Last P-day in The MTC
Hello everyone! I hope you all had really great weeks! I finally got over my cold, I have a lingering cough but it's not bad. Not being sick makes being here much easier to endure and enjoy. This is my last Pday in the MTC! and my last P day until Christmas. That is really weird. It doesn't feel like Christmas. Probably because there is no snow, we aren't allowed to listen to Christmas music, and the decorations we got from some sisters that left last week are really pathetic.
So every Sunday in the MTC you have to have two five minute talks prepared on some topics they give you, and then when sacrament meeting starts, they announce the program, and that's who you know is speaking in church that day. My name was called, of course, and I had to speak on faith. So I get up there and I say, "good morning brothers and sisters" and I'm like, oh oops, dang. "sorry, Elders and sisters." so that was really embarrassing. Then I keep going, talking about how faith is an action and we have to have faith, and we will only receive a witness after a trial of our faith. I talked about the blessing Elder Jones gave me, and I said, "last week I had a really bad cold, I felt really awful and prayed that I would have energy and strength and then had the thought that I should ask for a blessing because I really felt like crap." I. Said. Crap. Over. The. Pulpit. I was mortified, and the branch presidency sighed and then I felt weird, so I think the whole talk lasted about two and a half minutes, but it's fine. It was over. At the Snday devotional we got to hear the BYU men's chorus sing and it was beautiful. The spirit was so strong and I felt Christmas-y for an hour.
I learned something else about the sacrament! When we take the sacrament we are renewing ALL our covenants. Not just the ones we make at baptism but also the ones we make in the temple. Maybe that's like a widely known thing, but I thought it was cool because I've never heard it. So Boys, you better step up your game and remember that you are helping a lot of people become clean again.
Monday we met two new TRC investigators! Jen and Jaylne. Jen had a ton of questions for us and was really excited about everything we had to tell her. She's living with and taking care of her grandparents as her Grandma recovers from chemo and her grandpa recovers from a stroke. I told her I also took care of elderly people and it made me really miss my residents. We invited her to pray and she seemed really excited about it. Jaylne was harder to get through to. She's 18 and a student at BYU. All of her friends are members and her roommates said that the missionaries could answer all of her questions better than they could so they sent her to us. She had like, two questions and wouldn't tell us really anything about her. We invited her to pray as well.
Tuesday was a really hard day. My knees were killing me and I was really upset about that. I just got over my cold and now my knees are bugging me again. That night we went to the devotional and got to hear from Lynn G. Robbins of the Quorum of the Seventy. He talked about why we needed an inspiring reason to be here, otherwise it would be a long and miserable 18 months or two years. I thought a lot about that, because I have spent most of my time at the MTC feeling miserable. With a cold, with my knees and with being homesick. But I've realized, that despite all that, I've never thought about going home, or wanting to quit. And I thought about why. I am here because I love my Father in Heaven and I love His plan for us. I love that he gave me a family I can be with for eternity. I love the happiness and joy I get from following Christ and trying to become more like him as I serve, love, and teach. I am excited to give other people this knowledge and happiness. I am excited to tell people that they having a loving Heavenly Father that knows them personally, and is dying to hear from them. I am happy to be here and I know there isn't a better way to be spending the next 18 months of my life. I love this work and I haven't even started it yet. That is why I am here and that is what will keep me here when the members and investigators I meet make me try craw fish boil.
Wednesday we taught Jen. She said she had a great experience with prayer and felt like it was a very natural thing to do. She said she felt content after she prayed and that when she prayed with her grandparents she had felt love and happiness. We talked to her about the Doctrine of Christ and extended the invitation to be baptized and she said she would prepare to be baptized January 20th. We meet with her again tomorrow.
We also met with Jaylne. We left feeling discouraged. we taught her about the Book of Mormon a little bit and the Plan of Salvation. The spirit was there, but we couldn't get her to talk much. We didn't feel like she was progressing and we didn't know how to help her.
At lunch we got a letter from a senior couple at the MTC asking us to meet them at dinner time so we could talk. They are going to be working in the office in Baton Rouge. At dinner time we met them, they are the Mcvea's. I love them so much because they reminded me of my residents, (can you tell I miss them?). I'm going to love working with them and the other senior couples in my mission. Meeting them got me really excited to get out there!
Thursday we didn't do much. We had In-field orientation, which is just going to a seminar with a lot of other missionaries leaving next week and learned about finding people. we had to talk to people that weren't our companions and weren't in our district. It was hard because I don't talk to people. And I didn't feel like I was really good at it. But it was a good learning experience and I'm glad I got to do it. In class we started learning about how to teach less active members. It was hard because they already know all the lessons, and they might not be willing to open up about why they stopped coming, so we practiced asking questions, and how to help them. Our teacher is pretending to be our investigator, Sydney, who is a less active member. It's hard but I think Sister Peck and I have a good lesson planned.
We taught Jaylne yesterday and had planned to go through different scriptures in the Book of Mormon on how to recognize the spirit, and to get her comfortable with reading the Book of Mormon. She actually had a ton of questions on the plan of salvation, so we talked about that. The spirit that was there was so incredibly powerful. I know Jaylne could feel it too. We invited her to read the Book of Mormon, and to keep praying. We got her email so we could stay in touch with her, and help her prepare to be baptized. It was such a cool lesson, and very cool for us to be able to see how the spirit will guide us and how it can take the lesson in a completely different direction than we had planned.
Well that's all from me! I hope everyone is well! I miss you all and I hope you are still working on Lighting the World! I just found out the other day that the Baton Rouge temple will be closed from Jan. 28, 2018, to April 5th , 2019. So today might have been my last temple trip for a while! Please go as often as you can!
Sister Dowse Covered in our decorations
Me, Sister Peck, Sister Dowse, Sister Coon all by the tree
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