Activation Energy   

MTC - Week 2

Terve! Mina rakastan teita!

Fun fact of the week, Elvish on Lord of the Rings was based off of Finnish! So to all of you that speak Elvish, I feel you.

This week has flown by! Seriously time must be the best at hide-and-go-seek because I do not know where it goes. Finnish is still coming along well. However, now that we know more grammar we realize how bad our grammar truly is. The Finn-speakers we practice with must have amazing problem-solving and quick-thinking skills! In Finnish you conjugate nouns as well as verbs and there are no prepositions, you add prepositions to the ends of words. That's why Finnish words are so long. In my last letter I'm pretty sure when I tried to say "I love you all" I said something like "You Me love". Mutta nyt mina voit sanoa mina rakastan teita! ("but now I can say I love you all!" That's the right grammar but I can't figure out the accent marks on this computer so it's still wrong.)

We love learning new words! At lunch we sit by Hungarian-bound missionaries who have been here four weeks more than us, so they speak their language much better than we speak ours. When they rattle off Hungarian we want to feel cool too, so we just start saying every word we know in Finnish using inflection to make it sound like sentences. One of the "Huns" figured it out and now he has a list of simple Finnish words to rattle off right back at us. But the neighboring Spanish table still thinks we're pretty cool!

During personal study this week I read 1 Nephi 10:6 which says, "Wherefore, all mankind were in a lost and fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer." That scripture talks about how we all need Christ's Atonement in our lives so that we can become better and live with God again. When I read it, being a nerd, I immediately thought of changing states of matter (as in an element going from a solid to a liquid to a gas). In my head I imagined when a solid turns into a liquid to be like when we decide to follow Christ. We have new energy, determination, and different properties than we did before. But, if we want to keep changing states and turn into a gas (which is like becoming like Christ and enduring to the end), it takes a lot more energy to turn from a liquid into a gas than for a solid to turn into a liquid. Sometimes, we might think we will never have the required energy, we think there is just too much to do so we shouldn't even try. Let me tell you something awesome, you don't have to provide the energy yourself. "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4:13) With Christ we are more capable than we can possibly imagine. So use the activation energy freely given to you by Christ's Atonement! It is possible to keep changing states! Literally everyday you can make yourself better. That's what the Atonement is about, it is "to make bad men good and good men better" (I can't remember who said that first, but my dad quotes it a lot!). And unlike a New Years resolution, this change can last for eternity. 

A HUGE thanks for all of the letters this week!! If you haven't seen the movie "The Best Two Years" go watch it. If you have, you know the scene where tons of letters come and it's all for one Elder? That was me:) Vanhin (Elder) Hyer had a stack of letters and went through them like, "Sisar Mendenhall!!! Sisar Mendenhall! Sisar Mendenhall. Sisar Mendenhall..." I loved every one! 

Oh my companion wanted to join choir, I am not a singer but I went with her. They asked me what my choir experience was and I thought back on the time that I was in the Sound of Music. So I replied, "I was in a Catholic Nun's Choir." That got some pretty great faces:)

I love you all and wish you all the best! Have a great week!

Rakkaus ja rukous!

Sisar Mendenhall

Halloween in the MTC:  dressing as Octuplets!

Finnish district braving the elements of Provo: