First week at MTC

April 13, 2012

Well, I have officially been here at the mtc for a week and two days and I am having a great time. Sunday we had a special MTC wide sacrament meeting/ Easter Devotional. We were joined by President Packer from the Quorum of the 12 along with his son who is a member of the 70 and another member of the 70. It was really cool to be there and listen from him. One of the biggest things I liked about his talk was that he talked about replacing fear with faith. That if we have enough faith we will never fear. I really liked that and have tried to keep that in mind always.

We later had a nice walk outside to the temple! It was really nice to get out in the bright warm sunshine and walk over and take pictures of the beautiful temple! Before coming here I did not know that the temple was literally across the street from the MTC.

That night we had a Musical devotional from the BYU Mens Choir. It was their last performance of their season. Almost all of the choir is made up of returned missionaries or future missionaries. We then had a choice of a few different movies that we could watch as part of sunday movie night that they do every Sunday. My companion and I watched the Joseph Smith movie. I really like how deep that movie goes into his life and the bringing forth of the restored gospel to the world.

In our classes we were given an investigator to teach. We were told he was a native philippino who came to study at BYU and grew curious about the church. He was learning English but not enough that he could understand it so we had to teach him in Tagalog by companionship. We taught him four lessons introducing him to the gospel of christ, teaching him how to pray, about faith, repentance, and in our second lesson gave him a book of mormon that Ben and Amy gave to me at christmas with my testimony in tagalog in the front cover. A lot of our lessons were reading from the tagalog preach my gospel and reading from our tagalog translation of the scriptures but most importantly we had the spirit with us and really felt that he felt it as well. He accepted it and seemed like he was grasping the church so tightly he wanted to call his family in the Philippines and send the missionaries to them. One of the other companionships taught him about baptism and committed him to baptism on the last lesson. It was later that day that our teacher showed us a video that he had made of him speaking perfect english and saying how thankful he was for us to teach him and that he wanted to share it with his family. We were then given another surprise about an hour later from our teacher saying that he was not a real investigator but actually an employee at the MTC and that he would then start team teaching us! That got some of the elders in my district frustrated that all was for nothing but it gave us all a great experience of teaching in tagalog and we were all inspired to teach important sections that he needed and as a district we grew quite alot for what we all did and taught.

The food here started out in my mind as being good but has gone a little downhill but there are always constant things that are good like they always have good soup for lunch and dinner and they have a wrap bar that is always very good! yesterday I had the best lunch here at the MTC! They had pork gyros! It didnt taste as good as the lamb ones i have had before but they tasted very delicious, I had two along with everything else.

I hope everything is going well for everyone. I received a letter from Sterling this past week that he included a scripture from Job that said Gird up your loins and be a man! I really liked that and that has helped me when i have had troubles. I have also done as mom instructed me to always keep a cheerful song in my heart. Going from class to class I often find myself humming or singing a hymn to keep me going. I love my companion and I love the rest of the elders in my district. We have a strong sense of comradery and get along great!

I was talking with our district leader Elder Fatani from New Zealand yesterday about mail. We have each only received 2 letters the whole time we have been here whereas the other missionaries in our district have received 5-7-10 or more letters. While that may start to be discouraging that we dont get much mail we both agreed that we know that our families and friends are constantly praying for us and that we will feel the blessings from that Always and feel their comfort and support with us always.

I love you all and am very grateful for your love and support!