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January 29th at the MTC

Hello all!

This week in the MTC has been amazing :) Let me tell you just a few of the cool things that happened.

To start, we shipped off a bunch of missionaries to Korea! This left our Korean branch feeling a little small. But to end their time here, the MTC President and his 1st Counselor came to our sacrament meeting! It was so cool to be able to talk with him and gain his insights. The Korean speakers are very highly favored at the MTC- it's funny, they call us the "celestial branch." 

With all the older missionaries leaving, a lot of the leadership positions were left empty and obviously needed to be filled. In the presence of the MTC presidency, I was called the be the Sister Training Leader for the entire Korean branch. I can't even tell you how humbling that was. I've learned a lot about leadership since being here, and the most important of everything is that the title of "leader" is actually just another name for servant. My job is to place myself below every sister in my zone, and do everything I can for them, with love, to build them up. I love all of these girls so much, they are incredible and inspire me everyday. 

That being said, we just got 11 new sisters come in this week! One of them lived next to me at BYU and one is from alabama! It's so cool to not be the youngest anymore hahaha. And having them here has helped me put into perspective how much I really have learned, about Korean and about myself. It's pretty amazing.

The biggest thing I've learned this week is that life is all about the mindset you chose to be in. In most cases, you can chose to make any circumstance a chance to learn or be happy or serve others. Especially when things get hard, and you want to be mad or selfish or irritated, that is the absolute best time to stop thinking about yourself and thing about what you can do to learn or serve someone else. When we chose to focus on ourselves, we deny God the opportunity to work through us to make someone's day a little brighter, or even perform miracles. Our Branch presidents wife, Sister Gilbert, told us this week "If you live as though you are in a miracle, you will be the miracle." This world really is a miracle, everything in it. And when we chose to see things in that way, you are placing yourself in the position to be a catalyst for greatness.

I love you all so much, and am praying for you constantly!

Have a wonderful week :)

Sister Elayna Weston

Anyoung Haseyo!

That's how you pronounce hello in Korean for all you lovely people back home. This week has been amazing. I'm trying to remember back to two weeks ago when hello was all I could say, and now we teach someone IN KOREAN every single day. And most of the time they understand us! Haha, sometimes they don't but that's okay. That's where my years and years of charades practice comes in (shoutout to the family for always playing charades on camping trips- who knew how useful it could be). But honestly, I'm amazing at how much we are all able to learn here. I'm not saying I'm ready for Korea yet, but I know that when the time comes I'll be more than prepared and so excited to be able to talk to people- even if it's mostly smiling and nodding while I get used to their accents.

One thing I've loved the most about this week is that as we've gotten more settled into the schedule and our residence hall, we get to meet and spend time with a lot more people: most of whom are from all corners of the world. For example, just in my hall we have an entire room of native Korean girls, an entire room of native Japanese girls, six different girls from New Z eland, one from Germany, 4 from the Philippines, and that's not even mentioning all the different states people come from. It's truly amazing. I love learning a little bit of all of their languages and cultures, and what food they eat, and how it's too cold here (they obviously haven't been to Chicago) and all the fun stuff that comes with being from a different part of the globe. I can't wait to see what the differences are in Korea. The native Korean girls are helping me a lot to know whats popular there before I leave so I'm not a total nerdy America when I arrive.

In contrast to that last paragraph, I've also had the chance to meet people who are a lot like me. About an hour ago, I was stopped and asked if I was from Michigan because I'm wearing a Mackinac Island shirt. I told them yes, and they brought over a woman who was also from Michigan. Her name is Michelle and she is just a little bit older than me (not a missionary but she works at the MTC). Turn out she's from Rochester and got baptized just a little bit over a year ago! Needless to say, we are really good friends now hahaha. She actually is the woman who is in charge for reporting news in the MTC- or something like that I'm not totally sure- and one of her duties is to pick a missionary each week to interview and make a news report on, and for this week she chose me! I can't even explain how much love I've felt since beginning my mission. Not only from people like Michelle, or missionaries, but from those of you who read this and send me letters or e-mails. you often don't know how much of an impact you have on someones life by taking the time to care for them, so if you have not been recognized for doing so lately, I would like to take the time to recognize you now. 

My district, 28D, is just the best. Everyone works so hard and supports each other and are just so loving. I guess that's one huge benefit of being an all girl district, you don't have to hold back on any love for each other. 

This week the message that has been repeatedly shared is about turning out. My mom mentioned that a similar message was shared this week at her church. Funny how God works that way. But we've found that if ever we are starting to worry about ourselves a little to much, or feel sad or stressed, the best way to combat those feelings is to just stop for a moment and love for some way, even if it's small, to do something for someone else. Because if you are in need of encouragement, chances are someone else is too. And if you can forget yourself, and make someone else happy, well, it's bound to make you happy too. I've seen myself getting exponentially more joyful as I try to practice this bit of advice.

In other news, the Elders still call me "War Eagle" and I hold strong with a "Roll Tide" in return. I heard Ohio State won the National championship- and all I can say is that I'll be praying for all you friends down at Alabama, and Dave too. We will get them next year. I love you all sooo much! Have a wonderful week!

The Empty Sea

Hello Everyone!

We've made it to Provo safely and have official embarked on a truly wonderful journey. Thank you so much for any letters or messages you may have sent me, getting mail in the MTC is honestly the greatest thing that can ever happen to you. 

Someone wrote me this Monday that your first week at the MTC is like "you just got your drivers license and now they're like 'Welcome to NASCAR!" And it's hard to explain, but that is exactly what it's like!

You learn so much in such a short period of time you can hardly believe it's possible. I will tell you all honestly, Korean is not easy hahaha. But it is, seriously, the coolest language. Once you learn how to read it everything starts to make a lot more sense. It's especially cool because since we can't speak very much Korean, we have to speak very simply and when we teach we have to teach very simply. You learn quickly what is important and how to get your message across without any extra fluff. I think it's a really big blessing to have the chance to learn that skill. 

It's only been just over a week since I arrived here, but I already know that Sundays are the best. For one thing, you get ice cream at lunch and dinner. And for another, you are constantly having super awesome speakers come in and talk to you (usually around 3 or 4). This past sunday, they MTC presidency held a devotional- and I got to speak at it! It wasn't for long, only a couple minutes. But basically, they asked every person who had been baptized in the last 2 years to come forward and speak about conversion. There were about 10 of us and every person who spoke was so powerful. It made me so happy to have to opportunity both to speak and to her what others had to say. Everyone here is so awesome. 

On Tuesday nights, we also have devotionals. This time we just had one person speak, but that one person was Russel M. Nelson (I highly encourage you to look him up if you do not know who he is :) ) For this devotional I got to sing in the choir! It was super cool because this weeks devotional was broeadcasted to every MTC in the entire world. And, apparently, my face was on the screen hahaha. I wouldn't know because we were told not to look there while we were singing but a ton of missionaries came up to me after to tell me that they saw my face. So, look out I could be famous by now. Just kidding. But not really. 

When you're in the MTC, much like when you are out in the mission field, you have a companion that is basically your missionary partner. You get to be with them all the time and teach all your lessons with them. My companion's name is Sister Warren. She's from Roy, Utah and she really likes to sing (she's super good at it too). You are also a part of a district while you are on your mission. A district is just a group of missionaries that you go to class with while in the MTC and you do most of your activities with them too. My district is an all girl district which is super rare, but so awesome! There are six of us, Sister Jones (Bountiful, Utah) Sister Bejarano (Salt Lake City, Utah) Sister Warren (Roy, Utah) Sister Saranquin (Phillippines) sister DeLa Pena (Phillippines) and myself. I love all of this girls so much. They rock. I especially lvoe that we have two sister from the Phillippines that speak english that are going to Korean, that's just nuts! As an all girl district, we have another rare circumstance when it comes to District Leadership. Usually there will be one Elder from each district that is called the District Leader (they get the mail, make sure all the missonaries are okay health wise and spiritually, as well as lead meetings and report to the branch presidency). Well, since we don't have any Elders to do this, they called me to do it! So for the next little bit while we are at the MTC I get the chance to really get to know all the Sisters in my district as well as the other leaders and the branch presidency, which is just so cool. I love it.

I'm so excited for everything I still have yet to the learn, about the Korean language and people as well as about myself as we continue through the MTC and then to Korea. Again, thank you so much for all the love you send me. I love all of you more than I can explain! Talk to you next week!