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!
