•salamat para sa nindot nga mga sulat!‏ 6/24/12

dear pamilya,

the fast was hard but definitely worth it! we've improved, but our teachers make sure to keep us humble to make sure we don't feel like we've already mastered the language and can slack off. We're still teaching our teacher's as progressive investigators at the beginning of each class period (3 hours) and it's super hard. we teach the two progressive investigators 6 lessons a week and then we do a couple lessons to return missionaries who speak Cebuano - it's so hard to teach RM.'s something new! it was way cool teaching the rms at TRC this week though - one RM ended up marrying a girl from Cebu so they both came to the lesson with their way cute half philippino baby!

I'm progressing more in the language than my companion and he's feeling really behind and i want to help him in a supportive way but he's really independent and helping him might just make him feel worse and he doesn't want to practice with me - I think it's like when we try to talk to the teachers because you're having trouble understanding them and you don't want to feel stupid in front of them so so far all I've been able to think of is fasting earlier for him and trying to be super positive and compliment/congratulate him when he does good. I also try not to correct him all the time because that only discourages him from trying to say anything except for when it's right and then he'll be afraid to say anything but he needs to learn to speak in order to learn to speak well. does anyone have suggestions for this situation?

I am now coming toward the end of week six and we have 9 weeks (2 months) to the exact day! It's crazy how it worked out going from may 16 to July 17 and we have 63 days (9 weeks exactly)! Since it's our 6th week, they bring in a new group of Cebuano speaking missionaries - they do it this way so the older Cebuano speakers can help the younger ones. For at least the first day or two, we're going to try and speak only Cebuano around them (but watch the impact it has on them - we're hoping it makes them learn the language better and gives them more desire to learn it but we don't want to overwhelm them). We're going to host for new missionaries coming in on Wednesday! that means that when the missionaries get driven up we take their luggage and show them where to go to get their nametag, etc and then take them to their dorm to drop off their stuff and show them around! everyone in the district is hoping that we get one of the Cebuano speakers :)

...I'm also glad I found a good computer that isn't programmed for some other language that throws the keys and symbols off!

this Sunday we had a speaker come and one of the first things he said was a scripture, James 2:17 where it says faith without work is dead and how we need to participate and apply what he's saying to our lives - it really hit home that i need to not just listen to it but apply what they're saying. Afterwards, since there's missionary president training in 1m, they had only one movie for us to watch and that was characters of Christ, a Christmas talk given by Elder Bednar to the mtc. it was way cool and one of the things I took away from it was that as he put it, I've been creating large plates in my notes - a history of what the speaker said - then he pointed out that we never use our notes, but we always know where the spiritual impressions are and so we need to write down only those and create small plates with spiritual messages and guidance.

maayong adlaw! maayong suerte! maglaum ko nga sa imong semana mao maayo!  good day! good luck! maglaum I pray your week is good!

 We've gone through another set of missionaries - they're headed to Oklahoma - one of them had us all say hi through his new tape recorder before he left early this morning. i feel old. i guess it's more that i've been here for a long time and so many people here are new.

mapasalamaton para sa inyong gibasa! giangkon nimo ang maayong semana!

pagkasinsero,

Elder Dallin Carlson

•kamusta, kada-kinsa!‏ 6/18/2012

kamusta kamo? I've been pretty good here at the mtc, our teacher had noticed that we hadn't been SYL (speaking our language) enough outside of our class and the language was getting in the way of teaching when we taught returned missionaries at the Teaching Resource Center, so he challenged us to an English fast where we speak only Cebuano for a week starting 4:30 last Tuesday, so we have about 31 hours left where we speak only Cebuano even to friends unless absolutely necessary (interviews with leaders, choir, etc.). Its kinda frustrating for other people in our zone who don't talk Cebuano - the only reason they can kinda understand us is because we accompany the words with sort of a primitive sign language (shrugging the shoulders when we say ngano, waving when we say kamusta, looking confused when we say "unsa?", etc) - it's interesting. However, we don't know a ton of Cebuano, so there are a lot more periods of silence than there was before :P after this is over, we're going to try to speak Cebuano as much as possible except for when talking to people who aren't Cebuano speakers :)

Adlaw sa mga amahan went pretty well - at one part during our choir practice on Sunday that day the director stopped to talk a little bit about how fathers, especially Heavenly Father, watch over us - he went on to talk about how the Cherokees would have a manhood tradition where they´d have the father take the son out into the woods and blindfold him, set him on a stump, and have him sit there all night and don´t take the blindfold off until they felt the sun through their blindfold. When they took the blindfold off, there would be their father - he had been there watching over his son the whole time. But none of the other kids could know about it because part of the tradition was that the boy couldn't tell anyone about the experience.

the director then shared another story where his dad, when his mom was gone, took them to a river, blew up the raft, and set them in it, and told them have a good time, and watch out for the pillars of a bridge because it can flip them. then he set them on their way and got in the car to meet them at the bottom. they had fun, but then as the bridge came up the raft was sideways and so one half was paddling for one side, the other was paddling to a different side, and so the support of the bridge flipped them over. they all got to the shore but the raft was gone. they walked down the side of the river, and as they got around the first turn, there was their dad, raft in hand. It turns out that he had driven slowly down the road next to the river out of site, watching carefully, when he was sure that all of his children had made it safely to shore, he went ahead, got the raft, and met them at the next turn.

Both of these are so much like our Heavenly Father - we may not be able to see him, but he's there watching over us even when we're scared and/or feel alone just like the Cherokee father. Also, like the Choir director's father, Heavenly Father has set us on our way, telling us to have a good experience and what to look out for, but as we go through life, he's keeping an eye on us every step of the way, ready and wanting to help if we just ask for it.

busy kaayo dinhi! 6/11/2012 Dallin Carlson

kamusta kamo?

I hope everything's going well for everyone - It's so crazy here, most all of every day is all planned out with everything to do! The language is progressing slowly, it's all about learning for the investigator, so most all that i know is church related. It was kinda funny when my teacher read a line from his packet that he got before he went on his mission - they hadn't had too much materials at all. It said that Cebuano is a jungle language and you learn it by mimicking natives - for now, our teachers are our natives. the letters make the same sound every time you say them - a as in all, u as in illUminate, o as in bOat, i as in EEk. some of the words we are learning (all gospel lesson related, of course) are ebanghelyo for gospel, mga kasulatan for scriptures(mga sounds like manga, and any ng is sort of a sound where you put the back of your tongue to the top of your mouth) if you add mga in front of anything it makes it plural; panahon for time, karon for now. In Cebuano, the name of our religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, translates to Ang Simbahan ni Jesukristo sa mga Santos ulahing adlaw. then The Book of Mormon translates to Ang Basahon ni Mormon. the ni is a non focus noun marker for names; the focus noun marker for names is si (Si JesuKristo mao ang atong manluluwas ug atong manunubos) the general focus noun marker is Ang and the non focus noun marker is sa. these markers can translate to in, to, for, etc., or even just to mark it. Every sentance has a focus, which really defines what the person means to say - I'm liking Cebuano, even though it's frustrating.

Apparently another Cebuano group is going top arrive at the MTC in a couple weeks once we get to 6 weeks (we're finishing up week 4 here) - it's going to be so fun to speak only Cebuano to them when they get here! it'll be way fun to try and immerse them in the language to try and get them to learn faster, and it'll help us to with trying to "magsulti among linguahe" like our teachers are encouraging us to.

pagsincero, si Elder Dallin Carlson

kamusta ang imong adlaw?

kamusta, akong pamilya!

it is seriously sooo busy here - my companion seem to be getting a little closer, we're still struggling, but i guess that's a good thing because otherwise we'd probably be laid-back and not progressing. seriously, every minute of most every day is already planned out - we're even supposed to plan out everything for our study times - what we're going to do and how for each part! It should help us be more effective by doing that in our planning time though. during our last lesson with our teacher (bro. morrey, acting as a phillipino investigator), we were struggling through the lesson, and our teacher paused the lesson and told us that the level of excitement, etc was being set by the investigator, and he was acting bored. Anyways, he proceeded to tell us that we have the most awesome thing to give to the investigator, and we're so focused on the language that we never smile once after we enter the door because we're so worried about the language and nothing else. so next time, we're going to try and forget about the language, teaching the whole lesson, and try to make a bigger impact on the investigator by letting our personalities show through.

gugma ko kanimo!

Elder Carlson

Letter from Elder Dallin 5/28/2012

These are excerpts from a letter from Elder Dallin:

We're finishing at the MTC by July 17 because apparently the way we're learning is fast enough that we'll be able to teach by that time - we still get exactly 9 weeks here, to the day (I did the math with another elder here) and I won't be going to the Philippines MTC, that is strictly for locals.

The other day, I heard that the CIA comes here to the MTC to try and find out how we learn languages so fast.  They let the CIA take copies of this and that, but the CIA can't seem to figure it out.  I guess they don't realize the spiritual aspect or the incentive to learn the language that we have here.  The CIA coming her makes sense though.  They go to recruit at BYU because return missionaries (RM's) are the perfect candidates for it: they often know another language; they're hones and loyal (often previous Boy Scouts); don't drink, smoke, or gamble; etc, etc.

One of my roommates last night randomly asked for a bedtime story - a fishing story.  I was only too happy to oblige; he asked me to tell about a normal fishing day.  I proceeded to explain that the fishing is open from 7am-7pm, so Dad would wake us up at 4am and we would go down to the dock down the hill from our house and get a skiffride to the boat ("skiff" - a metal boat with an outboard put on the back) and we would take the tarp off the net which is wrapped around the huge reel about 4 feet in diameter on the sides and 5 feet wide, then we would head out to the inlet after getting about 100 gallons of gas and a 3.5 x 4 x 4 foot tote of ice.  As we would head out at 5 or 6am, I would have to try and stay awake to check for salmon jumping or "jumpers".

That's about as far as I got before they decided that we needed to get to sleep.  Now whenever they have any questions, they remind each other, "Hey! That's for tonight, remember?!"  Because it has now been made a nightly ritual in our room for me to tell about days of commercial fishing.  If we ever finish with that, I'll start telling them about Bristol Bay!

•Kamusta kita!!!...6/04/2012

sa akong nindot pamilya‏   It is wonderful to my family

kamusta! thanks for the email.

We have mostly Cebuano Classes, and a couple times a week we study doctrine - there's a lot of ;times in the day they fill with "additional study time" where we usually focus on the lesson we'll give to "among mga maestros" as progressive investigators. we have firesides every Sunday and devotionals every Tuesday. most of them have been part of the MTC presidency or the temple president, and the rest seem to have been part of the 70s.

mas mga hunahuna‏  more thoughts

There's only about 18 of us in the whole 2000 missionaries in the MTC learning Cebuano - so our teachers over the three districts are in charge of most all of the books and curriculum we use! the Cebuano speaking missionaries leaving tomorrow are three in total - their district has three missionaries - Sister Fina'i (Samoan),Sister Uitu faleagafulu(also Samoan) and Elder Wiscombe (very American). the weird thing is, though, that Cebuano is the 5th most spoken language in the church, right under Tagolog! the reason that there's only 18 of us is that most of the Cebuano speaking areas have people from the Philippines MTC go there because it can be dangerous in those areas, especially for white people. anyways, most of us Cebuano speaking missionaries here are headed to Cebu, the rest are headed to Tacloban (like my companion). Tacloban is mostly all a Bukid area. Cebu is apparently very Americanized, but the surrounding area is very poor. I heard that the people there are friendly, they'll just want to feed us but sometimes not be interested in the message but only the fact that we're foreign.

So the other day in gym, we were playing volleyball and someone spiked it hard and I swung my arms to hit it with a bump, and even though the ceiling is super high, i knocked out a ceiling tile and it fell down and landed on a corner, so it broke into at least 5 pieces- so we cleaned it up and I think I'll stick with sand volleyball outside from now on :P

Ayo ayo!

Elder Dallin Carlson

p.s. one of the other elders in my district knows someone else on our floor, and so he gave him a funny letter that was actually a dear john that was creative and hilarious! then he got a letter back saying that the other guy was tired of being bossed around and asked about the dr