week #8 Monday, April 29

Hey jiating he pengyou.

It has been a crazy week, it seems everyone needed to get sick at different times. My companion was sick Wed. Our District Leader was sick on Monday. But because my companion was sick, I experienced being in the biggest possible companionship. (4 people) We had three elders and a single sister. Both of her companions were sick so we had to stick together the entire day it was way weird.

Also we got our travel plans!!!!! we head out of the MTC next Tuesday, I leave the MTC at 7:30, our flight is at 11:30, then we have a 3 hour layover in LA. I already bought a phone card. I also got my Chinese name tag. So basically I'm just stoked to go. I'm super excited for all of that.

At the MTC, we really haven't done anything too different.  I've just been teaching lessons, studying, and going to devotionals and stuff. No apostles or anything this week. We did get to see the movie they filmed our class for. It's okay, nothing amazing #likethedistrict. They did switch our schedule around. Because the teachers all just finished the semester at BYU, and the MTC is going to be super crowded, they did some readjustment. I got Monday as my p-day and they switched around a lot of our meal times and study times. It doesn't really matter for us though because we only have a weeks worth of this new schedule anyways. One cool thing that came from it though is Sister Burningham and I have the same service (taking down the devotionals) so I get to talk to her a lot more now.

Another cool thing that happened, do you all know what TRC is? Basically we just teach members who already know Mandarin, who aren't our teachers/progressing investigators. We just teach them one of the lessons, so it's basically just practicing using teaching fundamentals. Well guess who I taught, Burr Laoshi (Mrs. Burr, who was my High School Chinese Teacher). It was crazy and way cool. One, it was weird teaching a high school teacher religion stuff. Second, I could understand a lot of what she said, which is a pretty good sign.

So, one way I've been practicing my listening skills is by listening to the mormon.org video that is in all chinese (there are 3, one is a surfer, she speaks pretty slow, another is a tour guide but you have to go on the chinese language settings to find him, he speaks normal speed but he pronounces things funny and adds a lot of thinking words so it can be hard to understand him, then the last one is Jingyi, she is like in the 3rd row or something, she's a tourist in Taipei, she speaks super super fast, but I've probably listened to that one the most. and I actually understand most of it now. (that's a good sign right). But I'll just listen and then stop every few seconds, re-listen until I understand and can repeat what she is saying.

So basically, I'm a pro(just kidding), but I'm super excited for Taiwan. ummm I think that's everything.

Oh did I tell you Kenny got his call to Denver, Colorado, spanish speaking enters May 29th, I think that's everything....

Love, Elder Brandon Bean