MTC - Semana Ocho, Jan. 12, 2010

Hola Familia!

Esta semana fue muy bien! This past week has been really great. Thanks for the e-mail mom. :D I got my immunizations all taken care of. The next thing I could use some help with is figuring out how to send my bike to my mission. You need to call and check to make sure that I still need it before you send it; apparently some other missions have been changing and don't have bikes anymore for sisters. I really really hope that I get to use my bike, but I just want you to double check so you don't waste the money sending it if I can't use it. Thanks! If you do end up sending my bike i have a bag of stuff in my closet you need to send with it, including a bike lock, a head lamp, and I also will need my helmet. Thanks!

This week has been really good. i have had some incredible experiences. One of them was in the Referral Center, which is where we call people that have requested DVDs and stuff online or from the pass-along cards and we make sure they got their item and then share our testimonies and invite then to have the missionaries bring them the Book of Mormon. Two weeks ago i talked to a man named Charles and he seemed really open and willing to hearing the message and wanted the Book of Mormon and the missionaries. I called him back this week to see if the missionaries had come and they hadn't, but he remembered me and I got to talk to him about the first vision and the restoration. He said that he "is always searching for truth," and when I shared the first vision with him he was like, "yeah, so you're saying God and Jesus Christ came in a vision to Joseph Smith. Ok. And that's how you know your chursh is true? I can see that." He just was so open and willing to hearing about the gospel, and it was such a thrilling experience realizing that I actually can make a difference, and really am going to be able to help people come to the gospel. I know that Heavenly Father blessed me with this experience and with a little taste of success because of my obedience and because I have been trying really hard to do what is right. It was also a nice boost because the Referral Center was something I was struggling with- it is hard to call up complete strangers and try to share the gospel with them. I know though that the Lord can help me get over those fears and become a missionary that he can rely on and use to do a great work. I know that there is a reason I am here and there is a work i need to do.

I have also been learning so much about following the guidance and direction of the spirit. I know that this is the skill that is going to bless me the most throughout the rest of my life and I am so glad i get to really focus and learn how to do that here. We were planning a lesson for a "progressing investigator" (a teacher playing an investigator) and in just was not feeling right, so finally we decided we needed to do something else, and the spirit prompted us to plan for a lesson on repentance and it was incredibly powerful. It seems like such a small silly thing that the spirit would help us for a fake, role-play lesson, but i realized that learning how to recognize that spirit and how important it is in our planning is part of the training here. This really is the lord's way of training his missionaries.

James and Bob, I hope you are really reading your scriptures. I hope the rest of you are too, but I just wish i had prepared even more. It is like the hymn "More holiness give me" where it says "more fit for the kingdom, more used would i be." If you want to be a missionary like Ammon or Alma start preparing now. Sister Dalton came and spoke in Relief Society and she said that her New Years Resolution was basically that hymn. There is so much we can do to be better and become closer to the Lord.

I realize that i am becoming more and more intense, but it is just because i want to be the best missionary i can possibly be, and because we are so spiritually fed here- I can't even tell one tenth of all of the incredible things I am learning, but I am so excited to go out and share them with the people in Los Angeles, so why shouldn't i share them with you too?

Sorry i didn't really get a chance to respond to your e-mail mom. I'll write you more next week. I don't get your dearelders that you write over the weekends until five on Monday, which doesn't really give me much time to write back. I love you all so much! Congratulations Bob! Good luck with that job Ang! Good luck with your classes james! I love you dad and am glad you are excited about your new calling. :)

- Hermana Dansie