were 6 missionaries, all over 6 feet, all bigger and more confident-looking than me. I felt very very new and inexperienced. It gave me a real sense of what getting thrown into the mission field will feel like(except hopefully they're not all over 6 feet too). These guys were "seasoned veterans" in the Lord's work. They weren't over confident. They weren't confident in themselves and they're ability to do things. They were confident that the Work they are about is true, and that it changes lives. They were confident in the Lord to fill in their inadequacies and weaknesses with His Grace and Love. They were confident that anything is possible with God, and that they are able to do anything with His help. I may have felt inexperienced being around them, but they quickly lifted me up and made me feel like I was in the field with them as well, and that my job is the same as theirs', and that makes us equals. It was awesome.

That brings me to my spiritual thought. During Elder Liang and my first Mandarin TRC(mock lesson with a native Mandarin speaker), I 100%, completely, fully relied on my Chinese skills, but mostly my awesome companion's Chinese skills. That made me so nervous and scared to do it, because I knew my Chinese is not perfect and super slow, and not correct grammar, etc etc. Throughout the week though, many times it impressed me this IS the Lord's Work. This is not Elder Cummings teaching his lesson. It's Elder Cummings and Elder Liang relying on the power of the Holy Ghost so they can be instruments in the Lord's hands to help someone better understand Heavenly Father and His plan for us. I better realized the importance of relying on God and His help. The Holy Ghost is the Comforter, He testifies of truth to people's souls. We are able to know things are true and do exist because of the Holy Ghost. In order to effectively help someone understand the truth of the message that I have been called to share, I need to rely on the Holy Ghost to be there and testify it to those we teach. They can believe my words all day long, but unless they do not feel the confirming witness of the Holy Ghost in their soul they cannot have a true, personal, testimony where they know it is true. I cannot rely on my own teaching and Chinese skills to do that for them, or they would never have that witness, I need to do my part and then rely fully on the Holy Ghost to teach them through the words we speak. An awesome lesson that I am beginning to better understand.

Elder Cummings

Pictures!

1. Crawfish boil with the fam to celebrate me going to Louisiana before Taiwan. Sooooo good!

2. some more zoom shenanigans, our teacher got corona a week and a half and is now fully recovered and joined us again all this this week(a miracle in and of itself) but we showed our love by making sure to wear our masks

3. Weekly view: I went to Down Under this week, a blast!

That solves our trio problem!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for,

It's been a great week! We found 4 people, one of which was a pretty great miracle. We had a referral from somewhere else, and we set up an appointment with them. We went to the appointment, and the original referral was not too interested, but his roommate was really interested! He had read the Book of Mormon and thought it was "accurate." We have another appointment this Wednesday with him. Looking forward to that! The Lord has really been blessing us. We see His hand in our lives almost every day. He is active in out lives.

Otherwise, we have been having lots of fun! I'm not sure if I told you, but one of our investigators gave us about 10 nerf guns with tons of bullets, and we've been having some fun with those. Though I may or may not have accidentally shot Elder Thompson in the eye. Oops. This week Elder some other Elders bet Elder Thompson that he wouldn't but mentos in a coke bottle, and but the bottle in his mouth. Today he did it. It was incredibly entertaining as coke went everywhere, and his cheeks flew out like a chipmunk. It's been fun for sure. The quote is from me. It's an inside joke now, as anytime we make a joke of one of us going home, or getting sick, or accidentally dying, we say that. Trio problems are real!

What do you need to activate a robot from Idaho? A potato chip! Haha! You get it.

Pictures:

1. My companions took my phone and took many pictures

2-3. Beautiful Idaho Sunsets

The Grind Continues to Continue

 (Elder Cummings)

I talked with my brother on how to start these weekly emails, cause it gets kind of hard to have anything truly creative or new during MTC when it's the same thing every week. Let alone home/virtual MTC where "you don't even have the bois".

The days and weeks really are very similar and that's not a bad thing at all. Just full of gospel and language study, on my own, with Elder Liang, and with my stellar district. There's a lot to learn on how to effectively teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, let alone in Mandarin.

Elder Liang and I taught our first Chinese TRC this week! Needless to say, I am once again grateful for Elder Liang and his immaculate skill in Mandarin, he carried me most of the way through the lesson.

You gotta find fun where you can these days. So it's always a blast when our teacher, He Laoshi, shares a google doc with us to create any Chinese sentence using the new grammar principle we're learning that day. I think Elder Welker won "Most Creative" when he came up with “Chúle Chummings zhǎnglǎo yǐwài wǒmen dōu bùshì dinosaurs" which means "Besides Elder Chummings, we are all not dinosaurs" Very nice Wekler, very nice. I think another highlight of the week was when Elder McKellar shaved his head and when I told him he reminded me of a scripture story he knew EXACTLY the one I was thinking about(2 Kings 2:23-24).

My spiritual thought comes from the Bible Dictionary definition of Prayer. Part of it reads, "As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part". I found this a very powerful but simple truth, especially when I have to describe prayer and its purpose in Mandarin. I basically say something along the lines of "God loves us. He wants to communicate with us, His children. Through prayer, we can communicate with our Heavenly Father". Not very eloquent I know, but when you're forced to use limited vocabulary and grammar skills, I've found that there is no way fancy words and sentence structures will distract from the truth I am trying to profess. The truth is that God is our Father. He does want to communicate with us, to help and guide us. When we understand that we truly are children of God, prayer not only becomes more natural, but more powerful. Prayer is an act of faith, and through prayer we can find truth and knowledge and comfort and direction and advice and solace and peace...the list goes on and on. I know this to be true, I know because I've acted in faith in prayer, I've "tested" it and I have been able to see just a glimpse of the blessings it has given me, because the blessings are endless.

再见！說祈禱！

Elder Cummings

How could I forget, the view this morning was amazing! I love the mountains.

I met someone famous!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for,

I'll keep this one short. You know Napoleon Dynamite? I met the old man who shoots the cow in front of the school bus this week. He was driving along the road, and he stopped as we were walking and said hi, and allowed us to take pictures. Definitely the highlight of the week. Also we had a corona scare with one of the people we were teaching. We called him and he was half asleep, and he said he tested positive for Corona. Since his kids are basically tackling us during lessons (they are crazy kids! Those same kids tried to beat me up this week! I have a few bruises from it today) we thought for sure we had Corona, and we would have to be put in quarantine for a few weeks. We did not want that. So, after a few calls to the mission president wife and the person we were teaching's neighbors, we learned he did not have Corona, and he was just tired, in a cranky mood, and didn't want us to come over that day. Oops.

But other than that, it's been regular missionary work of finding teaching and preparing for baptism. We have one kid named Chave who is 13 who is starting to progress. He's one of my favorite people we are teaching right now. It's amazing to see his growth, as it's a testimony to me that the gospel can change us, and help us to become better.

Just so you know, Elder Thompson did finish the 5 pound bag of rice, but only barely. It was quite p'rice'y on my part, as I had to pay 5 dollars but worth it. But you guys have a nice week! (Or should I say "rice" week! Ha)

Pictures:

1-2. I'm basically best buds with a famous person. I really want to watch Napoleon Dynamite though now. I guess I'll have to wait a year and a half though.

The Grind Continues

 (Elder Cummings)

This week both my good friends Elder Vines and Elder Fagergren left me...

Except I have my family and my stellar district to spend time with anyway. For those of you who don't know they're the guys I've been spending my days with as we all are in virtual MTC and in classes. Both of them have now finished MTC, so they left me to myself the second half of the week, all by my lonesome.

So. The Grind continues without them. It must. Cause I really need to learn more Mandarin. Coincidentally, when I don't have two other missionaries in the house with me I'm able to be a lot more productive in my studies. But my schedule remains the same really. I wake up and exercise, and get ready for the day, then I read scriptures for about an hour, and then study Mandarin for about 4 hours until I study scriptures with my awesome companion Elder Liang for about an hour. Then I study again "and by then it's like 7:15, and so I'll read a book, or maybe two or three..." Jokes, jokes. I'm a lot more excited about doing the usual morning lineup than Rapunzel is.

My spiritual thought comes from the Bible Dictionary definition of Faith. But I only know about it because another missionary going to Taiwan shared it in one of her emails (thanks Sister Starley). I thought it was so cool and so powerful. It reads, "The Lord has revealed Himself and His perfect character, possessing in their fullness all the attributes of love, knowledge, justice, mercy, unchangeableness, power, and every other needful thing, so as to enable the mind of man to place confidence in Him without reservation."

This is just absolutely awesome to think about. Faith is the first principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without faith in Him, you cannot find lasting happiness in this life. I know that to be true. It is only because and through our Savior that we can obtain lasting joy and happiness in turbulent times like these days. What's better is that He has done EVERYTHING to help us have faith in Him. We can trust Him because He is perfect and all-knowing. We can come to Him because He is merciful and loving. We can rely on Him because of His power and grace. I know Jesus Christ is my Savior and yours too. I have faith in Him and that faith gives me hope, direction, happiness and a multitude of other blessings in this life. I know that to be true with all my heart, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

再见！

Elder Cummings

Pics:

Despite all the work and studying to be done, I still found some time this week to visit South Korea, amazing experience, highly encouraged, the people are awesome...

On a connecting flight back to the States I ran into my good friends Thomas Rockwood and Elder Fagergren in Tokyo! What a coincidence! We stopped at a local Kobe Steakhouse for some good eats...

We pulled a nice little "prank" on our teacher. However I think my companion, Elder Liang wins. That man is SLURPING.