Family email-- April 9th

I saved some more time for you guys so I wouldnt have to send a letter and have you guys wait for days to get it!!

Conference weekend came and went FAST!!! We were "encouraged" to watch it in the auditorium, but my zone got special permission to just watch it in our classroom. To illustrate to you exactly why we didn't want to watch it in the auditorium... Imagine 3,000 seats filled with missionaries. Laughy, talky, coughy, stinky missionaries. Also, imagine a chair designed by satan, made for the sole purpose of robbing your bum-tocks of all their feeling. Our class on the other hand was perfect! I got a ton of notes and quotes, and I can't wait to use some of the references in talks and lessons.

I love the packages you guys have been sending!! Especially the last one with all the letters and homemade goodies!! UUUUUUUUnfortunately, the lid to the cinnamon rolls came off at some point, so your letters were a little... sticky. But it wasn't too bad, so don't worry about it!!

I miss everyone a ton, and I wish I could talk to everyone! Annie, thank you so much for watching my baby brother for me! Tell him Alex says PFFbbbtbtbbFFFttbbpppddt... Yeah, just give him a raspberry for me... Megan, try and whip those boys into shape for me. c'mon, I know Taylor and Zach like to drop those passes. Kick their bums. Zach, I'm so excited that you have a fun new show to watch! I'll have to catch up with you when I get back!! GRANITE FLATS BABY!!! Taylor... Make sure that all the BYU games record so I can come home and watch KVN, okay? I want to see all the good plays, can you remember them? Don't forget, Utah smells like stinky diapers!!

And as for Mom and Dad... You guys are awesome!! I feel so supported, and loved... Everything is fine here! Don't even worry about the Elder who didn't get anything... I tattled on his parents to my branch president, and some of the other elders had their parents send him things!! Don't cry for me west jordan! I'm 1/3 of the way done with the MTC!!

With loooooooove,
Elder Lis Xeeb

April 9th-- Of things... more spiritual...

Up until this point, my e-mails have dealt largely with the hardship and trial that I perceive as my mission. In reality this has been no doubt the most spiritual, testimony strengthening experience that I may ever go through. I'll tell you the story of my investigators here at the MTC.

We have "investigators" at the MTC that you actually teach lessons to in your own language. This is the best thing that I've had to do yet at the MTC, as it gets me studying my testimony, prayer, and the principles of the gospel in Hmong. Our first investigator was named Choj Thoj (Keeyaw tah) He was sad that his family had abandoned him, and that since they believed in the "old ways", basically a belief that most Hmong people have in shamanism, he was afraid to be converted. We taught him the very first week we got here, and our lessons were short and involved a lot of mistakes. We told him that God was Jesus' son and in stead of asking "Koj Puas kaw thov vajtswv" Will you pray... we switched out Puas for Paus... which means fart... So the sentence changed to God farted in the middle of the day. We were able to overcome the embarrassment and committed him to baptism, but we didn't feel very successful.

Our next was Voom Xyooj (Vong Shyong) Voom had a strong belief in Christ and in God, so we had a very good place to start. He was most definitely a family man, and so naturally we've taught him that families can be together forever. He accepted everything that we threw at him, committing to read the book of mormon, read the proclamation to the family, and pray every single night with his family. We were so excited when we extended the invitation to be baptized, thinking he would accept willingly... He began his response with "aw" (aoo, yes) but finished with a series of questions we weren't able to translate. We walked out of the room completely frustrated, and in no mood to prepare yet another lesson for our third investigator, Npis Vaj (nbee vah)

Npis was an ua li (ooa lee, former gangster) and he felt very guilty and very ashamed of what he had done. In each of our visits he had a very sullen, depressed demeanor. Our first attempt to connect with him, we talked to him about the plan of salvation... Not very effective. Our next we taught him of the love of our Savior... He perked up a little bit, and we even had him say our closing prayer. But the third time we had prepared what we had expected to be an absolutely killer lesson. We had prepared a lesson about faith, and we were ready to deliver it to him, and have him come to the knowlege of our gospel. 45 minutes before we were going to give our lesson, we were prompted to teach him about repentance and baptism. We had absolutely nothing prepared on this topic, but we did. not. hesitate. We immediately scrapped everything we had worked on for two days in favor of a lesson we had not even an hour to prepare. My two companions and I worked our hardest, put together a lesson dealing with the atonement, repentance, and baptism, and prayed for inspiration and the gift of tongues at his doorstep. We taught him, testified to him, and at one point he even had 2 hmong bibles and 2 hmong PnMs (that stands for Phau ntawd Maumoos, Pow Ndow mowmong, book of mormon) finally the time came to ask him to be baptized, I said a prayer in my heart, and we asked. Immediately he said yes, with a huge smile on his face. That is absolutely the strongest I have felt the spirit here at the MTC!

Wish I could keep writing!! But I've got some duties to attend to! Until next time...


Love,
Elder Lis Xeeb

Week 2! AND PICTURES!!

We opened up our mailbox today to find a few letters from Alex, one containing his memory card from his camera so we FINALLY got to see some pictures!!! He also sent us an email today so we got to learn a lot about his experiences during the last week! Here's his email from this week:

I just got back from a session at the temple, so I am riding on a total spiritual high right now!!! This morning we got up at 4:30 like we do every Tuesday morning to do our laundry... It's hard for me to believe that so many elders and sisters could be getting up much earlier than we are, but by the time we got there there were those who were already finished!! The cycles alone each take 35 minutes, so you can do the math yourselves... Luckily I had some mail to respond to and the morning flew by! (I even snuck in a quick nap... shhhhhh....) We then prepared ourselves for initiatory work at the temple. For some reason we were the first ones there, but the last ones to start. Afterwards we had a DELICIOUS breakfast which for me included biscuits and gravy which only reminded me of home. Not that they were anywhere near the quality of my mom's cooking!!! The whole morning went mostly without flaw... mostly... I found out halfway through my initiatory work that my left sock was inside out the whole time!! And then one of my names was (I kid you not) Hilarius Jochmans. I couldn't get the image of a Jamaican man telling me how funny sombody's joke just was... I may or may not have let out a few squeaky little giggles.

People still question about our mission call. A temple worker even commented on our name tags... he said "Well, congratulations, those name tags are the longest I've ever seen." I will now demonstrate to you just how long these name tags really are.......

Yexus Khetos Yaysoo kaytah
lub koom txoos loo kong tsong
ntawm tsoom indau jong
haiv neeg ntseeg high nang njeng
hauv hnub nyoog kawg how hnoo nyong gow

Yikes!! Lucky for me, I was able to memorize this without much difficulty... along with prayer (Txoj kev Thov Vajtsw, tsah kay toe vatjoo) and my testimony!!

We had a special Easter devotional this past Sunday where the Bishop of the presiding bishopric of the church, Bishop Causse, came to speak with us. We also had a first for the MTC... They blessed and passed the sacrament to nearly 4,000 missionaries all at once!! It was a truly spiritual experience that I am glad that I was blessed with. I don't think I will ever forget just how quiet a group of rowdy 18-21 year olds can be when the spirit is presiding over a meeting.

It's been raining all morning here, and we just absolutely love it!! This morning my companions, Elder Cook and Elder Mckay, talked about how lucky we are... For one, living in this time period is a huge blessing! I will never have to worry about the Lamanites trying to scalp me or anything.... We live in a great country, we have the best mission call in the MTC, we all love our families, and they love us, and standing in front of the Provo temple looking out over the valley this morning I felt extremely blessed to be a witness to God's handiwork... (Cougar stadium had almost nothing to do with that)

I love hearing from everybody, and I wish I had time to respond to every letter!! I'll do my best to get everybody at sometime or another... But just know how much I love each and every one of you, and how blessed I feel to have such a wonderful support group (cheerleaders as some refer to them as). Pray for me! I pray for you all daily!

Love,

Elder Lis Xeeb

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Now for my short time writing just my immediate family.....

Thank you all so much for sending all those great things in the packages and letters. In the many times that I've felt discouraged and a little bit lost here, reading over your letters again and again gives me the strength to go on!!

I'll try to answer as many questions in 3 minutes as I can...

Life here is great! we like how close we've gotten

I'm sending the SD card home with instructions and a list of all the pictures on it, I'll buy a new one here, but send back that one so we'll mail it back and forth and I'll always have one to take pictures with.

I'm not sure if any of my comps are cute... we call that a page 33 referring to pg 33 of our missionary guidebook saying no flirting... [This wasn't a question from Megan or me... but rather Dad asking if his companions were cute! HA!!]

That's the best I can do in my short time... But expect my letter in the next few days!!

P.S. Megan... you're cranky and you need a nap, so take a nap!! is on rugrats...... the grand canyon one.

P.P.S. Dad, out of all the things I got in my last package, the BYU box scores were the best... even better than the shorts!!

P.P.P.S Send me some AXE body spray... I stink!!

P.P.P.P.S....... Everyone here keeps singing Les Mis. There. Is. No. Escape...

LOVE Y'ALL!!!

P.P.P.P.P.S... post my e-mail and my MTC address if you haven't already... I love me some mail!!!

 

Elder McKay, Elder Cook, Alex

All the steps in saying a Hmong prayer!

 Alex with some other elders in his district

Hmong materials

Alex's first email!!

Everyday after Alex left, we'd check our email, hoping it would be Alex's P-Day that day. We had to wait 5 days to get a letter from him, and the next day (on Tuesday) it was FINALLY his P-Day so he was able to email us! It was awesome that we got a letter AND an email last week!

He's already doing awesome with the language and is LOVING his companions and the classes he goes to each day! We're so excited for him!

 

Here's his email!

Oh my goodness!! It feels so good to finally be able to communicate with everyone!! Of course my P-day is the day before I came in so I had to wait an entire week to be able to write you guys!! What a busy week we've had so far. We began by putting all of our bags in our dorm. I was the first one in there so I claimed both the best bed, closet, AND desk! I was pretty happy about that. Then I went to the classroom where my teacher for over an hour bombarded us with hmong... Out of all the words he said, we basically only picked up "Nyob zoo!" (Nyah-zhong) which means hello, and "Kuv lu npe..." (koo-loompay) which is My name is. Later my teacher told us that trying to learn a language is like trying to catch the water from a firehose with a sacrament cup. You may only catch one word until you're able to understand the language and your cup expands. The food here, contrary to everything I've been told on my Olson and Larsen side, is NOT steak and potatoes every day... In fact, my companions and I are pretty sure that the food here is our LEAST favorite thing about our MTC experience.
My companions Elder Cook and Elder McKay are pretty decent so far. We love being in what we call a "Tri-panionship" We actually get along really well. Since there are only 7 total Lus Hmoob (Loo-Mong) speaking missionaries in the whole MTC (almost 4000) we seem like one really large companionship of 7. We all love the language and we seem to be progressing extremely well.
On our second day we had an orientation with our branch presidency (basically our bishopric) and afterward they held interviews with us. Our president, president Jackson, interviewed me. He made note of my Olson legs as they were bouncing up and down pretty furiously. He also told me that he did a lot of buisiness in Milwaukee, and it was his absolute favorite place in the whole world!! That was so good to be able to talk about with someone with the experience of actually being there. Anyway, not 2 minutes after the interview, I was called back, and my heart dropped!! They must have found out that I skipped out on doing my fast offerings that one week!! I was sure I was to be sent home when President Jackson extended me the calling of District Leader!! I was shocked, and accepted of course! I was sustained on sunday, and had my first difficult time only a couple of hours later. I was approached by somebody in the district, and he told me that he wasnt fully repentant, and felt he needed to meet with the branch president. We all scrambled and were able to set up a meeting, and all is well with him now. Everyone is so glad that we get to have him back, but especially me. I knew how hard it was for him to come forward and admit that, so as he went into an interview room with President Jackson, I prayed and pleaded with God to let this kind Elder stay with us. The spirit was very strong, and I was elated when he came out and told me the news.
I miss everyone so much, and 30 minutes is NOT enough time to write to everyone!! I hope you all don't mind me sending out one big letter! I absolutely LOVE getting packages and mail through dear elder, because if anyone sends it through E-mail, I wont have the time to read it. I have taken a ton of pictures, but I can't even send those because I don't have an sd card reader!! So I'm thinking I'll just send it home in a letter and have my family post it and/or send it through E-mail. I have a MILLION more things to say, but alas, my time is running short :/ I'll end with a quote from our last devotional...
"2 missionaries is a companionship... 4 is a party... and 6 is a disaster!!... Especially if they're Elders!!"

Love you all So much!! SEND ME MAIL THROUGH DEAR ELDER!!!!!!! Mail here is like Gold!!!!

,Elder Lis Xeeb (lee-seng)

 

The hardest day yet!

Last Wednesday, March 20th, Alex left for the MTC. Megan and Zach had school that day so Zach said his final goodbye the night before, and Megan was lucky to catch Alex awake that morning. Alex spent the morning doing some last minute packing and tying all the loose ends together before he left. At about 10:30, all his luggage was zipped up and Alex was more than ready to go. He was so excited to go!!! Saying goodbye was certainly harder than we expected, especially for Taylor who had to say goodbye to his best buddy!

The day finally came...

...when we had to say our goodbyes to our  brother, son, and friend. On Tuesday, March 19th, Alex was given the choice of where he wanted to eat out for his last dinner with us before entering the MTC. Alex chose Chinese takeout from Golden China (a definite favorite of ours!). After we ate, Alex gave each of his siblings a special gift that would help us remind us of him. The gifts were all very thoughtful!

Taylor LOVES his blanket from Alex!

 Later, we went to the Stake Center to have Alex be set apart as a missionary.

The festivities weren't quite over for us yet! Alex was craving some delicious Leatherby's, and how could we say no?! This would be our last time as a family of 8 in a restaurant until he comes home!

 



 

All around, it was a special night full of the Spirit. We are sure going to miss Al, but we know that he'll be an AMAZING missionary while he's teaching the people in Milwaukee!

Alex's Farewell!

Alex's farewell was on March 10th, and he had a ton of support from family and friends who came to hear his talk in sacrament meeting. He did an amazing job on his talk, and had many people to greet in the chapel afterwards. After that, both sides of the family came to eat at Aunt Lindsey's house. What a fantastic day!

We made some delicious cupcakes with missionary name tags and shirts and ties for decoration!

Alex had the opportunity to stand in the circle while his babyTanner got blessed on the same day. It was a special moment for Alex to be a part of such a special blessing.