Week 3

I gotta say, even though having a father and two brothers serve a mission, I had no clue what the MTC has in store for missionaries. From feeling like you are on top of the world all the way to feeling like you can’t read another verse out of the scriptures or you will just collapse due to exhaustion.(Not that the scriptures are boring or anything) Everyone in my district is always on the brink of falling asleep during devotionals, classes, and meetings. Part of that reason is because every spare moment of free time we have goes to studying Cebuano. And at 10:30pm we crash HARD. 

It’s so funny, the other day our district had a quick testimony meeting with another district in our zone. The missionaries in that district are all going to the Philippines and learning Cebuano as well. But while I was in there, I realized that God gave perfect revelation to whoever picked which missionaries go into these districts. It’s like everyone in their district grew up together as best fiends, and everyone in my district grew up as best friends together. Before the meeting started we were talking about NBA free agency(probably not the most holy thing to be talking about) but not a single person in the other district knew what we were talking about. Then one of them talked about something that went straight over my head, along with all the others elders in my district, and they started chiming in while my district just sat their silent. It was very strange but funny.

Saturday: Today was an actually an awesome day. All of our classes were in the morning and early afternoon so when our last class ended we had dinner and then the rest of the night to hang out, study, and exercise. It was fantastic.

Sunday: Sunday’s are always so long. Since we don’t have any language classes and the MTC wants to make sure we stay busy, we have these random classes where members of our branch presidency will just talk about random stuff. Like today we talked about dispensations. They aren’t bad lessons or anything but we just sit for like 5 straight hours and it feels like FOREVER!!

Monday: Today was stressful. On either the third or fourth day here our language teachers gave us this pamphlet of Cebuano Basic Core. It has 50 phrases and like 300 vocab words. They challenged us to have the whole thing memorized in 10 days. And today was day 10, from the day we got challenge. No one got the whole thing memorized and our teachers said probably less than 2% do. So we weren’t beating ourselves up to bad. But each teacher pulled one of us away and tested us on all the phrases, I think two elders got all the phrases memorized(but they took pre MTC) I got 45 memorized of the 50 so I was pretty proud of myself. *And I almost have the first vision memorized fully in Cebuano

Tuesday: Tuesdays are awesome because we only have one language class. In the evening we have a devotional and devotional review. Today Elder Walker of the seventy spoke to us how we can become better missionaries. And today I finally got the whole first vision memorized in Cebuano.

Wednesday: Finally after a week and a half of the gym being closed due to floor renovations, it opened back up. Elder Young and I played volleyball and ahhhhhh did it remind me of back home playing sand volleyball. It was so much fun because most of the people playing actually knew how to play so the rallies were long and fun. It was so much fun. Today was our 3rd time teaching someone In Cebuano. the first time we could use SYL (Speak English but say the words you know in Cebuano) Our second lesson was full Cebuano but only like 5-10min long. This one was 20min long and 100% in Cebuano. It was so difficult but the teacher we were teaching said we had one of the best lessons of the day just because of how simple it was. Some people tried to teach about the atonement or the plan of salvation and we just taught that God is our loving Heavenly Father.

Thursday: For exercise time we played volleyball again. Today we had our first TRC (Teaching Resource Center). So my companion and I had TWO 20 minute lessons with a ten minute break in between. It was LISOD KAAYO(Very difficult). Luckily all the people we teach are members, and thankfully the only people who live in Utah and speak Cebuano are RM’s hahaha. The first lesson was this lady who had actually taught the language to my language teachers. She was super nice and she spoke slowly so we could actually understand. Or whole lesson was like 17min which was really good. However, our second lesson was a bit rougher. The dude was a native from Cebu and did he speak paspas(fast)!!! This lesson was only like 13min and the whole time I had no clue what he was saying... it was rough. But the whole experience was actually super helpful and fun.

Today: The temple here is closed until August 12, right before I leave for the Philippines. So unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the Temple at all while I’m here but we have service their today. So we just helped clean and do yard work for almost 4 hours.

During our district devotional review the other day, Brother Wilson, first counselor in our branch, mentioned a quote. I can’t remember the exact thing he said but it was something like, “Of all the words of sad and pain, the worst of all is ‘it might have been’”. He was just talking about how some missionaries come back from their mission either having sad/bitter feelings toward their mission because of how little effort they put into their mission. He was just encouraging us to work our hardest and do our best each and every day. But that quote really stuck out to me because I feel like that can apply to anything. Being out here these these two weeks I’ve learned that if you are gonna commit to something, always try your best and see the good in it. 

I’m loving my time here and my whole life has changed from just these past 16 days. I know I made the right decision coming out here and I know that this experience will stick me throughout my whole life. 

Love, Elder Kasden Grasse

Elders Fleischel, Grasse, Young, and Winters

After we did 4 hours of service at the Provo temple