1/09/2014 - Who are you? What have you done with my son?

Not gonna lie... This one made me cry.  So incredibly proud to be his mom.

Dear Family and Friends,

These past 5 weeks have been some of the most amazing of my entire life. 

Nothing really crazy has happened over the last week or so but it's just been super awesome. I once heard that while in the MTC the church wanted to have everything be consistent for the missionaries. Well that really hasn't been my experience. For about the first week and a half we had a really amazing teacher whom everybody in my district loved. Well it was the holiday season so he said that he was going to be out of town for about 9 days then he would be back. No big deal right? WRONG! We found out a few days later that he was not going to be coming back to work at the MTC at all. This made everybody in my district really sad. So the next 2 or so weeks we had a lot of substitute teachers that we really liked but could never really connect with because we only had them for a little bit. Just this past week we had our entire schedule changed. Before we had study time in the mourning and then our classes in the afternoon and evening. Now we have our classes in the mourning and afternoon and our study time at night. We were getting really good with our old schedule and then they decided to flip everything around and mess all of us up. I guess the entire MTC schedule is based off of the teachers school schedule and the change in semesters really messed it all up. 

We have had really only one consistent in our lives. His name is Brother Campbell. When we first got here he was the investigator that we practiced teaching and planning for. After a week and a half or so he became one of our teachers and he is the only one that has stuck with us for the entire way. He is such an amazing teacher and example to all of us. We have teachers that will have talk to us in English just about random things and stuff that like, but Brother Campbell has never spoken a whole sentence of English to us in our 5 weeks being here. In class he is 100% focused and corrects bad behavior in the best way possible. We can have normal conversations with him, but it's all in Korean and he helps us become better with the language all of the time. 

If you know me well then you know that I really love to sleep... A Lot! So this story may come as quite a shock to you. So for the first month of my stay here I was really tired all the time. We would have an hour of personal study time in class and I would take a 20 minute nap for that time. Well I realized that that is not the kind of missionary I want to be. So for my new year's goal I decided that I would never sleep and concentrate really hard on studying and never sleep when I shouldn't. I have kept this goal so far and I'm really feeling the power of the spirit help me stay awake and focus on what I need to do. I've come so far with the language and with the gospel just from the new year because i done this. I still get tired but when I do I just start to work harder or focus on why I'm on a mission and it helps me to stay awake and gives me energy to do what I need to do. A little while back our district talked about why we are here. I've realized that I'm not out here for myself. Everything we do here is to help the people come to the knowledge of the gospel. This is a time to be selfless in all that we do. I know that now and when I'm tired or if I don't want to focus or study the language I think about that. I think about that, think of something I need to do, and do it. The Lord will help us focus if we just put forth as much effort as we can. 

I've started to love reading the Book of Mormon. Holy cow it's like the most amazing book in the whole world and it's so fun to read. There is so much to learn from it and it's just a really good story. My personal study time is one of my favorite parts of the day now because I can just read and study the Book of Mormon for an hour. So Good! Also, my journal is like my best friend now. I basically take it everywhere I go. It's just really nice to be able to write down thoughts and insights you're having. 

Korean is still way hard and it's really frustrating sometimes, but we have learned a lot. Korean is a strange language. There is like different forms that you have to talk in when you are talking to certain people. There's High form, middle form, low form and then like low low form. It's super confusing but I don't see why, with some really hard work, I couldn't get it. 

Well my group is about to be the oldest group and we have a lot of new Korean speakers coming in next week. It will be super great to be the elders that know what's going on and the elders that are super good at the language even though we are terrible at it. 

Only a few more weeks until I'm going to be in Korea. It's going to be the greatest time of my life. When it's hard here I just think that i'm going to be in Korea in like 23 days and i feel better. 

This is the so great and I know it's the work of the Lord and if you trust in him he will help you. The church is true and I love being on a mission. 

I miss everybody and I love you all. 

love, 

Elder Daniel John Meeks