It's here! The MVP! - 22nd email from Macau

Dear all,

First of all, please do not accept Leeds just yet. On Tuesday we went into Hong Kong for Mission Conference, and I picked up the Bath Spa prospectus you sent me. The school looks very impressive, actually - more so than I had thought it would. I prayed that night that God would help slow you down in applying, because I want more time to think. Weighing up the options now, I'm still thinking that Leeds has a lot of benefits that other schools don't, but I'm going to think things through a lot first. We have until May, right?

On a completely unrelated note, I have bad news about the Language Legend test - I didn't pass. I had to do it a day earlier than I'd been planning, so I wasn't quite ready - and got a little under 90% of the 3,000 Chinese characters right, which we'd set as the pass rate. So after a long period of testing, and an even longer period of studying, I was told I'd have to try again in two weeks. This didn't seem too bad, but I also knew that I was racing the MVP. I'll explain what that is in a second.

Yesterday we had Mission Conference, which was a lot of fun. I'd been asked to translate for the morning session, so I got to sit up at the front at the sacrament table with Elder Hamon (who was in my MTC group and who was translating with me), and speak into a microphone that was connected to a broadcasting thingy which transmits to headsets that were being worn by aproximately three people in the audience. The translation services are there for any native who wants them, but all of the native missionaries in the mission right now have such good English that they don't need us. After the meeting the Assistants to the President thanked me for translating. I pointed out that nobody was listening to it, and Elder Gregory pointed out, "Elder Shupe was listening!". Elder Shupe was in my older group in the MTC and in my first District in West Point for three Moves - he hasn't spoken more than four words of English since he started his mission.

The conference was particularly special this time. They had told us that we weren't going to have one this Moves, because the Elder Nelson meeting counted as Mission Conference this Moves. There was also a rumour going around the mission that we weren't going to have mission conference anymore, which President Van Dam has told us is very, very false. Suddenly, Mission Conference appeared back on the schedual for no particular apparent reason, so I suspected that they had something big to do.

As President Van Dam got up the the pulpit to give a sharing on the Moves focus - working with ward and stake leaders, he got to the second frame of his slideshow presentation, and found that it was very badly spelled - it said "How to work Ward/Steak with Leadrs". Everyone chuckled and he tried to click to the next slide, but it didn't work. He got the APs to help, but as they tried to fix it, the microphone stopped working and the lights went out. Then that song from the beginning of Space 2001 started playing from the speakers and two missionaries wearing those Chinese pointy hats came in, carrying bamboo poles over their shoulders tied to big boxes that said "MVP" on the side. They started shouting "It's finally here! The MVP is here!" I knew what it was already, and was frustrated that it couldn't have waited just a little longer. As they got up to the stand, they pulled little brown books out of the boxes, and everyone gave them a standing inovation. Everyone in the Mission has been looking forward to the Missionary Vocabulary and Phrases book for a long time - they were working on it while I was in the MTC, and it had finally arrived. For the past year, the mission hasn't had a language learning book because we've been waiting for Provo to finish this one. Ultimately President Van Dam got them to email the unfinished book to us and we had it printed here in Hong Kong, because a flawed book is better than no book.

Unfortunately, with the new book came new language recognition awards - I knew this would happen, which is why I was racing to get legend before the book came. Now in addition to learning 3,000 character, being able to read the entire Book of Mormon and translating President Monson's conference talks, I also have to learn 30 pages of vocab from the book. It's more than a little frustrating, because it's slowed me down a little more. But I'm still determined to get it while I'm in Macau - which is potentially only another three weeks.

We also found out who the new Mission President is, replacing President Van Dam in July - it will be President Chan, a native to Hong Kong who is currently a sealer in the Temple, and who is a really nice guy. It should be good.

Anyway, time is running out. I hope you enjoyed my little essay on this new language resource we have.

Lots of love,

Elder Loffhagen