Dear beloved friends and family,

This has been a great week! I'm still doing my best to learn quickly and to try to improve every day. Our lessons have been getting better and better, which has been encouraging. I've been getting better and better at teaching lessons without script at all, English or Korean, and just making up my own Korean sentences that relate to the topics and/or questions of the investigators. One lesson we had this week went really well. We ended up not even really following the plan we had set, but just worked on answering her questions. I had the chance to recite the first vision in Korean and the Spirit was so strong. It was just a testimony to me about how powerful and true that experience really is. There is a reason that that is one of the only things we are specifically asked to memorize as missionaries. It was a cool experience.

Here are a few fun/interesting things that happened this week. Just a couple nights ago, my companion woke up in the middle of the night with a scripture in mind that he felt he needed to write down. He keeps his planner and a pencil next to his bed in case some thing like that happens. When he woke up in the morning, he had written D&C 19:43:19. He was pretty sure he meant D&C 43:19 (and there aren't even 43 verses in section 19), so we looked it up to see what revelation he had received. It ended up being something like "Gird up your loins that ye may not be found among the wicked." We all laughed and it was pretty funny that he had essential received condemning "revelation" in his sleep. Maybe that was something he needed, but it definitely was unexpected.

Another funny thing that happened is that during class this week, one of my teachers said he was going to show us something crazy/awesome, so he began taking off his shoes and said we all had to close our eyes until he said we could open them. I had no idea what he was doing and I thought he was going to have prosthetic feet or something... It turned out that he was showing us some awesome socks he got in Korea that he was wearing underneath his church socks and they were pretty awesome. They were the mushroom from mario with half of his face on each foot. It was funny. Everyone in the district was then excited both to buy cheap ties and awesome socks in Korea. So I'll keep my eye out for awesome ties and socks to send/bring home.

It has been sad but nice at the same time to have the older group of missionaries gone because the lines are a lot shorter. But I'm way excited to be getting the new set of Korean missionaries tomorrow and the new set of 23 Native Korean missionaries next Monday. We are getting 31 new missionaries tomorrow, but the crazy part is that 20 of them are Sisters!! Every new districts has almost twice as many Sisters as Elders. I've heard that other districts in the MTC have all Sisters and they are trying to figure out with Church Headquarters what to call the Sister equivalent of a district leader for those situations. It is so interesting to see the changes they are having to make to adapt to this crazy, yet incredible situation.

Probably the best part about this week, though, has been the incredible talks and devotionals.

Last Tuesday (a week ago) we had Elder Ballard come for our MTC devotional. It was incredible to feel the power and authority that he has as an apostle of God, just by sitting in the same room as him. He talked a lot about how Christ is so central to everything we do and everything in the Gospel and it reminded me where my focus really needs to be. We also had an incredible devotion by the Provo Temple President this Sunday. He talked about how powerful, important, and holy the temple really is. He reminded me about how the temple is really the only place on earth we can learn and gain the power necessary to become like our Father in Heaven. It was inspiring! Probably my favorite, though, was a film we watched of Elder Bednar's MTC talk, "The Character of Christ." Essentially, he talked about how the Character of Christ is learning to always turn outward rather than inward. That is exactly what Christ did 100% of the time. It is so hard to try to turn outward and seek to love and serve others when we are in the midst of trial, pain, and affliction, and really it is not even possible to do it ourselves. But He talked about how through the healing power of the atonement, if we turn our sorrow and pain over to the Lord through His atonement as we look outward in service to others, then He promises to lift us and bless us enough to continue to do His work. It was pretty much a life-changing talk. I loved it!

That's pretty much it for this week. It is crazy that I've been here 6 weeks already and that 3 weeks from today I will be in Korea! Time flies. I am so grateful for every one of you and for your love and support! God bless you all!

-Love, Elder Tolman