My tentative MTC departure date is June 23, so I'M HALFWAY THROUGH! Me and my companions had a halfway party, Sis. Hill got some donuts, chips, and salsa, so we partied a bit in our room and talked about the MTC so far. It was so fun.
This last week has been the most... uh. terrible and wonderful, so
far. Haha. Terrible because Saturday was the worst day I've had here so
far. It's kind of a long story, but during planning, we were trying to
prepare a lesson, and we just weren't unified, we didn't have to Spirit
with us, and I was trying SO HARD to just do what God wanted me to do,
but it just wasn't working. We weren't really getting along, and all 3
of us had a bad day. All day I felt inadequate, and Sis. Stratton (who
has the hardest time with the language and being here) hit an all-time
low and was saying she wanted to go home, and Sis. Hill was feeling
guilty that we weren't getting along and also just feeling bad about
herself. That evening we taught our "investigator," and it went badly.
Afterwards, our teacher told us he could totally tell we weren't unified
(we knew that) and that he considered telling us to not
come back to teach. Baaah. We were all extremely upset, but he forwent
his lesson plan to help us. He shared some stories from his mission and
some scriptures, it was really good. We also helped Sis. Stratton,
encouraged her to pray and remember the testimony she wrote down
recently when she really realized how happy she was to be here.
When we
got back to our residence, 2 sisters came in and talked with us, and
they helped out a lot. Sister Holdaway is the sweetest girl ever, I love
her. She shared something that I really liked. In Matthew 14 is that
story of Peter and Jesus walking on the water. You should find it, it's
really cool.
Anyways, in it, Peter sees Christ and says he will go out
on the water if Christ bids him, which Sis. Holdaway compared to submitting our mission papers, stating that we are willing to go out if
Christ asks. Well, He did, so we are here, out walking on water. There
are waves all about and sometimes we get scared, doubt, start to sink.
In the scriptures, when Peter starts to sink, he cries out to Christ to
save him, and "immediately" Christ does so. As missionaries, it is hard,
but if we just ask Christ to help us He will. And He did help us
through that day. By the evening, we had all been uplifted in some way. I sometimes feel inadequate, but I know I can
do this, and I know God and Christ are with me.
Everyday since Saturday
has been amazing, and we have learned so much. Saturday we got humbled,
which allowed us to be teachable. The talks during Relief Society and
devotional, the lessons our teachers taught, everything has been
teaching us so much about our purpose as missionaries and about
following the Spirit, how to teach. I'm especially happy for Sister
Stratton. She has been doing SO WELL. One time we were role-playing our
lesson in Korean, and she basically bore her testimony without any
mistakes and without any help from us. Sis Hill and I started to tear up
because we were so happy for her and proud of her. She has been doing
really well with the language since, she just needs to have the
confidence to speak. So Sunday-today has been awesome. We have had so
much fun.
Let me tell you about some of our mishaps :P On
time, I was trying to say "God called Joseph Smith," but I mispronounced
it and ended up saying "God is jealous of Joseph Smith." Our
"investigator" started grinning, and I was like... oh no... what did I
just say. :P He told us after. Then just yesterday, we taught a
"less-active member," and Sis Hill mixed some words up and ended up
saying "We like to eat before we teach" instead of "pray". Hahaha.... We
picked up a new investigator yesterday as well, and we wanted to give
her a Book of Mormon, but we didn't know there are two words for "gift",
so we were using the "spiritual" gifts word instead of like a present
as we gave it to her, she looked amused. It must be so funny to be a
teacher here.
Some other cool things, on Sunday night we have
devotionals, and at first it was kind of weird because instead of a
speaker, we were told we were going to watch a video of a previous MTC
talk by Elder Bednar, which I had already seen. After the video ends
(and it's a really good talk, by the way), suddenly Elder Bednar himself
comes in and has an hour long Question and Answer session with us. It
was so cool! But we totally got punked by an Apostle. :P hahaha, so in
the month that I have been here, I have seen 4 Apostles, how crazy! But
super cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment