Elder Brigham Blackhurst: GUESS WHO SAW ELDER BEDNAR

So I had every intention of titling this email "Guess who saw Elder Bednar" all week long and then was going to make the first line something among the lines of "If you guessed me, you'd be wrong". Except then he showed up last night and kinda spoiled the joke but it's fine because Elder Bednar. More about that later on.

Hello everybody! Still hanging in there. We hit halfway yesterday. I can't believe I've been here for 4 1/2 weeks already. I can't believe I'm only 4 1/2 weeks away from Australia. I'm more excited with every passing day. MTC life is same as always. But I'm still loving every minute of it. We decided as a district that, really, we only have four real days left of work...because if you think about it, you've got Friday, which is the beginning of the weekend, so it doesn't count, then Saturday AKA Yoga day, which doesn't count, then Sunday, which is beautiful and a break and doesn't count, and then Monday which is P Day and therefore doesn't count, and then Tuesday is devotional night (doesn't count), and then Wednesday which is halfway through the week and we get to go out to the field for exercise, so it doesn't count. All in all, we've only got four days left until the mission field. The rest is just fun work. We love it here.

A few fun stories. At the end of last week, one of the Elders in my district made a comment about us not having to worry about our investigator being a smoker because we couldn't smell cigarette smoke in the room. We all laughed and our teacher, who also poses as our investigator, smiled. Come Monday's lesson, we go in, and lo and behold, he's got a rolled up piece of paper resembling a cigarette that he's pretending to smoke throughout the lesson. Here we were, supposed to be role-playing, and we could barely contain from laughing.

One of the beautiful perks of the cafeteria at the MTC is the unlimited ice cream. Often after a meal, I'll treat myself to an orange Creamsicle. No harm in that. The other day, I decided that it would be a good idea to stick my tongue flat up against Creamsicle that was particularly frozen. (All of my non-Arizona friends are probably laughing at me.) I had an A Christmas Story light pole moment. My companion had to tear it off. Didn't taste much for the rest the day. Good times.

We also came to the consensus that, after attempting to get through 2nd Nephi, it'll probably be easier to learn Chinese and read the translation instead of crawling through Isaiah in English. So that was fun.

As far as Chinese, I'm really starting to get into the swing of things. I pick up 20 to 30 words off of flashcards a day. Everyone talks about finding "the thing that works for you" as far as learning a language. I found that as I attach stupid pictures or stories to the sounds in the pinyin, it'll stick. The number of puns I've come up with in the last week is pretty ridiculous. But hey – if it helps me learn Chinese, so be it. I'm sure both my father and Miles would be proud.

More often than not, I'll find two or three words in Chinese that, in English, would be captured by a single word. I've only found one example that goes the other way: the Chinese word 問題 "wenti", which translates to both "problem" and "question". This bothered me at first. Sometimes I want to say problem, and sometimes I want to say question, and there's a pretty solid difference between the two in my mind. And then I stopped to think about it. How often we look at our lives and identify the problems we have. We are so quick to point out the things we want and the things we need; we forget to look at the innumerable blessings we've already been given. What a beautiful lesson there is within this simple Chinese word: sometimes, things are put in our path that are meant to try us, to challenge us, to make us struggle. Perhaps if we think about our "problems" instead as "questions" to take to God - a way to learn and improve ourselves - we might find ourselves thanking Him for letting us grow instead of complaining to Him why things are difficult. I know he will guide us as we take our questions to him. We are His children and He loves us. We are never alone. He will he us through. We simply need ask.

May we all strive to find the blessings in the hard moments of our lives.

Elder Bednar. So, every Sunday evening there are a few "movie" options - most of which are just re-runs of old devotionals. The most popular is The Character of Christ by Elder David A. Bednar. I highly recommend you go find it (I think he gave a similar talk at BYUI a few years ago). Anyway, they invited all of the missionaries to watch it last night. At the conclusion of the video, the MTC president invited us to remain in our seats because Elder Bednar himself was there to do a Q&A session with the missionaries. It was incredible. He came in and answered questions and bore testimony and you could feel the power in his witness of Christ. It's an inspired work I'm part of. And I'm grateful for examples like him to remind me to focus on what really matters.

A big thanks to my aunt Charisse for the package she sent halfway through last week. She is now officially the favorite of every Elder in my district. We love packages. And food. Combinations thereof, especially so.

I'd like to try something for the bulk of my email next week. Send me any questions you have about missionary life: schedule, scriptures, my roommates, Chinese, the stupid things we do on P-Day… anything and everything. I'll amass them and send them all out to you next week in a Q and A sort of format. Any questions you have I will be happy to answer. There's always so much to share, and I'm never quite sure what you all want to hear. So. Let me know.

I love you all. I think about you a lot. I miss all of your wonderful examples. But I know I'm where I meant to be. The Lord has big plans for me. He has big plans for you. As we are faithful, He will help us become what He wants us to be. Have a fantastic week. I look forward to hearing from you.

Elder Blackhurst