Friday, September 16, 2011

Second week in the MTC

Hello everyone!


The day has finally come when I am not in the group of the newest missionaries!  We get to say "Bienvenidos"(welcome) or "Buena Suerte"(good luck) to all of the noobs who have an orange dork dot (as we call it) on their nametag.  This week has been one of the hardest weeks of my life along with one of the most learningful weeks of my life.  At this point I have taught cinco lecciones(5 lesssons) to an investigator.  He is now our teacher and goes by the name of Hermano(brother) Brown.  Starting lunes(monday) of next week we will have two or more investigators at a time...so me and my companion definitely need to find ways on how to prepare lessons faster.  One of the things that I have found out from this past week is that if you don't have the spirit with you in the MTC, you can't ever get much done.  In the second to last lesson with our investigator I very much was blessed with the gift of tongues and I was able to understand and communicate back with him the whole time!  Spanish is coming along just swell!  The new teacher, who was the investigator, kept pointing me out in class yesterday saying that I was a good spanish speaker and if my district has any questions they should talk to me...I'm not sure how I feel about that.  My district consists of 5 companionships: Elder Larisch and Elder Squires, Elder Wilson(DL) and Elder Harker, Elder Phenix and Elder Rose, Elder Wright and Elder Terris, and a threesome of Hermanas Collette, Ball, and Hafen.  They are all pretty cool people.  I will maybe send some pics home and give you a visualization on how things are goin here!  Today we had the opportunity to go to the Provo Temple!  Any time that we get to get some fresh air is quite the opportunity.  We always go out to the field for gym time.  Even more than getting some fresh air, we also get the blessings of the temple!


This week I was officially made senior companion.  Which doesn't really mean too much, it just means that I tell Elder Squires what to do and he has to obey my commands.  Whenever I want an ice cream, he gets me an ice cream.  Ha ha.  Just kidding, it doesnt really work that way, although it would be nice. 


Every Tuesday night in the MTC we have a special General Authority devotional.  Usually it is just people in the 70 that no one knows.  A few weeks ago it was Elder Holland(I very much so wish that I could have been there for that one!).  This week we had the awesome opportunity to hear from Elder M. Russell Ballard of the 12!!!  What great words of wisdom he had to talk to us about.  He had a lot of uplifting words to say about us as missionaries and the great purpose we have in inviting the world to come unto Christ.


The last few days I have had a progressive cold that is really annoying!  It started with a sore throat, the next day it was just a really bad runny nose, then yesterday it was more of a headache, now it is a cough...and a runny nose...No Bueno! 


I don't have much time left today to write more in the email because I got distracted from another Elder earlier.  But if you wanna talk to me you should just write me a letter or somethin!  or send me cookies, brownies, or anything sweet... ha ha.  Missionaries love packages!!


Missionary Message of the Week:


The missionary purpose is to INVITE others to come unto Christ by HELPING them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end.
The reason why I capitalized the words 'invite' and 'helping' is because those are the two verbs/actions we as missionaries must do to bring the world his truth.  The investigator of the church must find out for themselves if the church is true or not through the testification of the Holy Ghost to their heart!  I am thankful for the eternal blessing of the gospel in my life! 


Con Amor,


Elder Larisch


The Church is true!