7/12/13 Limping along in the MTC

Hey, everyone how's it going in cool old Phoenix where the temperature is nice and it's time to go outside and melt your skin off, just a little glad to be out of that weather,   I'm ready to be out of the MTC, The language is coming along and it's getting a lot better and it's to the point where the grammar of the language that we're going to know before we leave the MTC has been pretty much taught by our teacher and now it's more or less getting in the habit of using certain grammar and then memorizing the cases and then more words. The cases are a pain, and it's kind of a running joke in the class that every noun, and/or verb is irregularly conjugated/cased because any thing that we ask about is irregular and every time we use a principle and we use the usual conjugating and casing is always different haha. But I'm learning it.  It's not an extremely hard language to learn and speak and all that, just hard to perfect the intricacies of the language which will never be perfected by the time I leave Slovakia, because my teachers who have been speaking it for 2 years after don't consider themselves masters of the language. It's funny because they tell us that the people will always try to help you with your language but they contradict each other a lot so someone will tell you to say it one way, and then you use it that way the next day and then someone else will tell you wither the way you were using it, or a different way haha. I'm kind of winding down here at the MTC, tired a lot of the time like per usual, It's super repetitious and gets a little tedious at times, not necessarily always that way but there's some aspects that I could do without. The food is definitely blah, but I still eat it, may not enjoy it, but it's there, it's really not that bad.  Some think the food is getting better, even though it's the same thing every week, sometimes. I really want Cafe Rio from the Airport, and if we fly through Chicago, better believe that I'm gonna go to Manchu Wok before we leave there haha.

My ankle is doing okay, I've been off crutches since Monday, there are some times during the day where it hurts pretty bad and I have to prop it up, it's not like intense pain but just constant thudding pain. Although the first day I didn't use them, my ankle hurt so bad it was crazy how much it hurt, I had to take another pill, which I'm off of now. I don't really have much to talk about today except that with my ankle like this I don't do much else except for sleep, eat, study, eat, study, eat, sleep. No more gym, so I just sit there and watch people do stuff in the gym, it defintly got more lame as I couldn't do Gym, which is kind of a relieving time in the day where you can just do whatever you want and not worry about having to learn the language or study doctrines and stuff like that.

When I broke it, I missed all of a half hour of class for it, and that's all that I've missed because of it, so I haven't fallen behind. Now that we're the oldest group in the zone, I'm pretty safe in saying that I'm one of the best speakers in the zone in their respective language, . As well as, our class always goes the longest and starts the earliest because we don't have a problem with learning.  We got matched up to teach the Czech elders like we are fake investigators which is really cool, because it's just us and them and we teach a lesson for 20 minutes and we plan everything on our own so it's fun yet also very helpful to be able to talk to them afterwards and learn what we can improve on. The Elder that I'm paired up with is the best in the Czech class, and it's really cool to be able to understand each other and all that. But, me and one of my companions actually speak our language outside of class which is kind of a bummer because we can't speak to the Czech elders and have them understand us at all, so we're just 2 lonely elders only talking to each other because no one understands us ever haha, not really even our other companion. But we keep trudging along with it, we've started reading a new language book that we don't use during class and it's really helpful on letting us know the kinds of verbs that are common over there and we're hoping to finish the book before we go over there. Theres not much change in anything that i've been doing with my classes except me being excited to go over there, I think I'll be okay over there, I can understand what my teacher is saying probably about 90% of the time now, sometimes our of context but mostly out of understanding the language which is pretty cool that we can understand what they're saying regardless of if we know all the intricacies of the language and even sometimes how to sya the exact same thing as them. The language is truly not a hard language to me and I haven't stressed about it all that much while I've been here, it's sometimes hard for me to relate to some of the other missionaries because they constantly stress about the language, They often tell me that their languages are a challenge for them to create sentences and phrases but if you try to immerse yourself in the language, like start talking and thinking in the language as much as possible, learning the language is not as hard as one would think, that's what I personally believe.

I get some Emails from people every, mainly them being Krystin and Connor, and then I got one from Brian today, and he told me that he heard about my foot and that he has been listening to some Slovak talks and he can understand them for the most part and that it'll be cool because we'll be all about Central Europe haha. In the zone the Polish are right next to us so we hear them speaking it a lot and it's a lot of whistling.  He's told us that to him and to Polish people, the Slovak's sound like babies because to them it sounds similar but that we don't elongate the letters enough and it sounds like we're talking but not completing the word in Polish so that's pretty interesting.

 Connor wrote me and has told me all about how much he loves to tract in Humid Chicago, and how he has so much help from the English missionaries that their referrals always lead to some investigators haha, except the opposite of everything I just said.

Soon, like Monday/Tuesday, I will be the only one that I know in the MTC, and I'll have to suffer with it for about 2 weeks. Although, exciting, we should be getting our travel plans in a week from today, before I'll leave I'm gonna have to send you my boot in a package haha, theres no way that's gonna come with me to Slovakia. I'm ready to see our travel plans because then we know for sure that we're going to go to Slovakia and we know when and the route that we'll be taking. The Bulgarians that left this week were supposed to leave on Tuesday, so they get up, get on the bus and then someone calls their name and they yell present like to show that they're there haha. Then they tell them the flight to London was canceled and they aren't leaving until at least the next day. So they had to stay a whole other day, and then ahd to wake up at 3:30 the next morning to leave, it was sad to see them go but humorous with the way that they went. The Branch president said that's the first time in the 4 years that they've ever canceled a flight before in his Zone so that was funny. Also which is really funny is that when we leave the Croatians that came in with us will also leave and there's 50 missionaries in the zone and us and the croatians total 25, so when we go the zone will only be 25 missionaries big haha, but only for about 2 and a half days because like 30 more come in that week on Wednesday. Interestingly, there are supposed to be 6 Slovak and 6 Czech missionaries coming in next cycle, so our 2 teachers will have to double their efforts and their workload.

Well I got a lot of letters this week from everybody and I want to thank you so much for them they really help a lot and they are super fun to read and gives me something to do at night besides hobble around. They help keep me sane to a noticable amount I really thank you a lot for them. Well, my laundry is almost done so I must get off now, sorry for a shorter letter this week, I was kind of restricted on the time as well as being able to write an email that would actually be worth something because the content is kind of lame. I just don't do a lot of new things anymore, but I'm sure once we arrive in Slovakia I'll have a slew of things to write about and my Emails will become much better and much easier to read because I personally think this one was rather boring compared to some of the other letters that I've sent, so I hope you enjoy this and I love you all very much and I miss you just as much too, my time here will be short, but at the same time I know that I am loved and missed immensely and I want to thank you for that I love you all!

Love,
Elder Ferrell