MTC - Semana Cuatro, Dec. 15, 2009

Buenos Dias Familia!

Mom, I got the package you sent me! Thanks so much! I am so excited that I have something fun to look forward to and open for Christmas. That really was very sweet of you. And I was so glad you made me those address stickers! That will save me so much time. It is kind of hard being here for the holiday season, but at the same time it is nice having such an intense focus on Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. i am learning and growing so much spiritually. And like my branch president's wife told us missionaries in a talk, we are "giving up eighteen months or two years of our lives with our families so that we can help other people be with their families for eternity." I love the joy that comes from knowing that we will all be together forever. I get to think about that a lot as I practice teaching other people about the gospel. It makes me realize how important the gospel really is to me in my life, and also how lucky I am to have so many friends and family in the gospel that love and support me and share their testimonies and wonderful examples with me.

This week has been really good. We had an incredible devotional on Tuesday by Elder Costa, a member of the presidency of the seventy. He is from South America, and it was really neat to hear his conversion story and his experiences with learning english. Learning spanish is pretty challenging, but I know the lord will help me. I sang in the choir at the devotional, and it was funny because the camera zoomed in awkwardly close to my face for a really long time. (They have the screens and the whole set-up like conference, so I could see it out of the corner of my eye) it was so close that literally all you could see on the huge screen was my face. Speaking of singing, i auditioned with Breath of Heaven and I get to sing it next Sunday at Relief Society. Relief Society is one of my favorite meetings, because all of the sisters in the MTC get together, and they have amazing speakers come, like this past sunday was Sister Dalton, the Young Womens General president. So I am excited I will get to do the musical number but a little bit nervous.
One of the ways we practice teaching is by pretending like the teachers are investigators, and going around and contacting them and teaching them, and it is funny because one of my investigators actually knows Angela from high school. Some people from his class told me that he was really confused because he thought that I was Angela, but then realized that I wasn't. I can't talk to him like he is a teacher, I have to always whenever I see him pretend like he is "David," my investigator, so I haven't talked to him about it, but his name is brother Jensen. i don't know his first name. Anyways, we taught him the first lessono this week (in english, our first lesson in spanish will be next wednesday, but we had to contact him in spanish and ask him questions about himself in spanish.) He had us teach him the lesson in front of his whole class, and he was acting really enthusiastic about everything, and during the opening prayer he kept repeating what Hermana Stout was saying and then adding things like "praise Jesus," so we both just started laughing. It was pretty bad. We pulled ourselves together though and the rest of the lesson went alright.

Thursday we went to the RC again to talk to real investigators on the phone. It was an incredibly humbling experience for me. I got into two really intense conversations, one with a southern man, who I am assuming is black, that said that he had read the book of mormon but that you can't add to the bible, and that we don't need to have prophets because Jesus made it so we could talk directly to God through him. Another conversation was with a lady who also had read the Book of Mormon and had similar concerns about adding to the bible, but she was more of the attitude of we are all making it back to jesus, we are just taking different paths. It was really hard for me to try to share with them what we believe without having it sound like i was saying that they are wrong. I definitely have a lot to work on with being bold and testifying that this is the true and the only way to return to God.

I got all of the letters from the ward. That was really sweet of them to do that. I love how most of them were like "the MTC is really tough, but just hang in there." Its funny because before the mission the whole focus is "you are going to have such an amazing time, everything is going to be so great." And it really is true, i am having an amizing time and it is great, but it also is pretty rough. It was nice getting that extra little bit of encouragement and reaffirmation that it is supposed to be challenging, because really that is how we grow the most.
Something that I learned in class the other day was about the scripture in Mosiah about weaknesses, and how we are given weaknesses so that we can learn, and also I learned and realized that the closer we come to God the more and more aware we become of our weaknesses, but we can overcome them and become even stronger with his help.

Oh, and you can tell Davie that I am actually losing weight, not ganing any. I have been eating really healty and exercising a ton, so I've actually lost about six pounds and am in the best shape of my life. I feel like it is actually easier to be motivated and have self-control here, because why not add a few more goals when you are already focusing on a bunch?

Well, I love you, but my time is running out again.

- Hermana Dansie