7/20/15
Dear Family,
Dear Family,
Sorry, no pictures this week, I can send some next week of an amazing sunset if you want, but you probably have seen your fair share with your own eyes. So apparently I am only supposed to write letters on Preparation Day, so it will probably be lest often that I am able to write to letters to all of you... We should get on some sort of schedule too so I'm not receiving letters after I sent a reply if you know what I mean... Anyways, I also forgot all of my extra razors I think... What should I do? Can you even send those in the mail? If I did leave them they would be in the middle drawer in the bathroom... Haha I guess I packed more for a campout than a two year mission. One more business item, what should I do with these extra dress shirts? Send them back or just hang on to them? My bad on the miscommunication... How have things been going? The language is coming steadily, and I'm preparing to get my flight plans a week from this Friday! I'm so excited! I mean, it's going to be harder than ever being in a place where I can only barely communicate with everyone, but I'm excited to leave the compound and actually start sharing the Gospel with people! Today is my first day skyping actual people from Taiwan, so wish me luck. The other day in TRC, we taught one member from Mainland China that was absolutely crazy. She spoke incredibly fast, and had a weird dialect so I barely understood a single word she said. Pretty humbling. Apparently, the Taiwanese accent is pretty feminine, so by Asian standards I will come home speaking girly-Mandarin. Awesome. But I've also heard it isn't hard to switch from that to the Mainland accent. We will see. As of right now, I definitely can't worry about switching between accents. I hope everything is going well at home! Happy 24th of July this Friday!!! Let me know how all those parades, fireworks, etc go! Thanks for sending me all those awesome letters!
-Jordan
Brothers and Sisters,
6 weeks in to my MTC experience! It is so weird seeing so many Viewmont Elders come through and leave while I continue to stay. Finally I got a few foreign language speakers to keep me company like Elder Colton Richman. As it turns out, there are 1,997 missionaries currently at the MTC. We truly are the modern-day stripling warriors (or at least I like to think so). One Elder in my district kind of jokingly said something that I thought was awesome. "Do what makes you happy." While he meant it in the 'eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die' sort of way (we were talking about which food at the cafeteria was the lesser of two evils), it really struck me. In this life, that's all we are really out to do right? To do what makes us happy. Not in a temporal and temporary sort of way, but in a spiritual and everlasting sort of way. We do things so we can be happy. Going to church, while in the moment seems horrible at times, can in the long-term bless us so much and make us so happy. Nothing makes me more happy then the Gospel, even if it isn't in a 'fun' sort of way. And you can have fun in our Gospel if you really try and remember your purpose here on earth. I took Elder Darrington's advice and got cereal for dinner instead of pink chicken with rotting guacamole slathered on it. Oh and we found a mouse in our residence! It keeps sneaking into our room under the door. Some other Elders found it the other night and chased it around the hallways until it went into an empty room. Maintenance was called and soon oreos and a mouse trap were on their way. Happy 24th of July!!! Our pioneer heritage is something incredible, and I hope that you all will take a moment from the fireworks and read about your pioneer ancestors or even just the history of the church. I have been reading "Our Heritage", and I don't think I ever really realized just how much our church had to struggle through it's early years and just how much Satan was trying to bring it down. Though the trials were hard, those that carried the Gospel in their hearts and Christ in their countenance across the nation to the Salt Lake Valley were extremely blessed and we should all take a moment to remember their sacrifice.
Direct Translation of the First Vision:
I saw a (classifier) light pillar, right at me head top, compared to sun's light still bright, gradually descend down come, until it rested upon me body top. Light stop at me body top at that time, I look and saw two (classifier) personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description. One of them pointing to other towards me speak, calling me name, this is My Beloved Son--Here him speak.
Not exact, and I could break it down even further, but you get the gist of Chinese. Literal translations are pretty funny. Even though the direct translation is pretty funny, this First Vision is one of the crowning events of this dispensation--one of only three times God the Father has spoken to man on Earth in the scriptures. Ya, it's important. I have a strong testimony of Joseph Smith, and I know that he was sent here for a specific purpose: to restore Christ's church here on this Earth in these, the latter days before Christ's Second Coming. I am on a mission, pun-intended, to share that message that the Gospel is restored with everyone I possibly can. It is the one, true path that we may take to return to God. It is the only way to receive true happiness. We all can receive a testimony that this is true by the Power of the Holy Ghost, who I have come to know and love even more than I thought possible here at the MTC. The Holy Ghost is like a drill that can build our testimonies. At first, we have to go to a neighbors house and borrow his drill right? We can use one, but we have to return it. We don't have the right to keep it forever or to use it whenever we want. So, we go and buy ourselves a drill after we are baptized. Now it is ours. We have the right to use it whenever we want and in whatever way we please, and it is ours to keep forever. Quite a gift isn't it? But we have to remember where we put it--we have to remember our covenants and commandments and live worthy of that gift. End of analogy. When we repent, we can be forgiven through the cleansing fire of the Holy Ghost which has been made possible by Christ's Atonement. I taught a lesson about repentance yesterday, and I really love the all-encompassing scope of the Atonement. Not only can our sins be washed away in the eyes of God, but in our own eyes as well. Our guilt, our pain, our sorrow, even the memory can be washed away. Through the Atonement, our weaknesses can become strengths. Even more is possible, but I'll leave that for you to find. I hope we will all remember that we don't need to look back at Sodom and Gommorah. We need not wish we hadn't repented, we need not remember the guilt and pain we felt, we need not remember we failed. We must remember that through Christ we are made perfect, through Christ we can see our sins and guilt washed away, and that if we continue forward, not looking back, we will live again with our Heavenly Father. Thank you for taking the time to make it thus far into my somewhat all-over-the-place letter, and I hope that you have both learned something and made a commitment to change one thing about your life to come closer to God. I love you with all my heart, and you personally are in my thoughts and prayers.
Elder Hawkes
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