The Humility

Okay, so this one will be a little more spiritually centered...

So Sunday here is a wonderful thing. This week on Sunday, we just watched movies. We all watched Meet the Mormons and then later that night, all the intermedios watched Ephraim's rescue. Meet the Mormons was actually so good! I was amazed at how much I was feeling the Spirit when we finished it. I wasn't expecting that. (I undervalue anything technological for no real reason). It was cool just seeing different people's lives. :) Pretty cool stories. Everyone should watch it at some point if you haven't yet. It was very kind of presidente to let us watch it here.

Ephraim's rescue was amazing! I hadn't seen it before, and sometimes I laugh at parts I shouldn't (with all church movies...), but it's amazing the willingness all the pioneers had to give up everything, and the perserverance they had. It's crazy that it's based off of true stories, and I know miracles happen with the faithful. I'm excited to go out and see mircales happen on my mission. I know I will. The entire time I was watching the movie, I just had the Spirit whispering to me that I truly am a pioneer here. I just hope I can have the faith that they did. I never realized how much I've truly come to love our pioneer heritage.

So I had a day probably on Monday, where I was feeling like I wasn't progressing much with my language or as a person, which is a bit frustrating here, so I prayed for an opportunity to serve. So lo and behold, my teachers decided to make new seating arrangements, and stuck me next to Elder Redd, who I previously didn't like very much, and who struggles with the language (just because he came in with very little Spanish). So that was an answer, and now I actually can have a conversation with him, and I'm actually not bored in class because I get to help others learn! So, Heavenly Father answers prays.

Our Latina roommates left. I'm so sad about that. They were all so hilarious pretending to sprinkle us with Holy Water and trying to be like superman. (They were hilarious!) The one that I couldn't understand, Hermana Colquehuanca (For Mom: Coal-kay-wanka), was SO sweet, and gave me the longest hug and kiss on the cheek, and told me that we'd see each other again, and if not in this life, then in the eternities. She is SO sweet. I cannot even explain. Before she converted she was Catholic and wanted so bad to be a nun. But then the missionaries found her, and she knew this was the true church, so when she found out about missions, she got SO excited to come on one! So here she is a sister missionary. She is just so pure, and so humble! I want to be more like her! I just wish I spoke more Spanish so I could have learned more about her than that!

Another missionary here, Elder Fuentes, wanted to pay for his own mission, and he has worked for years (he's right before the cut off age for elders to come), making only 20 soles a day (less than 10 dollars a DAY), to be able to come on a mission. I am amazed by  the humility of some of the missionaries here, and it just touches me so much. I hope I can get some of that humility from all the missionaries here.

So in one of our lessons the other day, we planned to teach about baptism and the Holy Ghost (it was our last lesson), but one of the Hermanas in my companionship has a hard time wanting to teach the restoration or the creation, and always just wants to stick to the Bible and common ground (which is good to an extent), so we hadn't taught about Joseph Smith yet. But in the middle of the lesson the Spirit prompted me to talk about the restoration, (that looks so weird in English) and at the same time, she couldn't think of anything to say (she takes control of every lesson, so that was weird), and I taught the restoration, and we soft committed him to baptism! We only needed one more lesson, but sadly that was our last one with him. Good thing he's really just our teacher! :P

It was so sad when the advanzados flew out to their missions this week! I had gotten very used to them being around! They were all so loving! (I'm an advanzado now! Weird!) There is so much love here at the MTC. People will seriosuly never let you be sad. It's great! But anyways, the night before their flight, we have a tradition of singing hymns, so we all sang. And we have a locked door in the middle of the hallway that separates the elders from the sisters, so right after we finished they started up, so we just got to listen to a few more hymns. It's weird that we're actually in the same hallway. Pretty scandalous. (jk)

The temple today was awesome! I basically understand everything there in Spansih now! I love that I get to go every week. This was the best spanish session I've been to yet! (I'll use the headset next week for English though since it's my last week going to the temple for a rather long time). But it's so nice to feel the peace in the temple, and be able to receive revelation so easily.

Okay, funny story time! So every night our zone leaders would come in and talk to us for about five minutes. So one night they walk in and I looked at one of them and said, "I would adivse you to leave right now if you didn't bring any candy." He responded "Who do you think you are?" Then I said I was just joking. Then he gave me a piece of candy. It was the best thing. I did not expect him to actually have candy!

We all decided that we were going to have spirit animals one day. (We get really bored here). Hermana Marshall is a pirhanna because she's snappy and has a HUGE mouth. I'm a turtle. (We didn't pick our own. Everyone decided for us). One for the elders is an angry bunny. One is a baby bird. One is a racoon, Etc.

Our teacher, Hermano Janampa, got in a little bit of a disagreement with one of the other teachers the other night. So that was weird. We were supposed to teach, but they spent the entire hour with their supervisor fighting and talking it out. But when they came back, they were smiling. So... I guess that's good? for them at least.

Also, another day there were about four teachers in our room, and I thought it was really weird. So I asked Janampa why they were there. And he fakes not being able to speak english, but he does. One of the teachers said ¿por qué no? I said I wanted to know why. Then they left. Yeah, they're definitely just friends. Janampa was kinda irritated with me, but couldn't really do anything about it. Woops. I was just curious. They weren't like teaching us or anything. They were just hanging out...

So I had this one day this week where our district was ALL over the place. So it started with the elders teasing me (because almost everyone got the cold I had). So they drew a bell curve on the board which was kinda a "gripe" timeline as they titled it. Then they drew stick figure me. There were two different representations from two elders. So it was funny then, but they kept going at it even as we were teaching. I still didn't really care that much, because it was kinda true that they all got it from me, and they were just joking around, but Hermana Marshall got really irritated with them for being immature. So then she wouldn't even talk to any of them. And they didn't let us get our food first (which is a rule here for the hermanas), so then she told them that we were all upset. (I was fine). So after dinner, Elder Carter was super ashamed and wouldn't even make eye contact with me, and gave me and then all three of us hermanas the most sincere apology like ever. So I forgave him readily... Then LATER that night, Hermana Escobar got a blessing, and the day just ended on a very spiritual note. So that was an adventure.

We were reading some of the rules we have in one of our packets and one of them is how we are to sit with good posture in investigator's houses, and how it's custom to talk about family and work before moving on to the purpose of the visit. So then we all sat up really straight with frozen smiles on our faces kinda talking in really annoying robotic voices, with our hands clasped together. (We=me, H Marshall, E Monson). It drove everyone else nuts. We even had one of the elders from another district come in and join us. It was funny. Yeah, our humor is a lot less refined the longer we're here. There are an extremely high amount of jokes about pedos (farts) here.

Also, every night we do district bonding, so we play games like black magic or color wheel or snaps. Elder Carter started doing one last night called Bang. I hate it. I hate it SO much. I will never figure out the rules to that one! But it's actually really fun!

Okay, I don't know how I actually manage to make it this long every week, because I feel like nothing ever really happens here.

Uh, I love the MTC, I love the people here, and out in Lima! The Spirit is so strong and I know without a doubt that what I will be teaching IS the gospel of Jesus Christ. He really is our Savior, and He really just wants us to return home to live with our families and our Heavenly Father and Him forever.

I love you all!

Hope life in the States is good!

Sorry for terrible typos! (*Haley's mom thinks she got them all, but who knows. She did have TONS)

Hermana Brogan