From Sister McKinley Week One: "To My Adoring Fans" 9/4/2018

Xin chào bạn và gia đình!

(Hello to my friends and family! ***Pronounce it like this [shin cha-ow bah-n vah zh-eyah deen) hopefully that pronunciation guide was helpful haha***

MTC life is ROUGH.  The food is terrible and to those who have served a mission before, it has only improved slightly since you've been to the MTC. I never finish all of my food and I'll have to weigh myself every week to make sure that I'm not gaining a ton of weight from my intake of gummy snacks and chips during my study sessions. Our schedule generally goes like this. We wake up at 6:30, after breakfast which is usually around 7:15, we study Tiếng Việt until lunchtime. Unless it's Monday, then we clean the bathrooms (ew.) We have afternoon classes and evening classes so I'm pretty much "free" (in other words, study) until lunch. Tuesday is my P-Day and the fun can begin.

My companions are great! I have two of them, Sister Marks and Sister Vu. We all are of Vietnamese descent. Chi (sister) Vu is already fluent in Vietnamese so she won't be here for very long. Thankfully she is though, she drills us pretty much every time we are walking/eating/trying to sleep in Tiếng Việt. Chi Marks and I are beginners but our vietnamese has gotten pretty good thanks to chi vu.

My teachers are super great. I have Thầy Anh, Thầy Phan, and Thầy Phat. They are all super great. Thầy Anh is also from Northern Vietnam. He calls me his bạn bè cộng sản, which means communist friend. Hah. His lessons are the most ridiculous things ever, yet also strangely spiritual. He was explaining how "his boi nephi got beat up but he didn't let that stop him." Hahah he is literally one of the Elders except fluent.

We have learned so much in Vietnamese already. It's almost been a week and we are expected to introduce ourselves, say the prayer, and bear our testimonies in Viet. It's so crazy. I can't believe that I'm speaking this language yet here I am.

Just a spiritual thought to conclude this long email (I promise they won't be this long) I miss you all so much. I miss seeing all of your wonderful faces every day but I know we see each other again. There is such thing as saying goodbye in Hmong (another dialect from Vietnam), you just say "until next time" The reason why I'm out here is because I love someone enough to fall on my knees and pray for them every single day of my life. I love this gospel. I know that I will see you all so soon. It's hard to say goodbye to our Hmong Elders that are leaving today for their missions but I know that is the love of God that will keep us together. I know I love you all and Heavenly Father loves you too.

Chào!

Love,

Chị Mai Ahn (Sister McKinley)

Photos:

"My companions are great! I have two of them, Sister Marks and Sister Vu. We all are of Vietnamese descent. Chi (sister) Vu is already fluent in Vietnamese so she won't be here for very long. Thankfully she is though, she drills us pretty much every time we are walking/eating/trying to sleep in Tiếng Việt. Chi Marks and I are beginners but our vietnamese has gotten pretty good thanks to chi vu."

"Our district is the largest they've ever had the Vietnamese be. We have 12 people in our district. We are the only Vietnamese speaking sisters and the only sisters going to Vietnam. So basically, I'm an MTC celebrity. haha just kidding. We have this program called SYL (Speak Your Language) which basically we get a cool little sticker on our name tags and it requires us to always be speaking in Vietnamese except our sticker is the same color as portugese so people think we are going to Portugal all the time. "

"For those who haven't seen the new MTC, there are these amazing (Hay Qua!! *awesome in viet*) murals everywhere. This is Moses crossing the red sea. My companions and I were lost in the grandeur of it all."