More Glorious and Bright: Inside a comfort zone, there is little growth, but inside a growth zone, there is little comfort. Korean is my Growth Zone...

Hi kajoke and chingoo! (family and friends)

I don't even have words to describe this week! It's been like sticking a circus on a roller coaster. The MTC is incredible. I'm definitely not fluent in Korean yet but I can speak like a cavewoman, so that's progress. More importantly, my testimony of the Lord and His gospel has just exploded. It's so strange to compare myself with how I was one week ago to how I am now. Then I wonder what I'll be like in 18 months. Hopefully I will have progressed from cavewoman to Neanderthal by then.

Korean is a beautiful language. It's well structured, but it's so unlike English that it's basically starting from scratch. Time and time again this week we have heard the verse "Humble yourself as a child". It was as a child that I learned English, and it's as a child that I think I have to learn Korean. I have to throw all my knowledge out the window and believe everything my teachers tell me.

By the second day, we were teaching an investigator in Korean. Her name is Kim Chameneem (Sister Kim). She is very, very patient! Korean is like reading hieroglyphics, and we read most of that first lesson. It was entirely scripted; we plugged in phrases here and there and had her read for us. The entire room was just spiritually dead. We both felt extremely frustrated with ourselves. The next day teaching her was only slightly better. Then the third day miracles happened. We decided to get rid of our set phrases and teach more by the Spirit - by feeling what she needed to hear and what God wanted her to hear from him. We were blessed with the gift of tongues that day: it was still cavewoman talk but we were able to get our points across. I sang 'I Am a Child of God' in Korean and the Spirit was almost tangible. It was the very first time we saw her show emotion, and it was a truly inspiring moment.

My companion is a blessing and a gift. Her name is Phillips Chameneem (sister phillips) and she's 23 from Sandy Utah. I think so far her most amazing quality has been her patience. I've forgotten my nametag about five times now-I may glue it to my forehead from now on-and every time she's been just fine with it. I've also gotten involved with a number of musical commitments and she's come to every single one without complaint. My love for her grows every day. Also, we've gotten to the point where we start finishing each other's sentences. If that's not love then I don't know what is.

Every single person in our class is truly amazing. Take the smartest and most dedicated person you know, multiply them by nine, and you'll have our class. We're all surprisingly well adjusted as well -- no one has tried knotting their sheets together and climbing out the window, and no one collects their toenail clippings as far as I know. Everyone is incredibly kind and positive.

I take it as a sign of the Lord's plans that my teacher is actually a guy I knew in my third semester of college! Driggs Gyosa (teacher). I didn't even know he spoke Korean. He's been incredibly supportive. Or I think he is. He only speaks Korean in class, so he might be criticizing me nonstop and I'd have no idea.

One phrase that has kept me going is: inside a comfort zone, there is little growth, but inside a growth zone, there is little comfort. Korean is HARD. HARD. I'm an English major; English is my comfort zone. But Korean is my growth zone. The dark is scary and pushing through the soil is hard, but my love for the language and the gospel blossoms more each day.

I've had a few truly incredible experiences so far. When I don't eat well I get really bad headaches and fatigue. Getting them in class is just unfair. It's like slogging through a rainstorm, stuck in the mud, trying desperately to keep dry and clean (see? I'm an English major). I had been doing really well eating healthy, but one day I tried these energy bars and they gave me the worst headache. I just could not do it. I was absolutely exhausted from keeping sixteen hour days and learning nonstop. I prayed for help a few times like this: please just let me get through this, please just let me get through this. It was about all I could manage. Finally, my companion and I went back to our residence to grab some food and meds. I just collapsed onto my knees and started praying. But this time I remembered something from one of our devotionals: "God is not an ATM machine". You can't put your needs and the amount in and then stick out your hand and wait for blessings to fall into it. God wants us to pray because He wants to hear from us and grow closer to Him and love us. So I started off, a little awkwardly, by telling Him how our week had gone. I thanked Him for bringing us so far. I told Him how hard we were working and how tired and frustrated we felt, and how much my head hurt. I closed the prayer and immediately my headache and fatigue were gone. It was night and day. I skipped back to class.

There have been so many other miracles this week. Some are so personal that I don't want to share them. I'll share some though -- they were just so amazing! While walking back from a really awesome temple session, me and my companion studied passing cars to see if I could see any of my friends. I was disappointed not to see anyone, since I was in my college town. Then we got back to the MTC and lo and behold one of my friends was working at the front desk! It was like a smile from God.

I've been working a lot on patience, with myself mostly. One of the first things my president said on meeting me was "you're a perfectionist!" Which is part of why I'm so frustrated about this language. It's a lot of mistakes. But through several experiences I've learned to be patient -- mistakes are how you grow.

For example I decided to audition for a devotional. I love to sing, but don't always love singing in public and I especially hate auditions! There are tons of people -- often VERY important people -- that attend devotionals and judge auditions and I was a nervous wreck leading up to it. (Again, thank you my very patient companion!) Then my pianist and the others I was auditioning with couldn't do it, so I was singing a'cappella, alone, in front of the mission presidents and wives. I thought about quitting too, but I prayed and knew that the Lord would provide. And he did! I found an accompanist! only about five minutes before performing it. It went okay, and now I'm singing for a Tuesday devotional...super excited!

I was also the first new missionary to bear my testimony in church and I did it partly in Korean, which made me so happy. It was a beautiful start to the combining of my testimony with this new language.

Obviously now that I have a companion, I am never alone, but in a different respect I am never alone. Christ is always by my side. I have felt his hands lift me from my knees into His embrace. So many times that I felt alone, I thought it was God preparing me to be strong and learn how to support myself. Then in one truly amazing devotional that the Richardsons (high up administrators) gave, I realized that I had learned to lesson wrong. He wasn't teaching me how to be alone. He was teaching me that I don't have to be. That I can rely on His arm for love and help at all times.

I love this gospel and my calling is true. I love you all. Church is true!

xoxo, Bell Chameneem