Hey! Another p-day... did you ever get the letters I sent? I sent a few. This past week has been a good one. In the beginning I was a bit discouraged and my emotions were roller coasting almost out of control! I go from studying all day long in a class room and getting frustrated with the language, and then we have a really spiritual fireside or devotional and I'm like, "I can take on the world!"
This week, however, I had a talk with my teacher, Hermano Opoate, and I shared with him my seminary experiences and why I chose to serve a mission, and asked for his advice on learning the language. He told me to focus on the lessons we've learned and as I say my prayers and bear my testimony in Spanish, (which I can do pretty well) learn new words to use, but don't worry about trying to master something that hasn't been taught yet. He told me to "avoid comparing like the plague" and that The Lord's expectations are what matters. He also told me that they have had non-members come to the MTC and attempt to learn a language, but never could. The reason being is that our lessons are focused on gospel topics and the vocabulary we learn is all church related. I thought that was interesting and it brought me a lot of comfort. It requires faith, and through faith and trust, miracles can happen.
Speaking of which, we had an awesome fireside last night! It was about miracles and how they are possible when we trust in and have faith in the Lord. The speaker, brother Littlefield, (I think. I don't have my notebook with me!) who is the manager in charge of over-seeing the mission call proccess, shared an experience when he was in a room with one of the apostles deciding where they should send one particular young man on a mission. The apostle said, "he needs to go to Thailand." (Or the Phillipines, I don't remember which one.) The problem was, this young man didn't know the language and the MTC in that country he was about to be sent to didn't teach English speakers the language. When the Brother Littlefield voiced his concerns to the apostle, his response was, "Oh, he'll figure it out." As it turns out, the MTC in Thailand or the Phillipines had begun teaching the language to native English speakers the very day that missionary entered the MTC.
He shared some other incredible stories as well. One about this missionary who promised another soon to be missionary that he would baptize his father, who apparently had many run ins with the missionaries in the past and was very stubborn. The soon to be missionary told the Elder, "good luck with that!" Overtime, this missionary did baptize the other young man's father and wrote to him telling him so. As it turns out, this missionary who baptized the other missionary's father also had an aunt who he swore up and down would never be baptized. As a strange coincidence, the younger missionary whose dad was baptized, found the other missionary's aunt and baptized her. I hope that story made sense. I'm running low on time so that's as clear as I can make it right now.
We don't know when we'll be teaching another "investigator" again. Ricarda, who was our investigator, but is going to be one of our actual teachers, is in Colorado with her sister, so until she gets back, we've been waiting patiently for our next assignment. I took lots of pictures yesterday on the temple walk. You'll see them in a few weeks when I leave the MTC. I can't believe it's already been almost 6 weeks! Times flies!
I hope you got my letters. I love you all!
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