Ni hao everyone!

This week has been quite eventful:
Last Monday I found some crutches in the give-away box in our residence halls. Hehe.. still not sure if they belonged in there or not but so far, they are still in my possession. I fooled a couple people with them but in both cases I couldn't keep it up because I was just laughing so hard. I planned on coming to class one day with the crutches so I could fool my whole district and the teacher but that plan fell through because the first time Sister Goldrup and I were going to see our teacher, the one person we really wanted to mess with, until we taught him as our "investigator." Side note: we practice our lessons in Chinese with our teachers as the investigators. We had only one option: go into the appointment with the crutches, and that is exactly what I did haha. So we knock on the door and our "investigator" opens the door and saw me on crutches and he was like "Ni shi O.K ma?" (are you ok?).  I just nodded my head like "dui, dui. Wo shi O.K." (yes, yes, I am ok.). I managed to get through the whole lesson without laughing although I was laughing internally. Later when that teacher came to class I rose my hand and was like " I have a confession" and then I stood up on my supposedly hurt foot and then I said "I'm not really hurt.." The look on his face was priceless. Our district laughed about that for a bit.

Great news! I saw Sister Rozsa, finally!!! Pretty much best day ever so far. I ran into her at the Tuesday devotional since all the missionaries at both the west and main campus gather at the Marriott center for Tuesday devotionals from now on. I am 100% sure Sister Rozsa is having  a wonderful time being a missionary.

Saturday was our first TRC (teaching resource center). TRC is different for missionaries learning a foreign language because we just meet with members who volunteer and do not pretend to be investigators and when we teach them. It is more like a talk in sacrament meeting or a Sunday school lesson. I  heard that we might even teach over skype too. Although we are teaching a member, our purpose is still the same--to invite others to come unto Christ and strengthen them. I was super nervous about TRC because you never know what you are going to get. Our preparation paid off though and we taught a pretty good lesson on obedience and the Word of Wisdom. Our volunteer was super nice and he taught us just as much as we taught him. During our lesson, I shared a scripture I found when I was reading my scriptures one day. It's in 1 John 2:3 and it basically says that when we are obedient to God's commandments we can come to know God. I find this verse very interesting because I have never thought of this concept before. What our volunteer said, and what I was thinking too, was that we don't know too much about God because we have been so far away from Him for so long. If being obedient is how we can gain more knowledge about our Heavenly Father, then all the more reason to be obedient. You guys should look that scripture up if you have the time.

Our district always has a good story to share. So far I have told everyone about the "Oh we gon get dis blood" story and a few others. My favorite story I heard this week is about how one of the Elders sleep runs in his sleep. Literally. This Elder sleeps on the top bunk here at the MTC and his companion on the bottom. His companion said that one night he woke up to this big commotion coming from the top bunk and he found out that it was this Elder running in place in his bed while sleeping. If you knew this Elder you would know how much funnier the imagery is. He is kind of a quiet person and you would never guess he has a sleep walking issue. This Elder has also been known to climb down the ladder and walk around while sleep. Pretty funny, but also pretty creepy.

Yesterday at our branch sacrament meeting (our whole branch is Mandarin Chinese speaking) the MTC President announced that our branch is getting split in two starting next Sunday. We are supposed to be getting 53 new Mandarin Chinese missionaries on the 26th of this month. If they did not split our branch we would have had over 140 missionaries in our branch. My district is getting moved to the new Mandarin branch and I am actually pretty excited about it. Our new Branch President seems like a really awesome guy. The fact that the MTC has created a new Chinese branch when there has only been one for a very long time shows  that the work with the Mandarin Chinese population is hastening and more missionaries are being called to speak this language. Very exciting. Most of the Presidency for our new branch got moved from a German speaking branch and they know little to no Chinese. I guess we get to go through learning a new language together.

Sunday devotional was so great last night. I didn't get to see it "live" because it was the first Sunday devotional that was broadcast from the West campus. It didn't matter thought because the speaker, Brother Stephen B. Allen, used the cameras at both campuses to interact with everyone. He showed us commercials from the Homefront Commercial Series, which are Mormon ads that used to air on t.v. You all should definitely look these up because they are soo great. All of them have inspirational messages at the end of them and they are very entertaining as well. I suggest watching the "Braces and Glasses" one. So when I said Brother Allen used the cameras from our campus to interact with us, he would have the tech guy show the missionaries from our campus and we would all wave at the camera and I even saw one Elder in the crowd wrote a "Hi, Mom" sign. Before he started his talk, Brother Allen asked all the missionaries if any one of them had been Dear Johned or Janed and the camera zoomed in on the Elders who had shamefully raised their hands. At the West campus there was an Elder who had raised his hand so Brother Allen asked him "are you happy about that?" and this Elder sadly shook his head no and then Brother Allen asked him "is the girl who Dear Johned you happy about that?" and the Elder shrugged his shoulders and was like "Probably." And then Brother Allen said "I bet the RM who is dating her is pretty happy." Haha. Funny guy. Brother Allen,in the light of Father's Day, mentioned that he bet that none of our fathers would want anything more than to have their son or daughter where they are right now, on a mission. Happy Father’s Day again!

An update on the Chinese: I am able to speak more and more every day but last week I was staring to get frustrated that I couldn't understand anything in return. I have been praying to have this gift to interpret the language and it is slowly coming to me. The talks given by fellow missionaries on Sunday I was able to understand which is a huge step forward.

Thanks for all of the DearElders, they are always a highlight of my day. Glad to hear everything is going well back at home. Love you all!

Ai,
Sister Jordan