MTC Week 3

Hello everyone!!!  I'm still at the MTC.  Honestly, so surprised that it's P-day again, because not much has happened this week.  Just a whole lot of classes and lessons.  Most exciting news is that Im getting my flight plans today!  Super excited to get those and get out there!!  

Things with our district have been great!  We continue to become better friends and I can tell its gonna be heard to say bye in a couple weeks.  There are 2 Tongan districts here right now, and we are all homies and love chillin with each other.  Some of the best parts of the day is the meals, we will all sit down at the same table and just start going off in Tongan. everyone around us always looks so confused.  It is so cool to be able to understand another language!  And then to speak it back, not as good but still pretty good!!  To be fluent will be such an amazing experience. 

The closer we get to departure, the more I think about how excited I am to be with Tongans 24/7. They have so much love for each other and for all those around them.  If you are friends with them, they will honestly do anything for you.  But more importantly they have a great love for our Savior and Heavenly Father. Cant wait to be around that. 

So since there is not much to talk about this week, I'm going to talk about some more spiritual things. "Weaknesses are strengths that have not yet been developed.  If you have a lot of weaknesses, think about how awesome you can become!"  Man I can't think of anything else that shows you your weaknesses better, then a mission.  I've been on one for about a month now, and I could go on and on about all the weaknesses that I have.  But I have learned that that is not a discouraging thing. We have these short comings, and imperfections for a reason. Heavenly Father gives them to us so that we can be humble, and so that we can work on them to become better people and improve in every aspect of our life. Ether 12:27 is one of my favorite scriptures!!! 

On Sunday for our devotional, we heard from one of the District Presidents at the MTC, his wife said something that she once heard say in a prayer:  "We thank thee for the blessings thou has inflicted upon us."  It sounds really weird at first, but I know our hardships and trials are actually blessings. If we look at them like that, then life can become so much happier! 

Tonight, we have another TRC, this time we get to Skype someone all the way in Tonga!! So excited to get to talk to someone and know that they are right where I'm gonna be in 10 days!

Hope you all are super happy!  I'm having the time of my life out here learning the Tongan language and the language of the Spirit!!
                                                                           My Tongan scriptures

                                                                          Some of our distric

'OFA ATU TOKO TAHA KATOA PE

MTC Week 4

Hello everyone!!!  I'm still at the MTC.  Honestly, so surprised that it's P-day again, because not much has happened this week.  Just a whole lot of classes and lessons.  Most exciting news is that Im getting my flight plans today!  Super excited to get those and get out there!!  

Things with our district have been great!  We continue to become better friends and I can tell its gonna be heard to say bye in a couple weeks.  There are 2 Tongan districts here right now, and we are all homies and love chillin with each other.  Some of the best parts of the day is the meals, we will all sit down at the same table and just start going off in Tongan. everyone around us always looks so confused.  It is so cool to be able to understand another language!  And then to speak it back, not as good but still pretty good!!  To be fluent will be such an amazing experience. 

The closer we get to departure, the more I think about how excited I am to be with Tongans 24/7. They have so much love for each other and for all those around them.  If you are friends with them, they will honestly do anything for you.  But more importantly they have a great love for our Savior and Heavenly Father. Cant wait to be around that. 

So since there is not much to talk about this week, I'm going to talk about some more spiritual things. "Weaknesses are strengths that have not yet been developed.  If you have a lot of weaknesses, think about how awesome you can become!"  Man I can't think of anything else that shows you your weaknesses better, then a mission.  I've been on one for about a month now, and I could go on and on about all the weaknesses that I have.  But I have learned that that is not a discouraging thing. We have these short comings, and imperfections for a reason. Heavenly Father gives them to us so that we can be humble, and so that we can work on them to become better people and improve in every aspect of our life. Ether 12:27 is one of my favorite scriptures!!! 

On Sunday for our devotional, we heard from one of the District Presidents at the MTC, his wife said something that she once heard say in a prayer:  "We thank thee for the blessings thou has inflicted upon us."  It sounds really weird at first, but I know our hardships and trials are actually blessings. If we look at them like that, then life can become so much happier! 

Tonight, we have another TRC, this time we get to Skype someone all the way in Tonga!! So excited to get to talk to someone and know that they are right where I'm gonna be in 10 days!

Hope you all are super happy!  I'm having the time of my life out here learning the Tongan language and the language of the Spirit!!
                                                                           My Tongan scriptures

                                                                          Some of our distric

'OFA ATU TOKO TAHA KATOA PE

MTC Week 2, UK UIKE TAMASI'I

Hey Family and Friends!  Whats up!?!  All is good down here in Provo.   I always forget that I'm only like 30 min away from home because it is such a closed campus here, so I forget that there is an outside world. 

In one of our classes we were talking about the Spirit World and wondering what Spirit Prison might be like, and my companion was like,  "It's probably just like the MTC, you sit in class all day, and the food is horrible." Ha ha ha oh man. 

We've taught 7 lessons so far and our investigator, Lopeti said he'd be baptized on Sept 30th!  Ayye ha ha, its cool but he's still just our teacher so we weren't too excited.   I'm still loving our classes and learning for the most part.  Our teacher, Bro Tautuaa who I mentioned last email continues to prove that he is straight up, the man!  In one class I was feeling curious so I asked, "So who translated the Book of Mormon from English to Tongan" and he was like, "My dad." Hahaha we freaked out!  And then we found out that he helped him translate the triple combination too.  Its dang cool.  And we found out that his dad is on a mission in Tonga right now and he will probably be the one to pick us up from the airport. 

These last couple of days the 'Mission Goggles' have started to set in for those of you that know what that means. Hahaha!! 

So right about now I probably know about 400 words in Tongan and we are expected to know 1000 before we leave.  Kinda crazy but I've got that Tui Kia Sisu Kalaisi!!  We also have to memorize the First Vision in Tongan, which would probably be no biggy in English but in Tongan... yikes.  It'll all work out though. 

Tomorrow we have our first TRC, which is when a member who speaks Tongan will come, and we teach them a lesson. It's mostly to help us with the language and to show us how important members are in the field. 

This week almost everyone in our district got sick, including me.  Mostly just a headache and runny nose.  You are bound to get sick at some point in the MTC because it spreads like crazy, it's ridiculous.  I got to host this Wednesday which was super cool and reminded me a whole lot of when I got dropped off. 

Super cool thing this week, Chad Lewis came and talked to us.  If you don't know who he is, look him up.  He is such a good speaker and I got a ton out of his talk!!  Also on Sunday D. Todd Christoferson came and spoke to us, and it was broadcast to all the other MTC's.  It was really funny, because when a General Authority speaks here, they don't tell you who it is and keep it super shady ha ha. Probably for security reasons, but we had no idea who was talking until he walked in.  A big thing he talked about is how Heavenly Father loves everyone, but he doesn't necessarily trust everyone.  One of my biggest goals is to be the kind of missionary that the Lord can trust! 

The quote I want to leave off with is something one of my teachers said, "Because of the Atonement, the bad things in life don't have to last, and the good things can last."  Man that brings so much comfort to me! I am starting to understand the importance and the significance of the Atonement.  I guess it's kind of hard to, until you start thinking about teaching it to people who have no idea or don't fully understand that they have a Savior who suffered and died so that they can return to live in heaven. 

We were asked this week, what our goals or desires are as far as being a missionary, and I decided that I want to share with people the HOPE of the gospel.  That no matter what they have done, what trials or hardships they have gone through or will go through, they can find comfort, peace and joy in the Gospel, through Christs Atonement.

It feels like I've been here for fffooorreever, but Tuesday is my half way through the MTC mark!  I am so excited to get to Tonga and get going on this mission!!!

Oku ou fakama'oni kapau kitautolu lotu, Otua fakapapau ke tapuaki. Kapau kitautolu muimui fakamo'ui sipinga, kitautolu fakapapau ke ongo'i Laumalie Ma'oni'oni. Oku ou ilo'i Tamai Heavani mo Sisu Kalaisi asi ki Siosefa Samita. Oku ou ofa Sisu Kalaisi. Oku ou ilo'i Sisu Kalaisi mate ma'a kitautolu. Oke ne Ongoongolelei faka'ofo'ofa. I he huaga 'o Sisu Kalaisi, Emeni.

That's my testimony in some pretty rough Tongan ha ha but I'm getting a ton better! :)

Love you all SOOOO much. Thanks for the support and the emails, it makes the MTC a whooolle lot more bearable!!

OFA ATU

-Eleta Kalanite

Sorry for the lack of pics, the computer I'm using rn isn't working. I'll try and send them later or in next email! ❤

                                          Spoons found in their vent

                                         Provo Temple P-Day morning

 

                                          Tag picture

                                          Practicing his photographic skills

                                         Bro Tautuaa and Elder Tilini drawing some crazy stuff

                                          Mom is the hero again with package #2

MTC Week 1 - "The Power of Prayer"

Hey everybody!

 The MTC is great as always!  I am loving learning here, literally ALL day haha.  Most days we have our 3, 3 hour blocks of classes and it's really kinda rough to focus all the time.  My district is all homies and we love joking around with each other.  We have the biggest Branch in the whole MTC!  I think with like 150.  It's HUGE!   So that makes it way hard to get to know a lot of people in it.

 I'm pretty much tired 24/7 because we are allwwaayss doing something haha!  One of our districts favorite pass times is singing.  Our favorite is Ofa 'i Api.  Which is love at home. We sing it before almost every class haha. 

 Me and my comp have already taught 4 lessons in all Tongan to our "investigator" Lopeti who is really one of our teachers Brother Tautuaa.  He is one of the coolest guys I've ever met and he is super smart with gospel related stuff and life skills kinda things.  My comp is super good at memorizing  stuff and he's also way good at just thinking of scriptures that could help our investigator so there are times in our lessons when he will just start explaining things and I'll be a little confused, but I'm really good at putting together sentences and explaining stuff a little better so it all works out!  Bro Tautuaa is kinda strict but also one of the funniest people.  We have 2 other teachers, Bro Deilh and Sis Fotu.  They are both way cool.  All of them are only like 2 or 3 years off their mission, so it gets me really excited to see what I could be like in 4 or 5 years haha.  They are way good examples.

 The food here was good like the first week but I am quickly getting real tired of it.  I am not setting myself up to stay in good shape haha. The other day I had 10 cups of milk.  Haha I felt terrible afterwards. 

Some funny language stuff: 

In Tongan there is fakalelei which means Atonement and fakalele which means diarrhea.   Luckily, I haven't  made that mistake yet but it could happen real easy lol. 

The other day this kid in our district said in this prayer in Tongan: Dear Heavenly Father, I am fat!

Haha he meant to say Thank you, but one little switch of a word and it's a totally different meaning. One of our favorite words is fakahela, which means annoying haha. 

Spiritual Things:

The biggest thing I've learned this week is the power of Prayer. It is SO important to include prayer in everything we do.  Our first 2 lessons we didn't pray before the lesson and they were ok but not great. After that I was like, Holy cow! how come we aren't praying before hand?  So we started doing that and our lessons have been great! Our last one went for 40 min, so none of the other companions got tobe teacher that day!  Another cool thing, in our room we have the 2 companionships from our district (me, my comp, Elder Kraft and Elder St. clair)  Elder St Clair had a great idea on like the 4th day that we should all give our companion a blessing.  It was way cool and we all felt the spirit.  I was pretty dang nervous because it was only my second blessing but it went way good.

Everyday I pray for Me'afoaki 'o e lea, which is The Gift of Tongues.  Our branch president told us to ask our families to also pray to help us with that, so if you all could help with that, it would be amazing!  The spirit is so strong here and I love being here!  Tongan is coming along fine, even though I often get frustrated with myself that it's not coming along like i want it to, Tui Kia Sisu Kalaisi (Faith in Christ) is so important.  Do your absolute best and God will make up the rest.  I love all you guys so much!  Thanks for all the support! Let me know how you guys are doing,  I miss everyone tons and think about y'all all the time!

OFA ATU

-Elder Grant​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Lots of pics and most of them are totally random haha

 No explanations on these pictures

                                          Name tag strategically placed!  Fall is coming!

                                          Buddy from school, Braden Allred

                                          Connor in a class

                                   
                                      
                             Sister Aubrey Taylor,  Elder Connor Grant and their companions

                                          Elder Grant's Hymn book

                                          First package in the MTC

                                          One of the fun things inside