Feb 21, 2013 "One Eternal Round"

                                                                                           

Another week has gone by. I'd like to say that it has flown by, but here at the MTC time is a funny thing. Do y'all know the phrase "one eternal round"? It's something like that. Everything is so fast and so mind-numbingly slow at the same time, kind of weird. One thing that I can testify of is the power of the spirit here. Surrounded by people who want nothing more than to strengthen their testimonies, work hard, and learn, we do just that. They say the military and various others have studied what we do here to see what it is we do exactly here that helps us learn languages so quickly. I've always been told, "it's the spirit" and that was the obvious and final answer, but it has a great deal to do with the fact that everyone here wants so badly to learn! Even our days off aren't really days off, because what else is there to do than learn the language and study the scriptures?

 Today we went to the temple way early in the morning and then came back and slept for another hour. Because of the surge of missionaries we plan our day around what everyone else is likely not to be doing. The MTC is working over capacity and every Wednesday it grows by several hundred. Our dorms are being prepared to put another set of bunk bed closet things in each room. They don't really fit but what else can they do? All of the sisters dorms are tripled up. There's some talk of converting nearby BYU apartments to MTC housing but it's all speculation. The best plan right now is to take advantage of all the foreign MTCs.

Adam's MTC District in front of the Provo Temple

I'm enjoying my time in the MTC choir. There are about 600 of us... Though the median talent is mediocre, there are some pretty awesome singers here and the very last chord is usually pretty awesome. We cut off and the notes just ring forever. We don't know if we will be singing in General Conference at this point but I sure hope so! Actually, here in my district we're not even sure whether or not we'll be here come General Conference. We have conflicting information from our different schedules. The computer and print stuff is all on a 12 week schedule (its really 11 weeks, I don't know why they call it 12) but our teachers are teaching us on a 9 week schedule because that's what it says on their information. We probably won't know until they give us a travel itinerary randomly. I can't decide which would be better actually. If we leave early our General Conference experience will be wildly different but we will also be there for Cambodian New Year. The celebration of the new year in Cambodia is like a week long even that is something like Christmas, Valentines Day, the 4th of July, New Years and every one's birthday party all wrapped into one. Cool stuff.

 The language continues to be really really hard--no surprises there I suppose--and a great deal of my admittedly limited free time is spent trying to memorize characters. I've been working on sub consonants the past two days. There are 32 of them and they are kind of randomly shaped and located (sub consonants are in specific places around major consonants, if you put one in the wrong place it messes up the whole syllable which I imagine could become quite confusing) and I kind of hate them right now.

 I think I really should have an outline before I start writing these emails because I feel like I'm just vomiting words onto the screen. Whatever I think of, I say. I sent y'all a letter that should be arriving soon that might have more information. Between writing to my immediate family, friends, grandparents, my journal and anyone who writes me, I forget what I say to individual people. On that note, I'm out of time! Thank you for writing! Love y'all.

                                  

Elder Vore ran into his good friend from BYU, Hannah  (Sister Casper) on his way to the temple.