Week 8 - Almost Out of Here!

I GOT MY FLIGHT PLANS!!! I leave for Hong Kong Monday morning! I thought this day would never come, but in no way am I ready to leave the MTC. I guess I know enough Chinese to get by (not true), but that is expected. I wasn't expecting to be fluent after just 9 weeks. My stay here at the MTC has been a life changing experience. I have learned so much in the short 9 weeks I have been here. My testimony has grown so much here and I have made so many great friends. 

So this week I was called as a zone leader for the last week (I was district leader 7 of the last 8 weeks), and we have 23 new missionaries coming into our zone today, so I am in charge of giving them a little orientation and welcoming them to the MTC and helping them adjust to their new life in the MTC. That also means that our zone is doubling in size in one day! And there are over 800 people entering the MTC. The curb was crazy today. With 800 missionaries coming in, that meant there were some 800 hosts waiting to greet everyone so yeah this place is absolutely crazy. There are also 171 new Mission Presidents coming in today and most of the Apostles are here too, so the main building is shut down to all missionaries. So we now have to eat our meals in the gym which means I can't play basketball anymore :(, but its all good I still love it here.

This morning our entire zone did a temple session today, that was great. I am so lucky to be able to go to the temple every week here, and having a temple in Hong Kong and being able to go every transfer. 

And the Cavs won the finals so I guess I'm still kind of mad about that. Funny story about how I found out. My companions friends was leaving so she gave my companion a box of cereal, which I was holding. when I found out Clevland won by some random Elders I threw the box at the ground and kicked it and he wasn't very happy with me. That may not be that funny, but when you haven't really seen the real world in 8 weeks stuff like that makes you laugh like crazy.  

Well this is my last email from here in the MTC, the next time you hear from me I'll be in Hong Kong!!

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Elder Eveson

Zone Picture

 My basketball buddy Elder Lloyd who's off to Argentina ​



more friends off to Argentina 



The man the myth the legend President Newell

Elder Eveson with Elder Lange from Germany

Zone Sleep Over



Week 7

ummmmmmmmm so nothing out of the ordinary happened this week. Just another week full of classes and learning one of the hardest languages in the world, which is really a struggle, but is slowly coming. It's crazy to think that in 2 weeks, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'm not gonna be able to understand what anybody is saying, but I am still super excited to go! 

The MTC is absolutely crazy right now. Next week there are going to be 118 new Mission Presidents are gonna be here to be trained, and almost all the Apostles and 1st Presidency are gonna be here for the training. It's really cool that they're all gonna be here, but they close off more than half of the cafeteria and there's like 800 missionaries coming in next week, so the rest of my MTC is gonna be absolutely crazy.

The last couple of days here have been extremely hot ( I really don't like the heat) so when it rained one day I was literally the happiest man here in the MTC. So many people were complaining and I was like FINALLY!! 

Sorry I didn't have alot to say this week. I do get my travel plans on Friday, so me and my district are super excited for that. Another sorry for not having any pictures this week. I didn't take any this week and I already know my Mom's gonna be mad but oh well. Once again I'm sorry Mom!!

Love you all!!

Elder Eveson

Week 6 - One by One

My new name tag both in Chinese and English

Well another week down, and only 3 more to go. I have really come to love this place, but I am definitely ready to leave, but too bad I still got 3 weeks to go. We got a new district last week, and and they're alright I guess, and since I'm now a part of the oldest district in the zone, we finally had the opportunity to pull the same pranks on them that were done to us. So there is this little puppet of a Chinese lion and what we did was while all of the Elders were in the stalls we have a little drum, and we have the lion dance around the stalls and we flicker the light. Yeah it's pretty pathetic, but when you're in the MTC for this long everything becomes funny. The Elders just laughed, and we deny it ever happened. We just say it was the mysterious "poop" dragon that only strikes when a new district comes.

The language is still extremely hard. This last week has been extremely hard teaching our "investigators" which our teachers act as investigators they had. One had a baptismal date, and a couple days before, he said he no longer wanted to be baptized because he said his family would abandon him if he did. It's extremely hard to first figure out what we should do, and second we don't know how to say a lot of stuff. He just keeps throwing curve balls at us every time we teach him, and we don't have time to prepare for them and our other "investigators" don't keep their commitments, so that can be frustrating at times. I guess they're just prepping us for the field and having us figure out how to help people with their problems on their own.

So Elder Bednar spoke here yesterday, and it was probably one of the most powerful devotionals I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot. I've seen several different apostles speak in person, but this one was just so different. The foundation of his talk was that Jesus Christ Knows every single one of us personally. His talk was titled "One by One", and he used the Saviors visit to the America's in 3 Nephi as the foundation of his devotional. I usually space out during some parts of every devotional, but this time my eyes and ears were glued on the podium, and I listened to every word he said. After his remarks the choir of over 800 missionaries sang a song that he wrote called "One by One" and it was the first time it had ever been performed, and it will be published in the New Era next month, and I highly recommend reading through the lyrics. It's such a powerful song, and singing it after a talk by a Apostle of the Lord it that much better. 

So that's everything that happened this week. It's the MTC nothing happens. I don't know what happens out in the real world except for the NBA finals I got my connections here in the MTC. Go Warriors! Wish it was the Blazers, but oh well! Oh and one last thing people keep asking me hows the food here, and a scriptures that describes it perfectly is Jeremiah 4:19 and you'll probably break down laughing, or else it means the MTC has broken me. 

Love you all!!!

Elder Eveson

  Yeah, that's why I don't like to wear glasses.  That is my comp's glasses

week 5

Well 5 weeks down and 4 more to go until I'll be on a plane to Hong Kong!! The oldest district of the zone left yesterday morning, so that means my district is now the oldest. Along with them leaving, we inherited all their Elder's food and decorations. We got a couple of Chinese posters, mini Chinese dragons, and the best part was probably over 50 pounds of food, and right now we have no idea what to do with it. Everyone here is really gonna miss them, and Ii guess I'm gonna need to find some new people to play basketball with everyday. 

So here in the MTC they don't announce who is speaking at devotionals until about 20 minutes before it starts, but I did found out Elder Bednar is speaking here next week, and I'm sooooo excited for that! 2 Apostles in 3 weeks what could be better than that? Another thing is my companions have been dragging me along to choir every week even though I'm the worst singer in the world and we're performing a new song never heard before that was written by Elder Bednar, and we're gonna sing it with one of his 4 year old granddaughters WHAT COULD BE COOLER THAN THAT!! I'm super excited for next week.

Lastly, because Hong Kong is such an international city, our name tags have both English and Chinese on them, and in my opinion I think they look pretty cool. I saw mine at the front desk, but I won't get it until later this week so I'll send a picture of it next week.

 Sorry I didn't have a lot to say this week because nothing really happened this week.

 I love you all

Elder Eveson