Ping Pong

Hey all!

This week has been amazing but crazy. Holy crap, I can't even believe that I'm almost through with my time here at the MTC.

So.... I left my notes for what I wanted to write this week in our room (ha). This may be a little scatter-brained and short as a result.

Favorite Spiritual Moments:

For our Tuesday devotional, we got to hear from Elder Craig C. Christensen (of the seventy) and his wife. His wife talked a lot about how we should always want to be on the Lord's side. It was pretty cool to think about, especially since, as missionaries, we're pretty much the Lord's army right now. Elder Christensen had some awesome quotes too that I wrote down a little more exactly...but I forgot my list. ; )

We get to do something called TRC at the MTC now. I'm not sure exactly what it stands for, but that's when we get to teach our investigators. The MTC invites people from around here who are interested in the church to come to the MTC to learn from missionaries. It's really cool because they know that we're new at this, but we still get the experience of teaching for real. I think some of them are actually volunteers who are members of the church, but many of them really are investigators (they don't tell us, obviously, so we just assume that all of them are real). They actually meet with multiple sets of missionaries, which is amazing, because some of them have two or three lessons with missionaries a day. We get two investigators at a time and get to teach them three or four times, for a week. At the end of the week we get new ones. It was really sad to have to let our first ones move on to other missionaries since we'd come to care about them so much, but I know they're in good hands. My companion and I have taught eleven lessons so far, and we'll hopefully have at least three more before the end of the week. One thing that was so cool with our first investigators was our last lesson with an investigator named Linda. She is so amazing. We had already taught her a lot about how God is our Heavenly Father who loves us and about the restoration, so with our last lesson with her, we talked about faith because that was what we felt like she needed. We'd asked her to read Alma 32 beforehand, which she did, and then we talked about it for our lesson. She asked some questions that were really profound, that, fortunately, we were able to answer pretty well. The Spirit was so strong. At the end of the lesson, both Sister Smullin and I felt impressed to invite her to be baptized, which was a little crazy since it was only her third lesson with us, but we did it. She thought for a long time, and then said that she didn't know very much about baptism (we hadn't talked about it yet, so it was understandable). So I said something like "as you continue to meet with missionaries here at the MTC, others will help you to know more about baptism" and then we asked her if she would pray to know if it's right for her as her faith grows like it talks about in Alma 32. She said yes. But the miracle was this: another companionship in our district was also teaching Linda, and they had a lesson with her the same day, just a few hours after we did. Guess what their lesson was on. Baptism. They invited her to be baptized also, and that time, she was ready. The Church is true. This is so amazing.

Sister Smullin and I had some pretty amazing lessons with our TRC investigators this week. It's so cool to see how the Spirit can help us to understand these people way better than we could by ourselves. We were able to teach things that we never would have been able to think of without the help of the Lord.

Favorite Funny Moments:

When getting to know each other closer to the beginning of our time in the MTC, the Sisters and I told each other something funny we used to do in our childhood. I told them that I used to watch Aladdin a lot and loved when, in the Prince Ali scene, Aladdin smiles and his teeth ding, so I was convinced that if I brushed my teeth enough, I could get my teeth to do that too. It got brought up again this week, and Sister Peterson said: "You know what your life goal should be? You should be in a toothpaste commercial." She then went on to explain that there, my teeth could ding, even if it was just because of the editing. She even said she'd record it and save it if it ever happened. I, at least, thought it was hilarious. So I guess I'll add that to my list of things to do when I get home. ; )

One of the Elders in my district, Elder Howell, has this infamous ping pong joke that takes five minutes or more to tell. There's no punch line; it just has a depressing ending. What makes it funny is that it takes five minutes to tell, so everyone who has already had to sit through it once normally gets to enjoy the reaction of the person who has never heard it. When he told Sister Fortin the joke though, the reaction we got to appreciate was actually from our district leader, Elder Heilbut, because Sister Fortin was so sympathetic to the kid in the joke at the end that he got super pissed. It was hilarious. I'd type it up so you all could hatefully enjoy it too, but I don't have time.

I forgot to mention that all of the sisters in my district and half of the Elders are going to choir. It's seriously so amazing. There are probably 400-500 of us, and the Spirit is so strong in every practice. It's pretty amazing to see it all come together, because anyone can join choir so there are a bunch of people who have never done this before, and we only get to practice twice before the devotionals we sing at. We sang Hope of Israel the first week and This is the Christ this past week. It's been so cool. And the choir director, Brother Eget (or something, I don't know how to spell his name) is awesome. He tells tons of cool stories to help us to understand what the song is about, and he's hilarious.

My Companion and Me

Sister Smullin part 2

Man, I hate pictures, but I love you Mom ;-)

Sister Peterson and Sister Fortin

The murals here are amazing!

Woah! It's me!

Before class, sometimes we do weird things.

The Elders in our district. Left to right: Elder Morris, Elder Ballard, Elder Gregson, Elder Heilbut, Elder Howell (the one that's ducking), and Elder Farrer