Don't Hold Anything Back

May 24, 2013

Hola!!!

My time here in the Provo MTC has been simply incredible, and I'm thankful for everyday that my visa doesn't come because that means I can stay and have more amazing experiences! I am learning lots of Spanish, but teaching in Spanish is still really difficult. My teachers Brother Stevenson (aka Pepe) and Brother Busath have had to endure some pretty slow and painful lessons. Last night Brother Stevenson pretended to be us and give a lesson to another teacher to show us that even without much knowledge of Spanish we can still teach through the spirit... I kinda wanted to throw something at him when he was pretending to be us because it was reeeeally bad! We all know more spanish than he was using and he kept pretending to do the same things we do when we don't know what to say. However, in the end we all got a really good laugh out of it and I decided that throwing something at the teacher probably wouldn't be the best thing to do -- ha ha. My teachers are pretty great, and they are super patient with us while we are learning!

Oh, how we love laundry!
About the most exciting part of our week.

Nothing incredibly exciting has happened this week because, well, this is the MTC, but every day I become stronger spiritually and know how to better teach and speak in Spanish. There are people in my class who had absolutley no Spanish before coming here and now they are speaking so much! I can testify that the gift of tongues is a real thing and that we have indeed been blessed with it!

There are a couple of really great things that I learned this week: "Don't hold anything back" and "Submit your will to that of the Lord." I want my mission to be great, and so I want to be able to say that I gave my all and did exactly what the Lord wanted me to do! The hymn "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go, Dear Lord" comes to mind often when I remember think of these two things.

My district out for our weekly Sunday Temple Walk

So, my district is awesome! Two elders that were previously our district leaders have been chosen to be the new zone leaders because all of the other districts have departed except for one, and the district that left last had the previous zone leaders in it. Once that district leaves on Mon and Tues, our district will be the only one left in the zone until Wed, and as far as we know, we'll be getting only one other district for sure...It seems so weird to go from 4 zones to 2 and soon 1! Our table in the lunch room seems so empty!

My awesome district -- who knew we could sing?

Hermana Hyer left on Wed for Peru, and she is doing well and having a blast down there. It was really cool to see the Elders give her a blessing before she left...it was most of their first time giving a blessing! And last night, our Zone president, Pres. Tyler came in and asked them to give him a blessing because he had dislocated his shoulder. It surprised me for him, someone who is older, wiser, and has so much more knowledge asking them, who are newly ordained Elders, to give him a priesthood blessing. He told them "I know you can do it. I don't really care who gives it, becuase it is really the Lord who is giving me this blessing." I just thought it was a pretty good experience!

We also discovered that our district can sing! We just started singing "Nearer My God to Thee" because we wanted to try and bring the spirit back into the room after we had been having trouble focusing and studying. To our surprise, we were all able to pick out parts and sing a capella! It was way cool!

Me and my cousin, Elder Bone

I finally had the opportunity last Sunday to see my cousin Elder Bone! He entered the MTC on May 1st and is going to the Berlin Germany Mission. I had been trying to find him since I got here, and we just happened to run into each other behind the temple during our temple walk! He is doing great! I'm not gonna lie, though...it was a little awkward because we couldn't do anything but shake each other's hand and stand like 6 inches apart for the picture -- ha ha. I'm pretty sure that picture looked just as akward as it felt :) But I am so glad that I got to see him! If I am still here next week, I can try to find my cousin Sister Langford! That will be super cool to have two cousins in the MTC the same time as me!

Thank you for your prayers! I feel like I really need all the help I can get in order to learn the language!