Saturday, November 30, 2013

November 30, 2013 Provo MTC

November 30, 2013

Kumusta, pamilya ko!

Talk about leaving the MTC with a bang. This week. Haha. I just love thinking about it right now. I'll start with what happened Sunday night. 

So, since about Wednesday last week, I would walk into the dorm, put my stuff on my desk, inhale, and then exclaim "Oh my gosh it smells like feces over here." I was use to this smell though, considering what the food here had done to our digestive systems. So I didn't think much of it for a while, partly because we weren't in our room very often, and partly because everything here in any room smells awful. We are representatives of Jesus Christ, and we're all doing our part, but we still smell like 18 year old boys. 

Sunday night, though, the smell from my desk was unbearable. I yelled "Ok, Elder Peterson, we're going to find what is smelling this place up, and we're going to find it now." He agreed promptly, as well as Elder McCausland, and we began searching my desk. As we searched, Elder Peterson held up a bag of cookies that I hadn't touched in a while (from the Parry's). His eyes became wide with fear. He then turned the bag to Elder McCausland, who immediately began dry heaving. I have to say, on the bottom of the list of things I thought this smell could be coming from was the thing placed before my eyes, but it made perfect sense. 

Yes, inside the bag of cookies... Was a human poop. ( Meant to be read like the Aunt from My Big Fat Greek Wedding)

Your thoughts were my thoughts exactly. "What? Why? Here? Poop?". We immediately got dressed back up and headed to the front office, where we called Brother Cristofferson and talked to the front desk security clerk. They both reacted the same way. "You found a what in the bag?" Our district was completely dumbfounded as well. We didn't know who could have done this. As we all came back to the room, Elder Sefita exclaimed "Something still smells like poop in here." We assured him it was just residue from the previous resident. But then, our nostrils were consumed once again. We started searching. Elder Sefita found one of his Pringles cans. He smelled. "Ohp. I found it." Elder Peterson held the can over the bathroom trashcan. I carefully opened the lid with the outside of my fingernail. We looked in the can, dropped it in the trash, and ran back to the room with faces that can only be described as "pure denial". Two poops were placed in our room. How did this happen? Who could have done this? But we were faithfully reassured by the District Presidency and President Howard that whoever did this would be caught, and immediately sent home. 

This is all hilarious in retrospect, but I just want you to know that when things like this happen, missionaries get sent home, because obviously their minds are not in the right place. They are wasting their time in a place like this if the best they can do is poop in someones things. And that doesn't always mean someone else sends them home forcefully. They go home, because they realize they haven't taken the time or the sacrifice to find out what this work is really about. Which is a shame, because it is a great work, which is a work we should all be a part of in our own ways.

We had some amazing speakers at the devotionals and Thanksgiving programs. Russel M Nelson came, so that was awesome. He addressed the importance of implementing ward help during our missions. And guess who the other speaker was? A Filipino member of the Seventy. Yeah, I'm going to pretty much the best mission ever. Tagalog is going to be such a blessing in my life, I just know it. I have a feeling I will miss that language and these people so deeply when I leave, that I probably won't be a whole lot of fun to be around when I get back. I'll just teach you all Tagalog. 

Speaking of the Philippines, fun fact for ya: When you ask for directions there, most of the time they just come with you to wherever it is. "Hey, do you know where the bank is?" "Yeah, let's go together!" "Do you need to go to the bank too?" "Nope, but it sounds fun!"

SO basically everyone there is awesome.

I've been so anxious to get out to the field this week, with flight plans and all. Oh, so on the 2nd of December, my flight out of Salt Lake leaves at 7:30 in the morning, and we arrive in Detroit at about noon, then the next flight to Manila leaves at about 3:30. So there's the windows for calling, do you want to do just one call while I'm in Detroit? The window there would be about 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM, or something like that. I don't know what you guyzz schedules are like so hindi ko alam(I don't know). I'd be fine without a call too. It's up to you. 

We said goodbye to our teachers this week. They are both so amazing, but I will especially miss Brother Soderquist. His accent and tone with the language has helped me so much in sounding like a native speaker. It's so fun to speak Tagalog, so I'm excited to go to a place where you don't have to speak English to everyone! English is so lame. No offense to you English speakers out there. Tagalog is the bomb. 

Here's another word in Tagalog that is awesome. Ayos. It means "to fix", but they use it as slang there for "great!" or "awesome!". Pronounce it like Eye-ohs.

Thank you so much for the Christmas package! Awesomesauce! I love the pictures. So good. 

Thank you Cannon family for the giant package of pictures and books and letters! I love you all so much! I'm going to be looking at those drawings for the duration of my mission. This means a whole lot to me. Thank you so much. 

Oh, and thank you to aunt Ann for the package! We've been having fun with that whirlygig. 

Alam ko po na totoo ang simbahan ni Jesucristo and mga banal ng mga huling araw, at sa pamamagitan ng pagsunod natin, tatanggap po tayo ng mga sagot at patnubay. Alam ko po, dahil sa nangyari po ako. Alam ko po na totoo ang Aklat ni Mormon, at kung magbabasa po tayo niya, magbabasbas po ang Espiritu Santo sa atin kasama magdiscernment mali at tama. Sinasabi po ako ito sa pangalin ni Jesucristo, amen.

-Elder Kocherhans

Oh, and the beans!...
I forgot about this somehow, but we had an enormous humanitarian project that I got to lead in on Thanksgiving. They trained me in how to run the assembly line, and helped with a lot of other things. We packaged 350,000 bags of soup for hungry children all across Utah. It was so fun to be apart of. The organization who ran it was not Mormon, but our parting gift to them was copies of the Book of Mormon for them to read over. I really hope we were able to touch them with our spirit of service. It's so great to be a missionary at a time such as this.










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