Love you, mom

Our new zone 

Weird Sunday selfie

The early morning pday laundry grind

The best district ever!

The teacher left for a quick sec;)

Very much a spiritual grind this week!

To start off our week we got to do TRC! It is a weekly occurrence, but a really good way to start off the week. The members are very kind when it comes to our lack in korean knowledge. One of the people we taught actually new my dad and my brother Daniel which is so cool! He was very nice and we felt the spirit a lot when we asked him to read the Book of Mormon everyday that week, because he wasn’t currently reading everyday.

I think I will soon either get an allergy towards boiled eggs, or become one soon because that is all I eat for breakfast! Sometimes(all the time)I miss my moms awesome eggs and toast breakfast, and her awesome Sunday dinners, and our very frequent trips for burgers...but it’s alright! The food here is great, but you have to be very careful about what you eat so you don’t get unhealthy.

I got to see and talk to elder Abo and elder Bagley a lot this week. These to elders are two of my best friends and have been for a long time. It is so good to know that they are doing the same thing that I am doing. They keep the missionary life interesting for sure. It’s good to see their familiar faces all the time.

My companion and I had a cool experience this week that really struck me and I would love to share it all with you guys. It had been stormy all day with rain coming and then going. But right as class got out, and all the missionaries started walking to their dorms, it just started to POUR WATER! Everyone was getting soaked and it was letting up. My comp and I decided to sprint back to our dorms and grab our umbrellas (that we were convinced we would never use in the MTC, but the mommas insisted) and found soaking wet sisters and walked them to their dorm buildings. We got to help quite a few between the two of us and it was great! This experience reminds me what missionaries are out to do in a spiritual sense. We come and we provide them shelter from the storm of the adversary and guide and lead them to the place of safety that is gurentee them shelter from the storm! So awesome! The Lord is so amazing!

We got to hear from Elder Christopherson this week as am MTC body. Really cool to hear his insights on the importance of emphasizing the correct name of the church in all that we do. He said that all good things should be done in the name of Jesus Christ, whether literally or just having him in your mind all the time. Let us all make a conscious effort to follow the divine correction the Lord has put forth.

The work is amazing and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is amazing! His doctrine is the truest doctrine to ever Grace the lips a person or appear on the pages of books. I know that He lives! I know that He visited many people’s in the world after his divine resurrection! Let us all Rejoice!!

Love you all! 

Elder Meeks

Pictures

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Love you to the moon and back again! I can’t believe how lucky I am to have a mom as amazing as you! I am all safe and i am not the smelly kid! 

Your son, 

Elder Meeks

Saying goodbye to Elder Kearl (my good friend from Chinese Camp) before he leaves!

Soda PARTY with our zone!

Saying goodbye to all the Korean Elders, love them SOSOSOOSO much!

Us deciding where we want to serve as old people. Elder Hanks: Antartica. Elder Gonzales: The Atlantic Ocean. Elder Skousen: Greenland. Me: Jerusalem...Shalom

Hey Friends and Family! 

I hope you are all doing well and have had an amazing week!

I started my week off with some interesting stuff that may or may not have failed kind of miserably!! We had our first TRC was on monday night right after I sent my last email. TRC is when you teach people who are members that speak fluent korean a lesson on any topic you choose. Are instructed NOT to speak any english to you! So my comp and I go in with the Gift of Tongues in our minds and you know what happened? Sadly not miraculous fluent understanding of korean. Our investigator told us about dream he had about prayer and a lot of other stuff, but we had no clue what he was saying so we just nodded our heads and acted like we understood, bore our testimony's, and closed with a prayer. It's super cool to be able to bear our testimonies in korean and pray. The gospel becomes so real and meaningful when you have to think about every single word that you are saying. In regards to the lesson though, I see the nod and not understanding being the pattern in the future for sure!

I am starting my fourth week of being at the MTC!!!!!!! SO CRAZY! This is officially the longest time I have ever been away from home. Mom and Dad might be feeling a little weird right now because they don't know what to do with themselves now that I have been gone;) Oh and shout out to my sister Jessica in Taiwan right now for hitting her year mark this week! She is such an amazing missionary and has the sweetest spirit. I look up to her so much and hope to be the missionary she is someday!

This week I got to sing in the Choir for the MTC. When missionaries say that choir is the one thing that can turn a ish week into a good week, they are not lying! Brother Eggett (the choir director) makes you so happy! He tells entrancing stories of his life or lives of the prophets that has the complete attention of almost 1000 missionaries. He is an incredible man and definietly will be a general authority someday. Also, music is such a relieving aspect of missionary life. As most people who know me know, I can't be in a conversation without relating what is being said to some song that I have heard. I think in the terms of music. So having choir gives me release from all the stresses I am having and just lets me be into my groove. I KNOW that the Spirit totally testifies through music and it is amazing.

My district is absolutely incredible. Each missionary adds something knew and exciting everyday. The classroom is always so SO fun and everyone is working hard and wanting to learn more korean, testify of Christ, and eat all the yummy snacks that mom sends me! So much fun in the classroom and it is a sacred place where we can feel the Holy Spirit and feel Christ's love for us more fully. Each day is different because we are studying different aspects of the gospel every single day. We study them first in english and get an understanding of them, then we go straight into korean and learn sentences and vocab that will help us give a summary and explanation of that gospel topic. It is crazy HOW MUCH there is to learn in so little time. My comp and I are especially working hard right now so we can more effectively learn the language and be able to teach in it. We have also made so super heroic district goals that are pushing us to the next level of korean. Our district eats together, walks together, prays together, and laughs together! We are all striving to achieve the principle set forth in D&C 88: 119 and apply it to our district. Being the district leader for the first three weeks was such a great opportunity and I am so grateful that I could teach lessons and encourage all the missionaries to work harder and have more conviction for the gospel. Elder Guthrie was assigned to be the new district leader on Sunday and I know that He is going to do Great!

Sunday night was one of the funnest nights in the MTC! A large part of our zone headed out to korea this morning at 3am so everyone decided to celebrate! Some of the elders had a HUGE stash of sodas in their room. Like 60 cans of soda that they had collected. They busted all of them out and everyone just laughing and drinking lots and lots of soda. Super SUPER fun. My comp versed one of the outgoing missionaries in a chugging contest, but he lost...#mormondrinkingparty #whitehandbook #hmmmIwonderifthisismissionaryappropriate. I also had another pepper, a DRY one this time! Which is like way WAY worse. Cried some and had some major heartburn for a while. Nothing a little BOM reading couldn't heal right?;) 

Not a ton to talk about this week SORRY! The life in the MTC is pretty repatitive sometimes, but korea will be much more interesting. 

The last thing I want to share is a something that I have been thinking a lot about his week. 1 Timothy 4:12 says "be an example of the believers." I was thinking how to help my district out this week with a thought that could inspire them to be better and to step of their missionary game! Cuz who doesn't need to step up their game right:) I was thinking that here at the MTC, everyone is mormon and everyone is a missionary so it can be easy to think that you are apart of some big collective. When you think this, you start losing you vision of your own individual mission and purpose. I was thinking in our Branch Council meeting and it came to me! Let us be an example TO the believers. We when do that, we separate ourselves from this collective that is a like a big black hole in the MTC and become individual missionaries of Christ's church. As we do this, we create a new collective. A righteous collective. A collective where everyone knows who they are personally, but knows that without a doubt that the person next to them is just as essential to the work as they are. This is just a simple thought, but it can have so much meaning! I hope you all will think about this a little this week and find places and situations where you are surrounded by believers, and be an example to them!

Love you all!

Elder Meeks

Personal Revelation

Just a chillin selfie me and my comp took today.

Ultimate revelation desk set up!

My district this morning eating breakfast and doing laundry.

The very boring devotional where elder hanks(and me before that) fell asleep.

Elder Guthrie after he punished 11 bananas

Casual district selfie during the break between our classes .

Sister Urbano’s body guard to the drinking fountain and back #doitforlarry

I LOVE KOREA!!!!!!!

Hi all,

Jacob asked me to edit a letter from him to go out to the group.  He wrote his dad and me long letters this week, so the group email is a little shorter. Sorry, not sorry. :)   He is doing great. 

Dear Friends and Family

 

It was a good week! We got to learn so much stuff in Korean and it’s great,! I can pray pretty well in Korean, I can teach about prayers and invite people to pray and testify of prayer and it’s power. I can do a lot of things in Korean and it only gets harder! I get to teach my first real lesson tonight to a real person. The person is a member tho so no pressure. It’s all in Korean tho so that will be very difficult! Super excited tho. Our teachers are just incredible. They make it worth going to class when it seems so tedious. So lucky to have sister Holmes and Sister Gardinder.

My comp and I are getting along great! We don’t have a ton of things in common which isn’t bad, but just makes for silences sometimes. He is super energetic and very fun to be around. We can joke around and tease each other a lot which is cool! He is definitely not a time waster which makes me want to be more time efficient! He pushes me really hard in Korean which is super awesome! I hope to start being able to talk as well as he does soon. 

My district is super great! Like I said before we have 7 people in our district. Me and my comp, elder Guthrie and elder Dunn who are my other roommates and they are from Bountiful and Holiday. Then there is Elder hanks and elder Gonzales who are from salt lake area and phillipines. The last one who is sister Urbano who is riding solo and she is 

also from the Philippines. She is so funny and so sparky. Love talking to.

Our zone usually plays volleyball everyday at the gym which is the worst because I am SO BAD AT VOLLEYBALL!  It is probably very funny watching me because I struggle a lot haha. We played spike ball today tho so was sosososo fun. Elder hanks is super good so it got pretty intense. Hmmmm just the way I like it!

We just got some new Tongan and Samoan elders on our floor and they know how to party. We got chants, strength competitions, loud roars and burps, and a lot a lot of love. They are such nice guys it’s hard not to like them really. It is so cool to see the change that happens in these people. You can tell that every one just wants to be nice! 

I see Kallin, Kai, and Jonah almost everyday which is super awesome to have those guys to talk to and be with! I have other guys i know here. Like elder kearl who was one of my good buddies at startalk and is now my stake pres. super cool!

Oh and I just wanted to say...CINNAMON BREAD COMING IN CLUTCH...AKA MOM COMIING IN CLUTCH! It made my entire week finding that cinnamon break in the package! Everyone thought I got new shoes, but I told them it was even better than new shoes! Thanks for the memes and quotes as well, i shared one of them in my district meeting and we had a great discussion about it! 

Love you mom! Have a great week!

Elder Meeks

What a GREAT week!

Hey mom! 

Just to let you know, I am having the time of my life! I am so grateful for your constant encouragement for me to go on a mission. It has already changed the way I look upon the gospel and life in general.

To start off, my companion is Elder Skousen. He is from draper utah and he went to Corner Canyon high school. He is SO awesome! He has so much energy and loves to learn korean so we mesh very well together. He is more hyper then me which is saying A LOT so we keep the classroom interesting haha. The rest of our district and zone are super nice and fun people! I am very grateful to them and all they have done to help me feel comfortable and at home. 

The first day was pretty hecktic! I got once I said goodbye, it was 110% GO GO GO! We walked fast everywhere and I was so excited. This means I sweat a lot the first day! At the end of the day, you could definitley call me the stinky kid:) We met with the MTC presidency at the very beginning to have a devotional to welcome us. It was super exciting to hear them speak! Very good men and their wives are all a little sassy and spitfire which makes the meetings super funny. Oh but before that I went to my classroom and had a few hours of class. Of course she only spoke korean to us, but I was so excited that I didn't even care. We learned the alphabet the first day so it wasn't too hard. 

The rest of the week has been so much fun! The second day I got asked to get a haircut by my branch president(who is like the most strict branch president in the entire MTC) and asked to be the district leader in the next second. I guess hair doesn't signify spirituality right;). Super fun time eating with all my new friends and stuff too! They are such a blast and it is never a dull moment when elder Skousen is around. 

It has been super spiritual to study the scriptures so much this week. I already am falling in love with them and can't wait for study time. We have been reading the white bible as much as we can as a companionship because we want to be as prepared as possible and we want to test the promises by the MTC that exact obedience will bring miracles. The language study is SUPER hard and is totally going to be a challenge until the end of my mission. I can already decently pray and stuff so that is super awesome! I can't wait to learn more and more!

We played volleyball as a zone on Saturday which was SOOOOOOOOOO fun. Everyone was having a good time and it really helped us new missionaries feel better about the first week cuz it was harddddddd. 

Sunday was by far the longest day. We had meetings from 7:20am to 9:00pm with only choir and dinner as our break time because it was fast Sunday. It was really cool to see how President Facer(our branch President) conducted the meetings with a calm and peaceful spirituality that really helped us focus on the meaning of Sunday, which is Jesus Christ. The entire zone bore their testimony in sacrament meeting and it was so cool to see how each one of the missionaries came out for different reasons, but all have focused in on Jesus Christ and embodying his true character. I LOVED the movie that we watch by the end of the night. It was a devotional given by Elder Bednar at the MTC and it is called "Christlike Character". Literally changed my whole outlook on missionary work! I had a few ugly cries watching it for sure.

I am going to include a lot of this stuff in my main email, but just wanted to share with you all of my experiences! 

I love you mom! Hope you had an amazing week! Tell me all about it! 

Elder Meeks

Safe and Sound

I am here! I am safe! I am loving it so SOSOSOSO much already. My teacher is super sweet and knows of daniel! All the elders with me are quite confused...same!!!!! My Pday is on Monday btw!

Love you all and I hope you are doing alright.

P.S. 

Hopefully daniel's motorcycle didn't get confiscated! 

Yours truly, 

Elder Meeks

The Drop Off

A yummy meal and The Pizza Factory, fun pictures at the temple, a foiled attempt to drop off the missionary on the back of a motorcycle, and some ugly tears from the mama, make for a wonderful and gut-wrenching day.