Gestern war ein trauig Tage. Elder R hat gestern, daß er seinter Freunde Vater war tot gefinden hat. Es war sehr traurig für ihn. Yesterday was a sad day. Elder R found out that his friend’s father died.

Heute war ein gutes Tag für mich. Ich have in der Morgen klasse, der Geist geühlt. Es war ein Kirche Film und es war auf Deutsch. Ich have kleine Worte verstanden, aber mit der heilige Geist have ich die Bedeutung verstanden. Ich habe fast geweint. Sportstünde war sehr gut. Ich habe Volleyball gespielt. Und auch, Brüder J hat seiner Mongoose gebracht. Es war ein lustiges Ding. Er had es in ein Käfig. Und wir hat alles um den Käfig zu sehen. Und dann Brüder J hat ein Drüker gezieht, und dann die Tiel hat ausgekommen. Auf English jetzt. Brother J brought his mongoose today. We all went out to the parking lot to see it. It was in a wooden box type of a cage. When we had all gathered around to get a closer look, Brother J pulled a trigger and the lid flipped back real fast and just about scared the wee-wee out of everyone. Everyone but me and Elder R, we knew that it was a joke, and played along. It was soooo funny. We did it to some other Elders and Sisters and had a similar reaction, it was ganz toll. Bis Spater.

I forgot, Elder A flew this morning. He was the next A.P. after Elder S. He was an awesome, awesome Elder. He’s a great missionary.

Today was pretty good. I had a good study session this morning. It seems that they’re always better if I give a sincere prayer before I start.

I had a big lunch that was totally awesome. And I got 4 letters. One from Aaron and Mom, one from Faith, one from G & G Shepherd, and a graduation announcement from Aaron. It was cool to get that many letters.

We had a neat discussion about the Holy Ghost and missionary work in Abend Klasse (Evening Class). Brother F was able to share some neato experiences with us. I thought it was awesome. I spoke a lot of Deutsch today. That was neat.

I had a productive Studieren Stünde auch (study hour too). I got a lot of nouns written in my noun book. I must go.

Heute war gut für mich. Für ein Richtige, es war P-Tage. (Today was good for me. For one thing, it was P-Day.) I didn’t get up till 6am. Dann ich habe das Buck Mormon auf Deutsch gelessen für halb Stünde. Dann ich habe für eine Stünde gedient. (Then I read the Book of Mormon in German for half an hour. Then I served for an hour.) I was going to go to the temple after that, but Elder V had a headache so I stayed here with him. I finished the chapter I was reading in the BoM, then wrote some letters. After Elder V slept for a couple of hours we went and did our laundry. After we had lunch we did a session at the temple. Then I had just enough time to finish a letter home. Then it was off to dinner and then to class. And t hen I played an awesome game of volleyball. Cool day.

Today went well, pretty normal. I saw Shawn A finally. It was good to see him. Es fühlet zu mir, daß die Sprachmission like Hiem schicklick (becoming). Weil viele Elders, daß aus Mesa kommen. Na Ja. <span class=”notinjournal”>The German is so bad, it’s painful. It’s supposed to say that the MTC is starting to feel like home because so many Elders from Mesa are there.</span>

I finally told everybody how I feel. It was good to get it off my chest. Everybody thinks I’m probably a jerk still, but oh well. Elder J was really the only one that understood, really. He said he was sorry for having made me feel the way I did. He really is an awesome guy. Elder K, though, kept on asking why I felt that way, drilling me like I was in the wrong. It wasn’t so  much the questions, but the way he was acting about the way I felt. Anyhow, it’s all over with. Everything, I hope, is back to normal.

It seems to me that I’ve fallen out of a good groove I had made last week. Doing push-ups every night, studying well in the morning, stuff like that. But it seems that I fell out of that rut on Friday. Granted, I was sick, but I could have picked it up again sooner. I feel that I’ve gotten my program started up again, though.

The next thing that crosses my mind has to do with my relationship with the district. No matter how I try not to, I still feel like I’m not really part of the gang. Everybody else gets along, and like to be with everybody else but me. If that’s not really the way it is, good, but that’s how I feel most of the time. Tolerated, but not really accepted. But like I said before, Oh well. I’ve been in this position before, I should be used to it. It still hurts, though. The impression I get is that everybody is laughing at me, not with me. At least I know God and Christ love me no matter how I am. I love them too.

My language is coming along well. I’m learning quite a bit every day. I wish, though, that I would be able to memorize more scriptures and the discussions.

Back to the middle paragraph, though. It’s not like everybody hates me, it’s just that no one really clicks with me. Dan F. was lucky, he and an Elder in his district get along really well. I guess I’m just jealous. Das ist alles für heute (that’s all for today). Bis spater.

The reason I didn’t write much yesterday was because Elder G and I had a disagreement about whether God knows everything, meaning if He knows all that we will do before we’ve done it. It got me in such a mood as that I didn’t want to do anything. That topic was on my mind during every second of the rest of last night and the better part of the morning today. Elder G asked President Pine the question, and by the time I was able to hear the explanation from Elder G, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that he was more correct in his beliefs than I was and that my beliefs had thus changed for the better in agreement with Elder G’s belief and Pres. Pine’s. (** See below)

Anyhow, the rest of the day perked up for me. I seemed to spend a lot of time with Elder G today. I think we came together closer in a friend way. He is a real neat, and strongly opinionated Elder.

Tonight we heard from Elder Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve. He and his wife gave most excellent talks. Sister Maxwell gave some really neat mottos and perked us up for missionary work. Elder Maxwell’s talk was about the Book of Mormon. He focused on how it is impossible for Joseph Smith to have made up the Book of Mormon. Many great points were brought up. I’ll write a few. One continuing theme was the way a lot of the ways the Book of Mormon could be proven by logic and reasoning are (were) to sophisticated for Joseph to know about. The fact that the Book of Mormon has Chiasms; the path that Lehi and his family traveled had to be the one written of in the Book, or they wouldn’t have ended up at the ocean; those facts and ideas were completely unknown to Joseph Smith. He didn’t even know Jerusalem had a wall around it. Another point that Elder Maxwell brought up was that the Book flowed. The manuscripts show no major corrections of importance. A few spelling errors corrected or a word corrected. Joseph Smith translated the plates in about 65 working days, doing about 8 pages a day. It took 54 men 4 years to translate the King James version of the Bible. All in all, the point was, Joseph Smith didn’t write the Book, he translated it. Elder Maxwell’s main focus was about the purpose of the Book of Mormon. That being a witness of Jesus Christ. He also talked about how Christ has perfect empathy. The thing that struck me most was that Christ payed for all of our sins as if he committed them.

President Boltons talk on testimony was good also. And to put a topper on on the day, we all participated in giving Sister P a blessing to help her overcome the trouble she’s having. I won’t write what it is, because it’s none of my business. That’s all for tonight.

By the way, Elder R’s electric shaver bugs me. The sound just drives me up the wall.

I didn’t seem to think it important enough to write my new belief in God, so here is what I believe now on this topic, fourteen years later. God is all knowing. He knows everything. The big issue on this day, was if God knows everything, then he knows what we are going to do, and therefore we have no agency. If we have no agency, the our lives are predestined, predetermined, and we have no control of our actions and outcomes. The two points that God knows everything, and we have agency seemed to be conflicting. These are two big and important principles that are true, and exist at the same time. I have come to learn that Gods knows everything, even what we do, in the same way a parent knows what his child will do (or should I say, most likely do). How is that possible? A parent (and I speak from experience now), has a pretty good idea how their child will react in certain situations, because they have seen the child from day one. They know their child in ways the child doesn’t even know themselves. Our relationship with God is very similar. We lived with him before coming to this earth. We lived with him, I belief, a LOT longer than we live with our parents. Therefore, God knows us a LOT better than even we know ourselves. It’s not that our lives are predetermined. We have agency. But God knows us so well, even perfectly, that he knows how we will act in any given circumstance. So that’s how God knows everything, and we keep our agency.

Heute war gut (today was good). Ich spreche viele Deutsch (I spoke a lot of German). I woke up in a great mood, and carried that mood for most of the day. I can’t think of anything else to write.

Bis spater.

I feel I have a pretty good reason for not having written the past two days. I start by just telling what happened, and then I can glean and excuse from that.

Friday, May 10, 1996

Friday was a cool P-Day for a while. We did our laundry and then our service project as normal. Then for the excitement of the week I got to go to the mall. I’m really glad I did. My pants were just way too tight. The lady that helped me out was amazed that I was sold such tight pants. She’s having the blue ones taken out as far as they can and my one gray pair that I’m not wearing is being taken out an inch and a half. Now they’ll be real loose and wearable. We had an hour to be at the mall, and it only took 20 minutes to get my pants all worked out, so my companion, an elderly ward missionary who’s sole purpose is to take missionaries to the mall and health center, just walked around and talked until the van was supposed to come back. Of course the van was late getting back, but that was OK, because an Elder had broken his ankle playing basketball so our driver had to take him to the health clinic. Anyhow, I got back before the district was complete with their session at the temple, so I waited in the front lobby of the MTC. I was there for about an hour before they came back, then we went straight to lunch. Now the weird thing was that I felt perfectly fine up until I got up to go to lunch. Then all of a sudden I felt really sick. Kind of like the flu. I ate about half a sandwich, then came back to our room. I had received a letter from A and C, but I didn’t feel good enough to even read them. I got home about 1:30 and slept until dinnertime about 4:00. I went to dinner because I thought I might start feeling better, but I didn’t. Elder J was feeling a little sick also, so he and I came back together and slept until 6:00. Then Elder R and Elder G checked up on us and wanted to know if Elder J still wanted to go to the rest of class. He didn’t so we both slept until 7:00. A funny little aside here, Elder R had asked Elder J to come into my room so we would be together. Well he was half asleep and half undressed, so he didn’t think to bring a key and his door was locked. So at 7:00 we thought he would have to walk to our Kulturstunde in his bare-feet and ohne eine Krawatte (without a tie). We had just decided to go, and stepped out of my room, when Elders R, K and V came out of their room. So Elder J was able to get dressed before we left. Well, even though we still felt terrible, we went anyhow. I’m glad I did because it was awesome.

We got home from that after 9:30 and I promptly went to bed again, and didn’t wake up until morning.

Saturday, May 11, 1996

Saturday went by pretty normally. I still felt a little weak, but was able to make it to all my classes. Elder J also felt pretty bad and Sister H was getting pretty sick also. Our personal study was real effective for all of us. I was able to get all the verbs we’ve learned so far that I didn’t know all together in a new spiral note pad. Now I just need to get all the nouns and whatnot into a separate book.

Also something I forgot to mention. On Wednesday, Brad L came in. He’s the cousin of Todd and Allen K who came over in the summer a couple of times. He’s going to Hamburg also. It was neat to see him. I had thought he was coming in after I left, so I was surprised to see him.

I was going to stop on the other page, but I remembered some other things. One cool thing is that Dan F, Elder F, and his district moved into the room across the hall from mine. They were in that building to begin with, but got moved out and now they’re back in. Now I see him more than I used to. He’s cool still. He and another Elder in his district are always together and talking with me. They’re cool.

Sunday, May 12, 1996

Now for today. Our district, the Elders, sang a cool hymn in sacrament today. “Secret Prayer,” I think in English, “Wie Süß die Stund,” in Deutsch. We sang the verses in harmony and the chorus in three parts. I sang the tenor line. It sounded really awesome when we were practicing it. When we sang in sacrament we did all right except for me. Not that I messed up or anything, it was that I couldn’t remember the tenor line. I just couldn’t pick it out anymore, so I ended up singing bass. It made me mad, because it sounded so awesome with me singing tenor, but then I couldn’t in sacrament meeting.

I need to work on SYL more. No more English for me. Ich spreche nur Deutsch. Ich brauche Deutsch sprechen, damit ich besser Deutsch sprechen kann. Wenn ich nicht Deutsch sprechen, vergesse ich meine Worte. Daß ich nicht tun kann. Ich muß immer Deutsch sprechen. Und, es tut mir leid, ich muß immer Deutsch schreiben. Und auch immer Deutsch lesen, wenn ich kann. Na ja, Gute Nacht und bis Spater, oder bis Morgen. Ich muß meine Schriffte lesen.

I had an awesome experience this morgen (morning), during personal gospel study. I was studying scriptures, and I looked up a lot of scriptures about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. All my doubts are gone now. I don’t really care whether anybody likes me either, because I know they do. I can just get annoying, like they can to me. They’ll just have to live with me, as I’ll have to live with them. Anyhow, it was awesome this morning. I took two and a half pages of notes on the scriptures. I think my prayer is answered. Every verse I read bore witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and this Church. It was AWESOME. There is no way that I’ll be persuaded that the Book of Mormon is false. Only if God himself came to me and told me it is false. This Church is so totally true. I can’t wait to share this truth with those in Deutschland. Time to sleep. Bis Morgen.

Heute war ein gutes Tage (today was a good day). We had a big surprise today. Elder G came back. We had been told, gestern (yesterday), that Elder G was coming back on Donnerstag (Thursday). But I had forgotten all about it altogether. So when I saw him, it was a great big surprise. He is in a tritt now with Elder R and me. It’ll take some getting used to, but I think it’ll work out all right. I still get the feeling that all the Elders, except Elder V and me, are flirting way too much. To me it seems like they think the MTC is just a school, like a college, where everything that is OK there, is OK here. But I don’t think that way. The MTC is way different. I feel that they don’t treat this place or the time we have with enough respect. It’s probably just me though. I’ll keep on doing what I know is right, and won’t bug the others unless they’re doing something really wrong. It won’t matter, though, what I do. They always talk about showing respect for others, but I don’t feel that I have any. My words of caution or whatever have no meaning to them. I feel as if I’m an outcast. Like nobody really truly likes me. But I won’t let it get me down. I’m here to serve the Lord the best I know how, not do what they think is right, or what they think is OK. Sometimes, not often, I just can’t wait to get out of here because of the way my district acts. I only hope it is better in the field. I just have to keep on plugging along and not let the little things bug me. I’ll live with it, but I don’t have to like it.