First Vision, Faith, and Flag Pictures

Posted from Saren's Email:

"Okay, you HAVE to read the first vision english translation. The Chinese may form their sentences with the same "Subject Verb Object" order that we do, but they do some weird stuff with their sentences. "Light falls at me body top" HAH.

 

Read the first vision english underneath the chinese words in an Irish accent. It's the funniest thing ever. It's what my companion does whenever she gets too frustrated with the language.

Also, here is Sister Parker and Sister Washburn with their visual aid on faith!

And here is Sister Koch with a Taiwanese flag!

Can I just always be a missionary?

I am officially 13 days into the mission! The first week was like drinking out of the firehose, and each of us in our Sister Missionary district dormroom have definitely taken their turns to feel discouragement and uncertainty that they're capable of learning, preaching in, and becoming fluent in Mandarin flippin' Chinese. But I feel like every day or two something happens that just makes me snap my head back up with confidence and trust in my Heavenly Father that despite my weaknesses, with His help I can do this incredibly difficult task. The Spirit is in these buildings.  The classrooms and halls are (when we are on task and focusing on being Christlike-missionaries) FILLED with God's love. There have been many times when watching a Mormon Message video about a citizen in Taiwan or hear a jaw-dropping conversion stories, and I can feel my soul filled with the love Christ has for the people in Taiwan. In fact, that's my motto! One time my companion and I were jogging around (practicing this sprint-jog-sprint-jog workout) and on the last leg of the run, she shouted at me (in her Lacrosse Coach attitude) "PASS ME! BEAT ME! YOU CAN DO IT!" So I sprinted past her shouting, "FOOOOOR TAIWAAAAAAN!!!" Now I use that for everything. Don't feel like studying for another hour? FOR TAIWAAAAN! Don't feel like working hard in a workout? FOR TAIWAN, AND FOR TAIBEI BIKING!  Don't feel like writing ANOTHER lesson? FOR TAIWAAAAN. With everything I do, I just try so hard to keep those people in the front of my mind.

 

The wonderful thing is that there are so many "Spiritual Zingers" that will get you back on your feet when you just don't feel like you're capable of all you're asked to do. If any of you are about to become a missionary, try to see if you can watch online Elder Nash's Devotional last Tuesday. So crazy good.

 

Another thing is the scriptures. Right now on the back of my mininotebook that I write Chinese words in, I have Deuteronomy 31: 6 written in giant sharpie letters. Actually I have choke great spiritual uplifters. The one I'm obsessing about right now for my investigators is Moroni 10:5. I think we focus too much on the exhorting in the verses before that we look over the amazing promise in that verse.

 

"And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

 

Bam. Right there. You want to know it's true? You can. And THAT's how and why people become converted unto Christ's restored church and gospel. Simply by the Holy Ghost. Everything we do is to help our investigators feel that Heavenly connection with God through his spiritual messenger the Holy Ghost. And you want to know how you can have the Holy Ghost?

 

"And the Spirit shall be given unto you by the prayer of faith" (D&C 42:14).

 

Sincere prayer of faith. Changes lives. "Don't pray about the Book of Mormon, that's how they get you!"

 

Anyways. So much more to tell you, so little time.

 

Life in the MTC is crazy busy and awesome. I love my companion even more. We pretty much complete each other teaching and stragegy wise. We're very opposite (quiet tom boy meets extroverted girly goofball). But it's great. One of our Laoshis (teachers) told us, "Don't ever ignore or exclude your companions feelings or promptings. Don't forget, the Lord only gives half of the revelation needed for a lesson to you." It's so true. Our best lesson we've given out of the five we've already done was the last. Usually I have a problem of talking too much or us freezing up because we have NO idea what our investigator is saying (since it's 100% in Chinese aaaaahh!!!), but the last lesson was life changing. We walked in prepared to give "The Plan of Salvation", but were spiritually prompted to change it to Prayer. The Spirit was so powerful in there, and both my companion and I were bearing testimony in Chinese (which is a big deal since my companion especially struggles with the language). At the end my companion asked some inspired questions to investigator Mao Jiemei, and Mao decided on her own she wanted to pray that night and pray with ustomorrow! So cool!

 

Buut now we have new investigators. Zhang Chang Qing. (Remember how we have our chinese stereotypes 'ching chong ching chong'? Yeah... it's pretty accurate. That's how you say his name.) He's a married Chinese man who recently moved from China to Taiwan to help raise his kids in a better environment despite it being a lesser paying job in Taiwan. Our second investigator is a divorced 28 Taiwanese factory worker woman with a son. Our investigators are really just like what we'll experience in Taiwan, and it's a wonderful experience for us as missionaries. I love these people so much. It's amazing how the same beginning lesson "The Restoration of the Gospel" has something powerful for everyone no matter what their condition.

 

I love being a missionary. It's SO HARD.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE HOW HARD THIS IS.

But I feel so powerfully every second of every day that this is 1. my purpose in life and 2. the greatest thing I could be doing. I'm seeing miracles. I'm growing so much. Life is amazing, and the challenge is helping me grow.

 

I love you all.

 

 

PLEASE SEND ME MAIL AND CARE PACKAGES. THEY DON'T LET US TAKE OUT FOOD AND WE GET MAIL DELIVERED TWICE A DAY. A letter helps turn a day around so much. Please!

 

Xiexie nimen!

Zai Jian!

-Ke Jiemei (Sister Koch)

A Few MTC Pics!

Sister Koch and her companion, Sister Hammer

Sister Koch and Sister Bang.

Now, here is an interesting story. Saren, (pre-mission Sister Koch), puts in her mission papers from Hawaii. Whitney, (pre-mission Sister Bang) puts in her mission papers from Texas. They are both going to Taipei, Taiwan and entering the MTC on the same date, May 15. 

Interestingly, Saren's grammy and Whitney's grandmother are very dear friends in the same ward in Leavenworth, Kansas. Can you imagine their surprise when they find out that their granddaughters are going on the same mission and going to be entering the MTC on the same day?

Pretty cool!

Sister Koch and Elder Wheeler - friends from Kahuku High School at the MTC at the same time.

Elder Wheeler is also an "adopted grandson" of Saren's grandparents. 

Nimenhao from the MTC!

Nimenhao! (Hello everyone!)

 

I have so much to tell you, I don't know where to even begin!

 

So, I am officially a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! I have my badge on now, and I beam everytime I put it on in the morning. It has my English name (Sister Koch) and then a whole bunch of Chinese. Wanna know how to read it? Yesu Jidu houchi shengtu... something... something... yeah, still working on it. There's TONS I have to learn. Plus the fact that I didn't add tones to that means that if you read that outloud, you could be saying Octopus dangling bucket (swear word). Oh, Chinese, how we love your complicated ways. But I have actually learned an astonishing amount of Chinese since I entered the MTC. For example, 20 minutes into being dropped off at the MTC, I was guided to my Mandarin Chinese District classroom with 11 other people (one of them my "tongban", or companion), and IMMEDIATELY my laoshi, or teacher, started teaching the whole class without speaking a single word in English! To be honest, to this day he hasn't spoken a single complete sentence of english. All of our actual classroom time is in full chinese. And some of us in the classroom have never even taken a Mandarin class! But the crazy thing is, even though it can get SUPER frustrating, it works well. Our laoshi is amazing at Chinese (he's half Taiwanese and he just returned from his mission), and the MTC has upped its teaching materials SIGNIFICANTLY. Seriously, I have possibly 10 books given to be all to teach me everything from grammar to how to give a full lesson in Chinese, to Preach My Gospel in both Pinyin (chinese words in english letters) and the actual chinese Characters. (So including my own english copy, I have 3 PMGs.)

 

So wanna know what I can do within uh... 5 days? Well, by day 2 I learned how to pray in complete chinese, and that night I studied my brains out until I could do it without the book! I make a point of praying as much as I can in mandarin only, so at this point when it's time to bless the food, I can whip out a prayer pretty fast while still not giving a standard "in the book" prayer! WOO! Wanna know something else amazing and crazy? I've already given 2 lessons in full mandarin Chinese to an investigator! In fact, in about 3 hours, I'll be giving another! Right now my companion and I are focusing on teaching her how to pray and why it's an important and amazing thing! Our investigator (a member of the church roleplaying an investigator) plays a pretty standard investigator in Taiwan: parents are Buddhist, curious as to why all her Christian friends are happy, doesn't know anything from who God is to why in the world we bow our head while we pray! Her name's Mao (tone going up), and she's already stolen my heart. Please pray that my companion and I can stay in tune with the Spirit so we can know what message she needs to hear!

 

Oh right, companion! So right now I'm staying in a 6 girl dorm room with the best fellow sisters ever! We have Sister Washburn and Sister Parker (they're in our district and classroom, so we're with them all the time. They're HILARIOUS! The running joke is "f-f-f-fei-cheng-hao!" which means very good. Actually, we have a ton of hilarious inside jokes. Every night feels like standup comedy with them.) then Sister Jasperson and Sister Bong (YES! Mom, that's the granddaughter of Grammy's good friend! She's hilarious and amazing, I love her!). Sister Parker is going to Hong Kong. She's the first American girl to ever go to HongKong for Mandarin Speaking, how cool is that? (Usually it's Cantonese) Sister Washburn is going to a ghettoish place in California, I think it was Arcadia? Everyone else will be flying in with me to TAIPEI, TAIWAN! WOOO! We're so excited, but we'd be lying if we said we weren't overwhelmed with the language. It is one if the hardest languages, if not the hardest, to learn as an English speaker for a reason! The tones are killer, and one word can mean so many different things, even if both words have the same tone! We're not working on characters yet. I was rather disappointed when I found out about that, but I understand why. First we'll work on speaking, then after some weeks we'll dive into part two of why Chinese is crazy hard. Have I mentioned I love this language? I still study writing a little bit now and then so I can give visual aids during my lessons with words my investigator can read, and it's amazing how powerful the characters make the word. For example, the word for Atonement "Shuzui" has the word and character "zui" in it. "Zui" means sin. Atonement in chinese literally means to redeem from sin! Is that not cool or what? Heavenly Father, or Tian Fu, is also pretty cool because it's Father of the Heavens and the Earth.

 

My companion is Sister Hammer. She is the perfect companion for me. For those that know the "Dressing Your Truth", I think she's a type 2 (I think I have everyone's type figured out if any of you want to know, but we definitely have all 4 types between Hammer, Parker, Washburn, and I). I love her so much, and I'm trying to figure out better ways to serve her the way she patiently serves me. She's less outgoing than our roommates and very down to earth, which means we're constantly working with purpose. She's still really nice and funny and sometimes cheesy. She's 21, but honestly age doesn't even feel like a factor here. Your age is how long you've been in the MTC, not how old you are really, and in our eyes we're pretty much both babies. We make an amazing team with discussions and chinese! She has about the same amount of beginning Chinese knowledge as I, so we're really equal too! I love having her by my side! Plus she's a lacrosse coach, so we go pretty hard during gym time and are ALWAYS complaining about how sore we are from yesterday's workout.

 

I am nowhere near fluent, that is for sure. NOWHERE. I have so much to learn, and sometimes I get discouraged to hear how good my fellow classmates are because they've taken Chinese much longer than me. Some of them have even lived in China, or are half Taiwanese. But there have been amazing lessons I have learned already. The first was by one of the older sisters also going to Taiwan Taipei who gave us newer sisters some advice: Sometimes (actually, all the time) it's easy to feel discouraged about how little knowledge you know in comparison to how much you want to know. It's like little drops of water in a bucket. Don't focus on how empty your bucket of knowledge is, celebrate every single drop you have! I've definitely had moments where I've teared up in class with how frustrated I was that I didn't know all of the crazy amount of Chinese on the board. But when it's time to turn to our companion and practice giving a discussion, I stop and treasure just how much I've learned to say! I can hold my own in a conversation, nevermind that I may not be as good as the people around me that have had more experience! It is nothing short of a miracle, I feel myself every day uplifted and supported by the Lord's hand to learn this language and be a missionary. Because the days feel like weeks and I feel like I've already been here a MONTH (you would do if you had at least 9 hours of language study and practice a day like I do!), so it's easy to shout to the Heavens and cry, "I don't know Chinese! I've been here so long and I still don't know how to talk fluently!!", I really have to stop and say, "Sister Koch, you've been here 3 days (that's when I had this freakout), not a month. You're doing amazing, and God expects progress, not perfection."

 

I have to confess, I'm terribly beginner still at giving lessons. For the most part, they're sentences we've translated and written down (or just straight from the book), and we still don't know how to say or word a lot of how much we really want to tell our wonderful investigator! But miracles happen EVERY SINGLE LESSON. When you focus every lesson on doing exactly what the Spirit has guided you to do and keep your heart in your missionary purpose "to invite others to Christ", the Spirit is there. I can be giving the most terribly-worded or pronounced Chinese lesson to this poor investigator, but when it's time to say the prayer or when my companion or I bear our testimony-- it's there. Powerfully. It fills our hearts and the room and makes us cry. And it's only been 5 days! (Six days now, but today's P day.)

 

I wish I could explain the spirit of the MTC. The halls are filled with love, both from the kindest missionaries you ever did meet and from the Spirit of the Lord. When you clear your mind of your frustrations, fear, contention, or doubt, it's there. You can feel it the way you can undeniably feel the sun shining. Sometimes it's a subtle warmth, and other times it's a "makes you cry" kind of spiritual hug. This isn't some "justification" psychological effect, it's incredible. There's no place like the MTC. If it weren't for the fact that I'm up to my ears in easily intimidating Chinese study, I would want to live in this building forever.

 

Every single day is packed with purpose. There is not a single hour of the day that I am not working with a purpose. No joke. I only return to my room for changing for the gym and getting ready for bed. Like I said, some days there are 9 hours of language study, or sometimes only 7 hours because we're able to "relax" from teaching our lessons in Chinese (which we're constantly preparing to do).

 

I love this gospel. I love being a missionary, even if it is the the hardest thing I've ever done in my life by miles and miles. I love working with a purpose for the Lord, and only the Spirit could make you comfortable with working 10 hours a day with language/missionary study.

 

Wo ai nimen! I love you all! I'm out of time! I'll send the pictures to Mom, she'll post them on FB!

 

-Love, Sister Koch, or Ke (flat tone) Jie Mei. (My name is lame. It's a measurement word for trees. I mean, really?)

Sister Koch Gets To Provo (pics)

At the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

At the Joseph Smith Memorial Building with her Aunt Kerrilyn!

Seeing a few relatives (Aunt Kerrilyn, Uncle Thomas, Aunt Jamie, cousin Kelsey Edwards)

before she heads down to Provo.

Stopping by the Provo Temple before she goes to the MTC!

It is almost time to go to the MTC!

Getting dropped off at the MTC!

Aunt Kerrilyn was able to snap a few quick pics before she had to pull away from the curb.

Seeing a friend! No hugs allowed!

Just as she is getting dropped off, she sees a friend she knows from BYU-Hawaii! She is so excited! No hugs allowed though!! (This is so her - happy and jumping!)

The Mission Begins!

Written by her mom:

What a big day! At 4:20 this morning, we headed to the airport so Saren could begin the grand adventure of a mission. Luckily, the Kansas City airport has the super short security lines at each of the gates so we were able to spend a few minutes in a seating area in the airport saying our good-byes before Saren headed to gate 50 to catch her flight to Salt Lake City.

No tears were shed, just lots of hugs and well wishes and a little bit of laughter, then it was time to say good-bye. We watched and waved as she went through security. Then we walked down the hall a bit to wave at her at the gate. She smiled and waved exuberantly with the biggest grin on her face.


Saren is so excited for her mission. Scared, too. But mostly excited. She is giddy with enthusiasm and passionate about being the best missionary that she can be. It is fun to see her excitement. Her face lights up with such joy every time she has talked about her mission. She has been this way ever since she put in her papers and her enthusiasm has not diminished one whit ever since.

She has been home from college for a month. She studies "Preach My Gospel" for hours every day, practicing the first and second discussions, and studies Mandarin as well. Her mission items have been in piles around "her room" (it is actually her brother's bedroom. He is letting her use it while she is home from college) and she has been wearing her mission clothes and shoes for the past ten days to see how everything  fits and to break in her shoes. She has been motivated, dedicated, and super excited about her mission ever since she made the commitment to go.

When she landed at the SLC airport, she was picked up by her Aunt Kerrilyn. They went to the Joseph Smith Memorial building and did a little shopping at the distribution center there. After that, her Uncle Thom, Aunt Jamie, and cousin Kelsey (also leaving on a mission in two weeks) joined them and they ate lunch at the Nauvoo Cafe.

When it was time to drop Saren off at the MTC, Aunt Kerrilyn reported that Saren was greeted by someone she knew from BYU-H and that the drop off took two minutes total. She even looked at the clock. Pulling up to the curb at 1:16 and pulling away from the curb at 1:18. Quick and easy.

So, now Sister Koch is at the MTC and her new adventure officially begins.

I will update this blog whenever there is news. Looking forward to sharing her adventure with you all!