Week 9 - Almost there....

This last week has gone by very well, and I can hardly believe that my MTC experience is already over. In some ways, it feels like years have past since I arrived, but in other ways I feel like I just got here. It's crazy to think that by this time next week, I will have arrived in Australia.

On July 24th (pioneer day for Utah), I was busy hosting incoming missionaries when who should appear but Elder Tanner McGuire! I got the awesome opportunity to show him around and help him start to get settled in at the MTC. He's headed to Rome, Italy, and is one of my best friends since forever ago. I guess that that's one of the blessings of being here for so long, you get to see lots of friends come and go. I'm sure that he'll do great.

Since it's my last full week here, I've gotten to do some pretty cool stuff. On sunday, I attended a meeting for all of the leaving missionaries where I was told a lot of information on departing the MTC and arriving in the field. We also had "in-field orientation", which basically reviewed in nine hours what we've learned over the past nine weeks. It was completely in English, so I was a caught bit off guard by how well I understood everything. Hopefully, it's this easy to understand everything that happens when I'm in Australia.

This week, we recieved two new "investigators", and we have two chances to teach them before we leave. This presents the opportunity of a clean slate as missionaries as well as the challenge of getting to know these people without any previous introduction like we've had before. It's been really fun to see just how much we've improved our Korean in the last nine weeks. I feel much more confident about teaching and I think that I can understand most of what is being spoken. (I should also mention, I got my Korean name tags!)

Of course, that probably means that I'll arrive in Australia and realize that I don't know anything about the language or how to speak it, but I'm sure that like all missionaries, the language that I am learning will come along in no time at all.

Thank you everyone for your support, keep up the awesome work you're all doing. Next time you hear from me, I'll have some amazing stories to tell you all!

Elder Hayden Clark