We were lucky to receive a letter by mail and an email from Jake this week. Learning the language seems to be his main focus and challenge. He included a note written to his Dad for Father's Day. He also wanted us to send some supplies and snacks and asked for more letters from friends and family. The letters are a source of comfort and strength for him.
"Hey! or should I say Sawaadii Khab!! The MTC is what I expected... hard and challenging. I don't quite understand the teacher, but I'm getting better at it every day. When I got here, they gave me a HUGE bag of supplies to help learn the gospel and language. I've already started to use my backpack. Some things are helpful and others don't help me learn a thing. I just want to start learning the Thai alphabet symbols, so I can read it. I feel that I will understand better when I can read actual Thai. Tell everyone to write me because it calms me down while I'm freaking
out everyday. I know I'll be fine, but this first week is hard for
sure. We have a temple trip on Wednesday that I'm really excited for.
That is a place where I can feel real peace other than Sundays."
"I told you about my companion Elder Vance and you already met him.
He is really fun to have as a companion. He is district leader and so I
have to get the mail with him and do all the stuff that they have to
do. I love my district and we get along so great, perhaps too great,
because we stay up too late talking. That's mostly because we have so
many things we need to do before lights out. We are always with
each other and laughing."
"Here is an update on my week. Friday was interesting. We had gym time scheduled but we had to go get our immunization shots for Thailand, so we didn't really get gym time at all. We had our first lesson with the investigator and it was terrifying and we did terrible which made it even worse. We just sat there, read our script wrong and then left without even making another appointment. OH, that was the worst thing ever! Talk about a total downer, however it made me want to work harder because we have to teach him in Thai every day until we go to Thailand. All we do is read from a script and it is just the worst because I feel like we need to get to know him, but we don't know how to ask the questions or understand what he will say back. His name is Nike. Cool name I know. You should have named me that!"
"Saturday was the same in schedule; study, study, study, language, study, study, teach Nike, read Thai to Nike. We tried to teach him about the Restoration and it actually didn't go too bad. We seemed to teach it well even though we didn't understand a single thing he said. The days are super long. I got a letter this morning and by midday, I felt like I got it two days ago. I feel like I've been here so long and then I look back and realize it's only been two days! I can't wait to get out of here already. The food isn't great and makes me gassy and I can't understand anything. Don't get me wrong, I love to do the Lord's work, but I want them to teach us the language for at least 4 weeks and then start giving us the investigators."
"I now understand why everyone always says, "wait until Sunday," because it was awesome!! It's really a day when we get to rest and think about the Lord without the distractions of everyday MTC life. It was nice just to be able to recharge. We had priesthood meeting where they talked a lot about what our purpose as a missionary is and how to be effective. The AC was broken and it was so hot in the room for sacrament and priesthood. It was still great to partake the sacrament and just be able to relax. We heard a devotional from Steven B. Allen and he was super funny. He used a lot of the mormon commercials in his talk that we got to watch. TV! it was great!! Plus the things he said were so amazing that I could really feel the spirit. Afterwards, we went to the movie room and watched, "The Testaments." Best movie for sure!! Then it was off to bed."
"Monday we had a service assignment where we go to another building and clean it. My companion and I luckily got to take out the trash and mop. No toilets, Whoot! We went to class and learned a lot of Thai and I have the prayer memorized! Yay!! We're learning some new Thai stuff on bearing our testimonies. We finally were able to understand our teacher today because he was teaching us fundamentals of teaching and it is really important for us to know, so he spoke English. Then we had to teach our investigator again. We tried to teach without the script, but that was a bad choice. It went terrible! Worse than the first day. We had no idea what was going on. At one point we sat there for 7 minutes not saying anything that made sense. What makes it even worse was that we had to teach the investigator again the next morning which gave us no time to prepare another lesson."
"Miraculously the next day, I kinda just whipped out a lesson in Thai almost all by myself. Let me just say that the lesson went well and we were able to get through it. I was even able to ask some things that I knew he answered!! I still don't know what he said, but I did it! I also got him to pray and taught him how to, which was a plus. It was still on script however. We've made a goal to slowly get off script. We then had gym time and Elder Keller and I went to play some soccer. This is where Tori and Chance and all my soccer friends will be proud...I MADE A GOAL!!!!!! Yup, like a champ! Look out Thailand, Elder Smith is coming your way!!!"
"We practiced singing in the Marriott Center and I'm singing tenor, aaahhhh! too high! We had a devotional there as well by Brother Robert C. Gay. He talked a lot on missionary work and said that we need to not worry because we were ready before we came. He said that it's not anyone else's testimony that matters, it's only ours that matters and that was awesome. After that, we had a district devotional review and Brother Callister shared an amazing testimony that raised our spirits."
"I miss you all and love you with all my heart. I think of you guys all the time. By the way, I joined the choir with Elder Vance. It's way fun, but takes up a lot of time. I will be singing in the world wide broadcast for the church called "Work of Salvation". It's on Sunday, June 23rd. You can get more information about it on the LDS website. Don't forget to watch for me."
Elder Jacob Smith
