My companion and I already got released from the music calling and called to be Sister Training Leaders. I guess when you're only somewhere a month and a half they want to switch around and give you different responsibilities. This means we're in charge of all of the girls in our ward- which is a few districts now. To simplify it, there's 14 girls. We visit the girls every night, we will be hosts to the new missionaries next week, we're in charge of music and prayer and such in our classroom, getting mail, making sure everyone's getting along and being obedient, etc. It's going to fly by! I am most impressed by the fact that I was somewhat nervous about visiting the girls because sometimes I feel like Real World Lauren and Missionary Lauren don't know how to join up and connect with people. You can't really start off by doing some weird off kilter joke out here haha but one of the girls said 'sit down!' and made ME feel at ease, and the visits started going much better. These girls are incredible to go out at 19, I know I wouldn't have done it.
We got to hear from another apostle- Elder Quentin L. Cook! Our branch president said that they are probably taping all of these apostle visits, here in the MTC we frequently watch clips from MTC devotionals from Holland and Bednar and such. The most powerful part of the devotionals for me is that he was the third speaker to change his message just from being in the huge building with all the missionaries. Meaning he said 'i had things prepared for tonight...but the Spirit is telling me you need something else.' All three times that has happened you could just feel we all needed to hear it. I can't explain how strong the Spirit is here, many of the leaders have said we're just used to it, but they can feel it like it's almost palpable when they walk into the rooms here. Elder Cook's talk was about not doubting our capabilities or the Lord and basically to sum it up 'you can do it', which I know I really needed. I'm getting a little frustrated with myself that I can understand a fairly advanced level of Spanish, but can only speak it at a pretty elementary level. But I know that if I do my part the Lord will make up the rest.
We've had all sorts of lessons with our 'investigators' this week. Just to clarify, an investigator at the MTC is either our teachers role playing an investigator they once had, or we go to the TRC (training resource center) and there are hired people acting as investigators, most of them are hispanic,- one's even from Puebla! Ours is named Natalie and I have had amazing experiences with her. With my teachers I'm just too nervous and self conscious about my Spanish, knowing the doctrine, etc. But with Natalie we get into these awesome discussions and I ask questions and am able to say things that I don't even plan out beforehand! It's crazy that I'm having 45 minute gospel conversations with someone in another language... Natalie really causes me to think HARD about the gospel- man, all of her questions have another question within it! She wanted to know why Christ applied to her life now if he lived so long ago. We explained the atonement and that through him we can be cleansed through sin. But she said how did he do that. We said he suffered in Getsethamene...she said how, if that was so long ago? She also asked why did we come down to Earth if we were living with God before? What is the point of being tested down here? And so on. This has made my studies so much more effective because I'm literally just digging to find the answers both for Natalie and myself. Sometimes I wish I could just get on Google, but I'm glad I can't. I'm learning the scriptures much better which was one of my mission goals. The scriptures were my peace of mind at home and they still are here as well.
We had a funny experience 'teaching' one of our teachers (acting as an investigator), it kind of had the feel of a first lesson for some reason, lots of weird things happen. Apparently my companion and I knock on the door really loud. Then we sat down and she said 'Que paso?' which is more like WHAT HAPPENED, rather than, what's up? So with big eyes he said 'with what?' and we all were just kind of blinking at each other. 'ohhhh que PASA', he said hahah. THEN, I got him mixed up with someone else and asked 'how are your applications going for work?' and he wasn't applying for a job. Once we got over THAT awkwardness we were trying to explain the law of tithing. I was trying to say that it pays for things such as temples, chapels, and even the clothes he would wear for his baptism. The last time we met with him we just could not figure out how to explain the baptism jumpsuit so we settled on 'pants and shirt together' super classy ha. But this week I looked in the dictionary and it said 'mono'...that makes sense, I thought. One, one piece. I told him tithing even helps to pay for the mono he would wear at his baptism....yep that means MONKEY. When he explained that I couldn't even hold my laughter in. He looked at the dictionary later and said it wasn't right. I think its a mono de something something, a once piece falling suit or something , we had another teacher look on his iphone later. Anyway as we walked out the door I said don't have fear about a monkey at your baptism haha. Oh man.
I found out one of my super good friends in the district, Hermana Hymas was in LOGAN'S EFY GROUP ONCE UPON A TIME!!! How crazy is that? Oh and there are TONS of missionaries here now and more to come, now that high school is out (high school!!?!?! I feel so old!!!), and apparently the MTC is just going to 'explode' in June. That's why my email was late today, the laundry room is a mad house.
Just a reminder that DEAR ELDER is the best way to get ahold of me in the MTC! We found out a Spanish speaking missionary will spend 600 WAKING hours in the MTC, and only once every Thursday for 6 Thursdays for no more than an hour I get to log on and the time flies by. I adore getting the emails and the pictures- keep them coming. But Dear Elder allows me to hold onto your words, and then I can write you a letter on my P day or during Sunday free time. And still all you have to do is type! Oh and make sure you put your correct address- I sent Logan, Annie, and Carly letters hopefully everyone's getting stuff- I have no way of knowing throughout the week!!!
Hope everyone's summer is going well. If you're feeling down about anything, remember that the Lord will take your weakness and make it strong. The scripture doesn't say your 'weaknessES', it says your weakness, our weakness we all have is that we're the natural man, and we're going to make mistakes. But the Lord will do his part when we do ours.
Love you all!!! Hope to hear from you soon!
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