Kenzie+Korea: THE ONE WHEN THEY ALL LOST IT

Hello friends and family!!!

So there's this thing that happens in the MTC where for your first few weeks you try to pretend like you know what you're doing and you act like everything is okay because 'you've got this.' Slowly, however, insanity starts to creep in. You start singing weird songs about anything and everything, you start make weird food combinations and somehow enjoy eating them because the cafeteria food is so dang awful, you are so tired at the end of the day that you start to doze off in weird places, and one day you finally realize that you've lost it. And you're not sure if you ever had it in the first place. And if you ever did it's actually been lost for a long time. That is where the other 자매님들 (sisters) and I have been finding ourselves lately. Last night, we all finally admitted to ourselves that we don't have this, but we will make the best of it. So we sat in our beds after lights out and laughed about I don't even know what and tried to make each other feel better about our crumbling mental state. I really love these sisters and I am so glad I get to lose my sanity with them.

So that's pretty much where I'm at. 1/3 of my MTC journey is finally over, but there so much left to learn. The language is coming along really well. I can pray in 한국말 without even thinking about it and I can conjugate sentences in my head and I am working on memorizing the first vision and learning to share my testimony. I am really blessed and I really love watching my district grow. We are all improving so much. Why? Because we are opening our mouths. I can tell you that putting pride aside and opening your mouth will help you in whatever it is you're doing in life. God qualifies those He calls.

We had a wonderful devotional with Janice Capp Perry last Sunday. She is the songwriter who wrote A Child's Prayer, I Love to See the Temple, As Sisters in Zion, etc. (basically all of my favorite church songs). It was a such a blessing to hear from her. She spoke about the power of hymns and the influence they can have on missionary work. Coincidentally, all of last week I had been studying Korean hymns (찬송가) because I really enjoy reading them and it really helps improve my Korean literacy. I felt so strongly that music would be very important to missionary work in Korea.

Another cool experience from this week...Elder and Sister Christofferson came to speak at the devotional on Tuesday! It was so cool to be able to hear from another apostle! Sister Christofferson spoke very powerfully about loving the people you serve. It was a message I really needed to hear because we got 15 new sisters and one new Elder this week (the poor guy). Being an STL over that many sisters is really stressful, but I can do all things through Christ (Philippians 4:13--go read it. It's my favorite. I just finished memorizing that scripture in 한국말. Just another testimony of the truthfulness of its message)!! Elder Christofferson answered some commonly asked questions asked by missionaries. There is so much that he said that I wish I had time to write, but I will just share my favorite point he made, which was that the scriptures are the textbook for learning the language of love. If you need help loving someone other than yourself, go to the scriptures. They will teach you everything you need to do. When you read the scriptures your capacity to love and your faith grow. Faith leads to action, action leads to miracles. So go read your scriptures and act on what you learn! Now! :)

There's this thing called hosting that missionaries who have been at the MTC for 3+ weeks get to do every Wednesday in order to keep us sane. Basically, we meet the incoming missionaries at the curb, help them with their bags, show them around etc. It was a pretty fun experience, but we had to miss four whole hours of class and study because of it! But it was worth it to serve the new missionaries. I got to host two sisters. The first sister was from Texas and she is serving in the Baltic mission speaking Russian. Obviously, we got along pretty well. I hope her mission is great! I also got to host one of the new sisters in our branch. That was a cool experience.

Overall, nothing really big (other than Elder Christofferson's talk) happened this week. I'm just keeping on keeping on. 1/3 down, 2/3 to go. I hope everything is great at home! Love y'all!

사랑합니다!

"I you love!"

Johns 자매

Had to say bye to my "Seoul sista." Yes, we always make Korea puns. *literally* praying we get to be companions at some point.

We had to say byebye to some of my favorite sisters ever! It was so hard! I will see all of them in Pusan though! (except for Sister Orangan-in the middle-she is going to Daejeon)

All of the sisters together for one last time

On Wednesdays, we wear polkadots

I love my cute companion!

Silly tender mercy: There's this thing at the MTC called TRC where you teach real people (members, recent converts, less actives, investigators, etc) once a week in your mission language. It was our first week and I was SO nervous! My Korean is awful! Well, after Sister Cooper and I finished praying, Sister Markus ran over and told us that she found a cool annotated Russian hymn book in her TRC room and she wanted me to have it! It was like manna from heaven. Not only did it remind me that God is aware of us--even in small, insignificant ways and that he was kind of just saying "hey Sister Johns, I'm looking out for you"--but it was also such a cool find. I love learning hymns in other languages, so I can't wait to use this thing when I get home and learn Russian!