Zhongwen shi hen nan! (Chinese is very hard!)

Nimen hao!

So this week has been full of spiritual experiences.

Monday was a normal P-day. That's about it.

Tuesday I got a package of cookies from somebody. I don't know who because if you order cookies it doesn't say who it's from. I thought it was my family, but they just sent me some on Friday, so unless they ordered two? If it's any of you, I'd love to know. And thanks, they were good!
I also meet somebody named Elder Huang. He's fluent in Chinese and English and learning French here at the MTC. Oh, and he lives in my mission and I'll most likely be serving in his branch!!!! It was so nice to get to talk to him about my mission, specifically the Chinese part. Plus I could speak Chinese to him pretty decently so that was nice. He was telling me about all the Chinese missionaries that are there (about 12) and they are all waiting for me and my companion to get up there. SO Sweet! Just gets me pumped to go.

The speaker Tuesday night was Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge from the 70. His wife said something that was really cool: "Stay in the light, and hold on tight." I thought it was really neat to think about. He also said to ensure that your missionary purpose IS your purpose. I really liked that.

Wednesday was probably the best day here so far. There were just so many tender mercies from the Lord. So I lost my CTR ring last week in the Gym and had been checking back for a few days but didn't find it. Then I just felt like I should check again and it was in the lost and found! Then I hosted again it just happened to work out that I got there right as Elder (Brandon) Atkin did so I got to be his host missionary for his first moments at the MTC. And (another tender mercy) His key didn't work so we got to go to the front desk and just have more time to hang out together while we waited. And he brought me a package from my family so that was sweet! Then we taught our investigator Zhang DiXiong "Tony" about the Restoration and I think it was the best lesson I have taught so far. Chinese is so hard, but it's definitely getting easier.

Thursday had a very spiritual lesson. We were teaching Bi Jiemei again, and as we were teaching her about the plan of salvation I felt prompted to share my story about Jordan Smith. One of my good friends from high school who took his own life back in February. Afterwards she opened up and told us about how her mom is sick and dying and we were able to relate both experiences back to God's plan for us. Then I told her we love her and that's why we are teaching her all this, because we know it's true and we want it to help her because we love her. And then she said she would be baptized. I realize it's not a real investigator, but our teacher's put on the role of somebody they taught on their mission, so if I met them in the real world they would react the same way. So it was still an amazing feeling. 

Nothing really happened Friday...

Saturday we did our last in person TRC, and then tonight we do our first Skype TRC. It'll be interesting because these people might not even speak English. I'm excited.

Sunday was super awesome. The AC was broken in our chapel so it was VERY hot in there. I feel bad for those going to Taiwan where that might happen a lot. Canada sounds pretty nice now! The speaker for the devotional was Brother Charles W. Dahlqurst II who was just from President Burgess's (the MTC president's) home ward. But it was probably the best talk I have heard in my life. It was better than Character of Christ from Elder Bednar and that was SO good. He just said everything that I need to hear. It was definitely inspired. One of the many things he said that I loved was "Service isn't a project, it's a way of life." It just makes me want to be a better missionary. Then the movie we ended up watching was Missions are Forever by Elder Holland. He's always a great speaker and said some amazing things.

That's about it for now! Our Chinese name tags are almost definitely coming this week, and we are so stoked. Then next Thursday or Friday we get our flight plans and then we are gone. I leave 3 weeks from Wednesday and I'm so excited. I can't wait to get in the field. I love you all and love to hear from you. If you feel like it, letters and email are the best!

Wo ai nimen!

王長老

Elder Wallace

​got a letter from my favorite girl!

​Finished my first planner here, now to start the one I'm taking to the field!

​(sorry it's a crappy picture) Elder Hoskins playing the Ukulele and singing for basically our whole building. He has an insane voice! He got accepted to Julliard if that means anything to anyone.

HUMP-DAY!!!!

Wo de pengyoumen,

Nimen Hao!

As you can tell from the title, my hump-day was on saturday. Now i'm over halfway done with my sentence here at the MTC. Only 4 1/2 more weeks in the state pen!

Not a ton happened this week! It feels like last P-day was yesterday, the weeks just fly by here. (although not fast enough, because you know, I'm still here a month later)

But yeah! I made it to my month mark, less than 23 more months until I come home. That doesn't seem long enough. 2 years isn't enough!

I got to say goodbye to Elder (Zane) Freeman on Monday. It doesn't seem fair to see all my friends come and go  in the MTC. Elder Atkin will get here this week, leave and then I'll still have 2 weeks left! On the bright side, Our father district leaves today and tomorrow, which officially makes us the oldest Chinese district here. I really love those guys, and have gotten close, so I'm gonna be sad when they leave. Wo bu zhidao rugo wo de zhongwen shi hao. (I don't know if my Chinese is good enough to be the example) But I'm excited to be getting out of here in the upcoming future. We should get our new name tags this week or next week that have our Chinese names on them, so that's exciting. Then flight plans come soon after that, and then were in Canada!

Nothing really interesting Tuesday. The speaker was Elder Larry J. Echo Hawk from the 70. He was "native american" (even though he looked pretty white) and apparently used to be the white house's native american correspondent or something like that. He's met with President Obama before and stuff, so it was kind of cool.

Wednesday was the bomb. We got to be "Host Missionaries" basically as missionaries get dropped off at the MTC, we take their bags, go take them to get their name tags, take them to their residence halls, and then to their classrooms. There is a lot of running around and it's been kind of hot here in Provo so I was exhausted by the end of the day. It's really humid here compared to home, but it's only like 30% humidity so everyone thinks I'm crazy when I say it's really humid here, but I'm actually dying. I saw Sister (Kaylie) Minson and Elder (Cole) Fleming who reported on Wednesday. And on the plus side, I leave before Elder Fleming because he's here for 6 weeks!! You don't know how painful it was to host English speaking missionaries because they all leave next week. They only have the language missionaries host because we are here for so long, so I'll probably do it again in the upcoming weeks at least once.

We taught a "less active" member (played by our teacher as usual). It was pretty difficult actually. Progressing Investigators who keep their commitments, read The Book of Mormon and pray, are a lot easier to teach than someone who thinks they don't need the church. It was kind of rough, but we go to see her again on Wednesday, and I'm pretty excited. We should teach our investigator Bi Jie Mie today, and she is getting close to baptism, so that's really exciting.

Nothing happened really on Thursday or Friday.

Our teacher, Ang Lao Shi got married on Friday. He's only been home for 3 months so that's crazy! He'll be gone this week, so we have a bunch of subs. But all of their districts left for their missions, so there are a bunch of teachers with nobody to teach for a while, until we get new missionaries in our branch.

Saturday I didn't get to go do TRC because Elder Claflin was throwing up the night before. It sucked, because I really wanted to do that so I could attempt to put my Chinese to good use.

Sunday was pretty relaxing. The Elder who spoke on Sunday in our branch was trying to say "I love faith" (Wo ai xi wang) but instead said "Wo ai si wang" which is "I Love Death". It was funny, but just reminds me of how difficult Chinese really is! Elder Allan from the 70 spoke again for the devotional. He's good, but his talk is the same every week. He just makes everyone feel bad, and think that they are unworthy to be here. It's kind of funny actually. To get an idea of what his talks are like: the first time he talked, I was convinced I had a law of chastity problem, but I've never even kissed a girl! He's just a special kind of speaker. The movie we watched was by Elder Lund, and it was a talk about how to recognize and teach by the spirit. It was really good. One of the things I really liked that he said was that "We are all enlisted until the conflict is over. The conflict is NOT over, so we all still need to work hard."

That's about it for now. I can't wait until I'm out of here. Hope everyone is doing well!

Wo ai nimen

Wang Zhang Lao

Elder Wallace

 

His District and President and Sister Gilbert

Host Missionary- who wouldn’t want to be greeted  by that face

Elder Claflin and Elder Evans

Elder Graves top and Elder Wilkinson bottom His favorite elders from his “father” district

And one last one, this was his caption:

Samuel Smith (the first missionary) and Elder Wallace (the best and most humble missionary)

I’ll I can say, you gotta love him!!!

Week 4? Yeah, 4. It feels like week 100

Wo de pengyou,

Nimen Hao! How is everyone doing?

So not a lot happened for most of this week. So this might not have a ton of details.

Tuesday night devotional was given by C. Scott Grow (no, even I couldn't make up that name) of the 70. He was a little weird, but still a good speaker. Then we had choir practice for Nashville Tribute Band which was on Sunday and was amazing!

Wednesday was pretty sweet. We went in to teach a lesson to our investigator (which we do everyday now by the way). So we had a lesson prepared, but when we got in there, she asked a question, and we went off an taught a completely different lesson that we didn't prepare at all! IN CHINESE!!!! It was insane! It was a great lesson, I used Alma 32 to compare Faith to a seed. The spirit is amazing to tell us what we need to teach. Also Elder (Spencer) King came in. It was sweet to see my friend from EFY back in June.

Thursday the same thing happened with our second investigator. We had a lesson prepared, but then taught something completely different. Plus I got a letter from my main home-skillet Elder Carroll, which made my day

Friday was a good day. Great lesson, not much else.

Our TRC on Saturday was pretty sweet too. It was pretty much impossible to understand them though, they speak so fast! I can basically understand everything in our classes, because they talk slow, but once we teach real people, it's really hard. One of the guys we taught actually was my companion's brother's companion. (if that makes any sense)

Sunday was sweet. The Nashville Tribute Band was so cool. They sang 9 songs, and the choir sang with them for 2 of them. The songs they sang (not really sure if all of these are the right titles but....) Send them 2 by 2, A song about the First Vision, Candle Burning Bright, Prophet in a Place called Kirtland, How Much Can One Heart Take, Brother I'll Follow You, and Stronger. Then we sang with them for I Was Born, and John's Song. John's song was super upbeat and there were drums and guitars and it was really weird hearing that stuff again, but It was SO much fun.

Finally they sang the song The Hardest Thing I've Ever Loved to Do. If you have friends or family that are missionaries and you want to cry, that's the song you listen to. Hearing it was the first time I've cried my whole mission (that includes being dropped off at the airport, sorry Mom, I still love you guys though). It's a great song.

I just got a haircut in the middle of writing this, and I think it was the scariest thing I've ever been through. They just shave off your hair with no regard for human life, or whiplash. But it looks good now, so I guess it was worth it :)

I guess that's about it for now. Hopefully this week will bring me a little more things that I can write about. But most likely not because nothing every happens here.

4 weeks down! Only 5 1/2 more weeks to go!

*cries internally*

Wo ai nimen,

Wang Zhanglao

Elder Wallace and Elder Freeman a friend from home

Elder King a friend from EFY this year

Selfie- His companion was feeling sick so they were missing class

Week 3

Wo de jiating,

This wednesday will be week 3 at the MTC. I can't believe how slow and fast this time has been, it doesn't even make sense.

Honestly, my letters from the MTC are gonna be pretty boring for a while, because we do the SAME SCHEDULE EVERY DAY!!!!! AHHHHHHH

But it's all good, I love it here, it's just very repetitive and the days blend together.

Monday, it was rainy and a standard P-day...

yeah...

Tuesday was really awesome. We are now teaching both of our teachers as "investigators" everyday of the week. It's really hard to put together Chinese lessons everyday in the 2 hours or so of study time you would have to prepare. But somehow we're managing. If it wasn't for God's help, there is now way I could ever be doing the things that I am.
Tuesday night was the best. President Russel M Nelson, new president of The Quorum of the 12 Apostles came and spoke to us. It was insanely cool. He is such a spiritual man, and it was awesome to hear his message, and special witness about Jesus Christ. Something really interesting he said is: the main, overarching, reason why the Brethren decided to change the missionary age (which is the reason why I'm writing this email today) is so all of the youth could have a chance to serve if they wanted to. I thought that was really cool.

Wednesday I became a father. Now before you freak out, it's slang that us language speakers use here at the MTC, because we are here long enough to need to come up with stuff like that to keep us entertained! Basically it means, that new Chinese speakers came into our branch and we were no longer the baby district, but now the father district. Our branch is super close. I love my father district, but my grandfather district is super cool, and a lot of them left today which was kind of sad. I mean, it was awesome because they are out in the field now, which is where I'm dying to be, but they did become our brothers and sisters and it's sad to see them go.

Because we ran out of time on Wednesday (due to no fault of our own) we had to teach 2 Chinese lessons to our mudaoyou's (investigators) on Thursday. It went really well. Not much else happened on Thursday because nothing ever happens here.

Friday was standard. Taught more lessons, had 6 hours of classes. Basically like every day here.

Saturday may have been the best day of my mission so far. We SYL'd the whole day, (which means we Spoke Our Language the whole day) and it went really well. I had to Ching-lish it (Chinese mixed with a little English) a little but I did much better than I thought I would. Honestly, my Chinese was the best it had ever been. We also did a TRC in the morning. TRC stands for Teaching Resource Center and basically, return missionaries come and volunteer and we teach them like a home teaching lesson in our language. And then afterwards they grade us on how we did. We did decent, but I'm sure next week it will be even better.

Sundays in the MTC are very long. It's the only day of the week we don't have classes, and so it's filled with lots of personal study time. Which is fine, but it's over 5 hours worth of time to sit there and read the scriptures. We don't practice Chinese on Sunday because I would kill myself if I didn't get one day of a break.
Our choir practice for Sunday was THE BOMB-DIGGITY!!!! We got to practice one of the two songs we are singing with the Nashville Tribute Band next week. It's very different than anything we've heard in a long time. Even though it is a spiritual song, (called John's Song, about John the Baptist) it's pretty folky and upbeat, so it's weird to be singing that after only hearing hymns for a month. This is the first time in MTC history that anything like this has ever been allowed to happen so it's awesome to get to be apart of history. It'll be so solid to get to say "when I was 18 I sang backup for the Nashville Tribute Band!" You should definitely look that song up, and get a taste of what it would sound like when the choir is made up of over 1,000 missionaries.

I found a really cool scripture yesterday, and I wish I would have found it before I made my mission plaque, but oh well, it's still super cool. 

It's in 3rd Nephi 5:13 and says:

"Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life." If that's not the definition of a missionary, I don't know what is.

So that's about it. I love you all, and I'm so happy to be here. I have a strong feeling my letter next week will be even shorter because we do the same thing every week.

Wo ai nimen,

Wang Zhanglao

Elder Wallace

 

Elder Wallace and Calflin and his 10 pounds of study materials

scripture case he made and trying to convince teacher to get them so Chick-Fil-A

More and more Chinese!

Nimen hao wo de peng you (Hello my friends)

So to start, I don't have a ton of times on P-day to email so if you want to write me, I'll still try and email back, but the best option is to use DearElder.com or to send a letter to my MTC address. DearElder delievers everyday and I can write back any day of the week

My address is:

Elder Brandon Wallace

SEP23 CAN-VAN

2007 N 900 E Unit 52 

Provo UT 84602

So after P-day last Monday, we taught another lesson, but we didn't prepare, because we didn't know we were teaching on Monday. So we hurried and prayed really hard and we were so blessed with probably the best lesson we ever taught. The spirit was so strong and we could understand probably 60% of what was being said, which is enough to guess and hopefully answer the question they are asking you. It's still really hard with Chinese, but we are doing better for sure. 

By Tuesday the days started to fly by, they honestly kind of just run together at the MTC. It's hard to remember all the stuff that happened because we have the same schedule and the same classes for almost everyday. Tuesday we got to sing in the choir for the Tuesday night devotional and the choir director said next week (tomorrow the 4th) the devotional will be broadcast to every MTC in the world. That means that one of the 12 will most likely be there and everyone here is super excited. Rumor has it that it's going to be Ucthdorf, Holland or Bednar and that sounds so awesome. I'll be in the choir again so if you know anyone in the other MTC's around the world, they might see me XD

The new missionaries came in on Wednesday and it was nice to not be the babies anymore. We still are the baby Chinese district, but we are getting more Chinese speakers this Wednesday so we won't be on the bottom anymore! Wednesday was also my one week mark, even though it feels like I've been in the MTC for half a year!!

One of the Elders in our district went home on Thursday. They didn't tell us anything, other than that he can come back in 6 months.There are now 11 people in my district, 3 are sisters, and 8 are Elders. So they split up our tri-panionship. Now Elder Claflin is my companion, and it's just the two of us. We haven't taught a lesson since the split so it'll be interesting to see how it changes the way we teach. Also on Thursday, as we were teaching our "investigator" we were able to commit him to baptism which was so awesome! Even though it's not real, and he isn't actually investigating the church, it was a super good feeling to get to ask someone to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the proper authority and have them say "Yes!". Except I said it in Chinese, so I don't know actually what I said, or if I said it right.

Speaking of mispronunciation, in Chinese, there are tones on the words and depending on the pitch you say the word, saying it in a different pitch could mean something different. So while I was teaching our investigator about Christ's ministry on the earth, I said the word Apostles wrong. So instead of saying that "Jesus called and ordained 12 apostles", I said "Jesus called and ordained 12 rocks". Just one of the many joys that Chinese has to offer.

Our "investigator" became our 2nd teacher on Friday and it was a little awkward, but he is super cool. His name is Brother Anderson (Ang lao shi), and he went to Australia on his mission and has only been back 2 months and is already getting married! Life goals, let me tell you. That means that he was still on his mission when I got my mission call. I guess our "investigators" that we teach our just our teachers, and we are teaching our other teacher, Sister Ochoa (Ou yang lao shi) on Tuesday. 

Sunday was Fast Sunday, and since they force you to fast, We were all really hungry by dinner. But it was super spiritual and l'm glad that we fasted. During our testimony meeting in our branch, all of the older districts bore their testimonies (in Chinese, because that's all we ever do :/ ) and it was so awesome because I could understand most of what was being said. Our Sunday night devotional speaker was Sister Sheri Dew! It was super cool, and she is an amazing, pretty famous church speaker. Afterwards, the film we watched (you get to watch one of like 7 films Sunday night) was "Becoming a Missionary" by Elder Bednar, from another talk he gave at the MTC about 10 years ago. It was really good, and gave me new motivation.

We went to the temple this morning, and it's been pouring rain in Provo all day. Most of the MTC campus is a little flooded, it's awesome because it never rains in Arizona, so I love it!

The spirit is super strong here, and the language is definitely catching on. As much as I am dying to go out to Canada, I am actually excited to stay here and learn the language, and I'm ok staying for a little while longer.

I'm sure there are tons of things that I forgot to add or say, so I apologize, I might be able to respond today if you reply fast enough but other than that, I guess this is it!

Wo ai nimen (I love you all)

Wang Zhang Lao

Elder Wallace

Elder Calflin and his District

wet and raining and pre temple selfie