Letters From The Field – Elder Tanner Bennett’s Mission Blog – Week 1

This week has been absolutely AMAZING!!! I seriously am loving the MTC! lemme give you a quick breakdown of my week.

Wednesday: I got dropped off after a good long cry and final meal at Brick oven pizza, I was met by a nice elder from Italy named Elder Puff, he is going to Poland. He was very nice, showed me to my dorm and to my classroom. There, I met my district! My companion, Elder Lang, is awesome!! We get along super well (even though he is taller than me), he’s super smart and really funny. The rest of my district I’ll break down like this.

Elder Stayner: Handsome Elder, he’s basically a CK model who’s great grandfather was Wilford Woodruff and our district leader.

Elder Leung: The super skinny brown kid from Hong Kong, he doesn’t speak a lot of English, but when he does, it’s usually something hilarious.

Elder Gessler: The elder from Switzerland-thank-you-very-much. He just got out of the Swiss military and is really funny, he speaks really good English, French, German, Italian and now he’s learning Mandarin! Super smart guy.

Elder Muhlstein… I probably butchered that, but that’s what he gets for being born with that name. He is super nice, from Las Vegas and is beginning to pick up some really good zhongwen.

Elder Lang, and Myself and then Two Jiamei or, sisters

Sister Elison from Lehi is super sweet and was actually in China IN ZHONGSHAN the same time I was, we talked for a bit and she has really good Mandarin too.

Sister Kamakaojone (just say sister K) is from Thailand and the only member of the church in her family, at great expense. She has an incredible spirit and an unbelievable command of the English and Mandarin Languages. We got to go through the temple with her for the first time today and she shared a really amazing testimony.

Alright!

Thursday was awesome, we had class, felt like we were getting fire hosed with the language and found out we get to teach an investigator… like Friday… with 2 days of the language, AHHH!!! We prepared like nothing else, got our literal 20 lbs of study materials and off we went!

Friday was our first meeting with the investigator, he’s super cool and we did really… horribly. I felt like I didn’t know a lick of Mandarin, but as the spirit began to fill the room, the language came back okay and we got a commitment for him to pray! Friday was hard and my companion and I were SUPER burned out after the whole ordeal. AND IT RAINED

Saturday morning was our SECOND meeting with our investigator. Finally, we were able to command some more of the language and understood him more! He is super nice and really patient as we flipped out trying to figure out what on earth we were going to say to him, but in the end we were able to bear our TESTIMONIES IN CHINESE and had an amazing experience. AND IT RAINED SOME MORE.

Sunday. Sunday at the MTC was CRAZY. First, we are supposed to write 4 talks a week on various topics in mandarin and be prepared to share them. I finally had the opportunity to get my fingers on some piano keys and just was able to recharge my spiritual batteries through music. I pretty much understood everything that was said, and it was really different getting to pray in Mandarin. Oh yeah, I pray in mandarin now, and it’s kinda crazy how fast the language is coming. THE GIFT OF TONGUES IS REAL PEOPLE. It’s been absolutely wonderful.

Now, on Sundays we also have the opportunity to attend a devotional and go to the MTC choir. I went to the choir, and afterwards the devotional was amazing. It was a performance of The Lamb of God, and I cried through the whole thing. The spirit was just unbelievable there, as it is everywhere in the MTC. After that, we watched a talk that I hope you all get to watch called “The Character of Christ” by elder Bednar. To sum it up, be better, study Christ, and turn OUTWARD when you want to turn in.

Alright, I have to go do laundry, but I’ll send you another email as soon as I can!

Love y’all!

Elder Tanner S Bennett