Semana Cuatro - Choose To Be Grateful

Hola ustedes!

This week was definitely full of some highs and some lows. Being a missionary is by no means easy, but it is worth it.

On Sunday, me and mis compañeras got to teach Relief Society! Leading up to Sunday I was super stressed. Because every Sunday we have to prepare a talk and they only announce who is speaking after sacrament meeting. So I was worrying about that and teaching our lesson to a bunch of missionaries. But it actually went super well! We taught about how to join the I.R.A committee which is inviting, recognizing and acting on the spirit. 

Another highlight of the week is from Elder Lidicott. He is from England and he is the funniest and sweetest guy you'll ever meet. During one of our classes, our teacher asked us to practice explaining a gospel lesson to an investigator ( friend of the church) and he was my partner. At the end of our mock lesson I told him he did good and then he asked me If I could even call it a " Jolly good Job" in his England accent haha. And he was dead serious too! 

My favorite part of the week though, was definitely hosting new missionaries. For the first time in three weeks we had a change of schedule. And I just could not hide my smile. WE WERE ALLOWED TO MISS CLASS. Ah haha but also for a good reason. Hosting new missionaries is such an amazing, special experience. I had the opportunity of helping arriving missionaries with their luggage, saying goodbye to their families, and helping them find their room at the MTC. Watching each of them say goodbye to their family was hard, but it also helped me strengthen my testimony. So many young people sacrifice their time to serve the Lord. And they wouldn't be doing it, unless they knew that this church was true. The Lord requires us to push each of our limits, but does so knowing that we will benefit and grow by breaking the boundaries of our comfort zone. And he always puts people in our lives to help us whether we realize it or not. 

Thursday though was definitely a hard day. I didn't want to go for another round of cafeteria food, but really there isn't much options here. And I really just wanted to wear Jean's and a tshirt and listen to some good old Khalid. I just wanted a break, but my p-day wasn't until Saturday... and my heck it was so hard to focus. We had a lesson that night for TRC and I could not concentrate for the life of me. Eventually we ended up pulling a lesson together but it took up all of our personal and language study times. So haha I really wasn't in the best mind set. But that changed when we had TRC later that night.

We taught Yaisza. She is studying at BYU to learn English and she is SOOO KIND.  Every time after our lesson she would make sure to hug us before we left. But alright back to Thursday night. So that lesson was more focused on getting her to recognize God in her life. So we asked her when she had seen God answer a question to her prayers. And she told us that she had been married for 3 months, but had to file for a divorce because her husband was gay. And her boyfriend now has been her friend through all of this. Her story just made me realize again how gratitude plays a huge part in everyday. Yaisza could have chosen to say she didn't see God's hand at all, but instead  chose to focus on what she did have.

It can be so SO easy to find one negative thing. But if we are not careful, this can easily become your focus for the entire day. Choose to focus on the good in each day and I promise you'll find it :)

Well adios mis amigos!

Love,

Hermana Pulver 

Pictures:

1. Relief Society lesson

2. ESPANOL

3. UN GATO

Semana Tres

Wow this week flew by! It is crazy how fast time goes when you are in the MTC. And by the time Saturday hits I honestly have no idea what I did in the week.

But on Tuesday we have devotionals and they have become my favorite thing here. Mostly because it takes the place of a 3 hour class haha. This last Tuesday though we had Elder Quentin L. Cook of the quorum of the twelve come to visit. And the excitement I felt was just amazing. When he entered the room everyone stood up as a sign of respect and it was just SO COOL to have an apostle of the Lord a couple feet away from us. His talk was also amazing. He talked to us about how he assigns missionaries. A little picture shows up on a screen along with a small bio about you then he has a map with the mission's that need missionaries. And the holy ghost directs where each person will serve. He also touched on " feeling an urgency" in missionary work. Finding the urgency to serve is when we completely place our focus on others. And through the process we will lose ourselves in the work. Oh! He also brought a church historian that showed us a draft of Alma 34 ( scripture in the libro de mormon). This page was one of the few surviving drafts of the book of mormon that were left in a Church corner for 40 YEARS. 

This week we also taught our first two lessons in spanish. It was kind of rough at first, because we only know broken spanish but she got the message. We are teaching a girl named Yaisza who is studying English at BYU. She's also from Mexico and she is sooo kind. Whenever we mess up she just smiles at us and tries to correct our Spanish haha. 

I'm also still surviving. The language is coming, but it's kind of tough to fit studying in because we only have an hour to go over Spanish. From this, I just really have learned to trust in the Lord.

24/7 exhaustion is also a thing here. Every minute we are doing something and so there is no time for naps. And so there have definitely been times where sleep deprivation has taken over. On Wednesday night me and Hermana Amedee had to iron some shirts. So the irons here work best when you just use a spray bottle instead of pouring the water inside the actual iron. So that is what we did! We brought the spray bottles. And this is where it kind of went downhill. 

I was trying to find the mist setting but I accidentally found the "aim" setting and I sprayed Hermana Amedee. She got mad and sprayed me back and yeah well eventually I stole her spray bottle and it was just free flying from there that is till she ran away. Haha she even LOCKED ME OUT OF MY ROOM. so I told her that jumanji was coming and she let me back in. I promise it was funnier in real life. Haha just know we are having a good time!

Anyways I hope you all have a great week! If there's anything I can do for you please don't hesitate to shoot me an email!

GREAT QUOTES BY A GREAT AUTHOR:

" The church loves us for which we are, but we can't stay who we are - we need to progress" 

"It takes the elect to gather the elect. You are here now, because you are supposed to be here now. You may have even poed with your heavenly father to be reserved for now."

Love,

Hermana Pulver 

Week Dos

Hello Everyone!

Today is my first official P-day. Because of General Conference last week we only had two hours of free time so I am SO EXCITED to get to spend a whole day doing whatever I want. A typical day in the MTC looks like this: class in the morning, lunch and exercise in between that and class later in the night. We don't get a lot of free time here because there is just so much to do!! Every minute counts here. Haha every morning before class me and my companions plan out the day in our planners and EVERY hour is filled with an assignment.It can get pretty crazy at times, and by the time 9:00 hits I am beyond ready to go to bed. And if you knew me before I left on my mission, I would never even think about going to bed at 9......

The food at the MTC really isn't my favorite, but it's food. They have the same meal schedule for two weeks then they just rotate it again. But five more weeks and I will get to have other food! So that's exciting.

Our Spanish teachers are so much fun, and they have taught us so much already. It is crazy how fast I have progressed in the language in just one week. Before I came to the MTC I could only probably say a couple of phrases in spanish like "how are you" "good" and "How do you say" but now I can bear a short testimony of the gospel, say a prayer, and understand a lot of what is being said in the spanish book of Mormon. The MTC has a program called SYL which stands for Speak your language and it actually helps A TON. Whenever you learn a word in spanish you replace that with the English word.

Also! We had our very first couple of TRC meetings. TRC is when either a member or a non-member of the church volunteers to be taught by the missionaries. For our TRC we had a girl named Katie. She's studying at UVU and also has a RODEO scholarship. I didn't even know that existed. She didn't have much of a religious background, but was interested in learning more because her husband is a member. In our first meeting with her we spent the time to get to know her and bore our testimonies about how Heavenly Father knows each of his children. We also invited her to give prayer a shot. She said she would pray, but I didn't really expect her too because I thought she was just being nice. But no! In our second meeting with her we asked if she followed through with the invitation and she did! Katie told us that she prayed in her bedroom and she also expressed that she didn't really know if she did it right. So the next thing we taught her was how to pray. We didn't have a pen on us, so in the note section of her phone I wrote down the steps of prayer. After that, she asked us why we end our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ and why we start our prayers by addressing Heavenly Father. This was such a good question, that honestly I had never really thought about before. I started out by saying Jesus Christ knows how we feel and the spirit helped me explain the rest. IT was such a cool feeling. I could tell that Katie really was listening and the Spirit was definitely there in the room. I can not wait to have more experiences like this!!

My companions are amazing and I am so grateful to have them. I love it here! It's tough, but I know that all this work is going to be worth it. 

I hope all of you guys are doing well, and I hope you all have a great week!

Gift Of Tongues

Hola ustedes!

It is so surreal to wear a missionary tag. Haha I still don't think that the reality of it has really sunk in. 

The MTC is filled with so many amazing missionaries. And I feel so privileged to be apart of this. I've also ran into  many friends here too! Sister Beck, Elder Koch, Sister Johnson, Sister Lloyd. 

So it's only been a couple days at the MTC, but I feel like it's been weeks. It's been insanely busy. We all wake up at 6:30 am and we don't really have a break until we go to bed at 10:30. This has been a big change! I'm very tired most of the time, but hopefully It will get better. 

I also have two wonderful companions! Sister Nadee is from St. Lucia ( the Caribbean) and she is the only member in her family. She got baptized 4 years ago and her conversion story is amazing. She is such a good example to me! My other companion Sister Pierce is from Idaho. Her flight was delayed so sister Nadee and I didn't meet her until Wednesday evening. But she's also great. She has a smile on her face most of the day haha which is a good thing.

Learning the language actually hasn't been that tough. This week we have been reviewing basic core which is what I learned previously in spanish 2. I have also remembered words that I haven't studied in years which has been such a testimony to me of the gift of tongues ( being able to speak a different language ). I thought that the gift of tongues would come instantly, but it comes gradually with hard work and study!

Being a missionary is not easy, but I am so excited for what is ahead of me. 

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Sister Pulver