Before I write this post, I should give you a disclaimer. Although I was a LDS/Mormon missionary in the past I have since removed my name from the church for reasons I talk about in this post called “물몬교의 숨은 역사”. I am not bitter or angry against the church or the members, I simply have come to believe that it isn’t true. I loved my time as a missionary and am very happy that I went. Heck, I wouldn’t know anything about Korea if I didn’t go on my mission. Now that y’all know where I’m coming from, let me give quick overview of what a mission entails.
Just some quick facts about LDS missions, unmarried men 19 to 25 can serve two years while unmarried women 21 to 25 can serve one and a half years. It’s expected that all young men in the church serve a mission (though it’s technically voluntary) while completely voluntary for women. All missionaries around the world pay $400 US dollars each month to cover all expenses. During those entire two or one and a half years missionaries dedicate their entire life to preaching the gospel. The only contact they have with family is through letters once a week and two phone calls a year. There are also a lot of rules that make it so missionaries don’t play around, but we did get time to do what we wanted (not everything) once a week from morning until 6. The rest of the week missionaries either proselyte out on the streets (oh many do I have stories there) or teach in appointments. Okay, let’s look into the MTC. Here I am entering the MTC (no name tag yet, so it actually looks a little weird lol), bright-eyed and eager to learn!:
For missionaries, this is the last time you will see your family for two years regardless of how close you serve to them. They have a little presentation and then the parents go out one side of the room and the missionaries go out of the other, so it’s a very emotional time for many.
As many of you know, missionaries always travel in pairs (called companionships). Well, missionaries even stay in pairs in the MTC. You go back to your new dorm and meet your new companion who you’ll be with 24/7 for your entire MTC stay. For English missionaries, they stay two weeks, Spanish six weeks, and for harder languages like Chinese, Japanese or Korean it’s twelve weeks. That’s all the time you have before you’re thrown into the field to find and teach investigators with nothing more than up to an hour of personal language study every day. For companions who don’t click well, the MTC can be a living hell, but my companion was really fun and not totally uptight. Here’s us trying to escape from the MTC (which missionaries can’t leave):
Everything is organized exactly how it is in the field. Missionaries are always in companionships of two or three people (called threesomes) if there’s an odd number. Those companions are in groups of about four companionships called districts. Districts are part of zones (in the field it’s all geographically based, in the MTC it’s all language based). Teachers teach one district each, so we get a lot of individual attention. Here was my awesome district:
Our group of Korean missionaries actually was quarantined for a few days, you can read that post over here.
If you’ve ever called a phone number from an LDS commercial or from one of the cards the missionaries give out, you’ve probably talked to a missionary. In the MTC we did service by answering phone calls to the church about sending out pamphlets and free books. It also helps us get out of our shell in case we’re super shy or anything like that. Out of all the missionaries there, I always got the long calls for some reason. I guess it prepared me for my mission since I had many ‘interesting’ conversations out in the field. Anyways, here’s me at one of the desks in the call center:
Now to get into the beef of the MTC: study time! Our daily schedule was pretty much the same every day. We would have three study sessions every day that lasted three hours, one session which was personal study. Each session would be about half language and half gospel.
The first thing we learned do to in Korean, after spending a one day on Hangeul, was to pray. We prayed when we woke up, when we started and ended a study session, ate food, before we worked out, at night before going to bed, and numerous other times. We were encouraged to say our prayers in Korean anytime possible to practice. As you can imagine, our prayers were fairly repetitive since we didn’t know much Korean. It was always pretty simple, things like ‘thank you for giving us our families’ and such things. We also did things like sing hymns in Korean, read scriptures in Korean (even though we didn’t understand it, it was mostly pronunciation practice), etc. Most, well pretty much all, of our vocabulary was attained through learning it in the context of teaching about our church.
Instead of using a regular Korean textbook, we had a special book put together by the church which taught how to teach about the gospel in Jesus Christ. It was kind of funny, because we couldn’t talk about a lot of simple topics but we could talk about advanced gospel topics. Not only that, we didn’t even practice middle form. In order to be respectful, we only learned the highest form used in normal conversation (-합니다/-합니까). Korean missionaries are never allowed to use low level language (-해) and are expected to use high form when they teach out in the field.
The teachers in the MTC were returned missionaries who had served in Korean speaking missions so they pretty much knew how to prepare us for the field. The teachers are generally students from Brigham Young University (BYU), the university next door which is also owned by the church. Here’s one of the teachers who was a second generation Korean from Hawaii:
We played some games that helped us have some fun. We did things like 3-6-9 (funny video of that game here) and some others that I can’t remember the name of. We also had weekly sessions where we taught fake investigators for 20-30 minutes twice with a scenario and another session where we taught another teacher other than our main teachers.
All in all it was pretty good training for teaching about the gospel and provided a good root for learning Korean. I cemented my love for studying Korean in the MTC and so was infamous for studying Korean every free minute of the day. Now that I’m home I’ve found a lot of joy in continuing my studies, hoping to finally get to Korea. As missionaries we weren’t allowed to watch TV or listen to music, so I’m still filling up on those right now =).
Very interesting! Maybe (as if I haven’t been demanding enough) you could do a follow-up post with more detail about the coursework/study schedule… How much was it focused on writing and or grammar vs. speaking/listening? Can you get the texts outside of the LDS Church? Was there level testing? Were there any particular approaches that you found especially effective in their teaching techniques?
I’m not a Christian, myself. But regardless of theological considerations, I have a good deal of respect for the LDS Church–at the very least because it has apparently put together a crackerjack language program
@Andrew
It was all pretty much geared towards speaking. If we could teach the lessons, that was the most important thing bar none. We worked a little on reading and listening, but not nearly as much as teaching. We could answer some simple questions and read things even if we didn’t understand them, so the basics were covered. The teaching was pretty lose, teachers could do whatever they saw fit as long as we were ready by the time we left. Teachers covered topics in the same time period, but their methods were very different from one teacher to the next.
The text is only available from the LDS church. I believe you might be able to buy it in the MTC located in Provo, Utah, but that’s a little iffy. There’s a store inside the MTC that anyone can go to which sells missionary materials, but that usually is just regular church stuff like manuals and hymnals in all the different languages. The actual language texts are usually just printed, bound and given to each missionary when they come in. The missionaries get to keep their manuals, mine is probably at home in Alaska right now. We learn pretty much everything from the teacher and use the materials mainly for personal study. When I was there the language materials we had were all over the place. We had a grammar book written by the church (I think I still have that), a pocket-sized card with basic grammar rules, a packet with pronunciation rules (like 받침 sound changes), basic scenarios with examples like greeting, phone calls, street preaching, and other such things, and we were just starting to get manuals which helped with vocabulary and grammer that helped us read the missionary lesson plans in Korean. After I left, they actually released a really cool little book that has pretty much everything in it. I think they use that now rather than giving all these individual things. I can’t remember how much of the materials I still have since they’re all back in Alaska, but I know I still have some.
No, there wasn’t any level testing. Missionaries are sent out no matter what level they are since they’re expected to get up pretty quick once they’re in the field.
It is pretty amazing, the LDS church definitely has the best worldwide missionary training program out there. I’ve heard that the military has looked at the method used in the MTC as a model for their language programs. It’s very impressive to teach people a language like Korean for just 12 weeks and then put them out in the field with no more classroom-style training after that. To answer your question about what helped the most, it was getting a little bit of knowledge and being thrown into the situation. I was forced to try my best to use my Korean every day in real-life teaching situations. That necessity is what I think gives the missionaries the amazing language skills they come home with.
your new Reveal!
I found this blog while looking for a mormom contact in Korea. I’m producing a documentary on missionaries in Korea and I would love to interview you, on camera, about your experiences. Do you know how I can contact the MTC and do you think they would be willing to participate in an interview?
glasgowarsenal@live.co.uk
Hi dear brother,
My son is in a LDS mission. He was learning French in MTC. But when he arrived at Canada, the mission president asked him to learn Mandarin Chinese. Therefore, I was searching from language learning materials. That our path in this numerous web come acrose. It was sad to hear that you don’t believe the restored gospel anymore. But it is your life. Not mine, I moved on to eat my dinner. However, the message of you keep haunting in my brain. I told myself, stay away from other business. I have eough things to do. By the way, in order to say things meaningful, I have to come to the Lord and it takes effort in my heart. However, the Holy Ghost keep prompting me to do something. Therefore, I kneeled to say a prayer. As soon as I kneeled down, tears almost came from my eyes, I can feel the love of our Lord Jesus Christ toward all children of men. Thne I listened. The thought came to my mind is:
Tell him that the Lord loves you. Don’t focus on negative and small things. Look at the overall pictures of your experience. Then you will know the truth. Ask him to say prayers with sincere heart with a real intent, then I will answer his prayers.
Oh, I am only a messager as the Lord wants me to deliver this mesage. I don’t know whether you take it or not. I am glad that you have no bitter with the church. Hey, one more things about the cost of missionary. My wife and I are paying the $400.00 per month to my son. When I was a missionary about 30 years ago, I saved some money, and some good members of the church supported me during my 2 years mission. May the Lord bless you.
Thanks for your kind words, I hope you read my story:
http://www.mstrum.com/docs/LLC.pdf
Hi Brother!?
I was reading your post it made me miss my mission and at the time when i was at the MTC, It was the best time of my entire life, When i got home from my mission, i had way hard time i got to think i should remove my name from the church, but i said a prayer then at that moment the Lord was still talking to me. So you know what i meant?. I hope you dont mind. Pray is the only reason i believe in God, also it helped me came to know about my Savior. May the lord bless you.
I hope your life continued to improve after your mission. It was two of the best years of my life but life just keeps getting better and better! (even without the church).
I hope you also read my story:
http://www.mstrum.com/docs/LLC.pdf