HI Everyone!!
THANK YOU so much for your emails! I just cry while I read them because it makes me so happy to hear about what you're up to and all of your sweet thoughts. I appreciate more than you know all of your prayers and words of courage and advice. First off, I apologize if I didn't get an individual response back to you this week. We get one hour for emailing in the MTC and it's like so stressful! haha you know me, I want to read everything and take my time to type a response butttt it's easier said than done around here ha! So I took notes and I'm planning to write letters on my flight to South Carolina! How sad, I'm so stoked for the flight because it will be the first hours of uninterrupted time that we've had since walking through the gates it feels like haha. So I wanted to try and share more about my experience here at the MTC and what I've been so busy doing! I feel like before the MTC no one tells you what you'll be doing and just to expect to be busy ha
Okay so, I get up at 6 every day which actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be and then we don't get back to our room until 9:30 at night, sometimes later. We usually have two 3 hour classes a day and then in between have personal study, companion study, daily planning, gym time and other work shops and what not. Oh ya and we eat ALOT. Contrary to what I was told.. the food is actually really good haha but I've been trying to be healthy and we get 5 hours of exercise a week so thats nice.
We have the most amazing lessons and all the teachers here are amazing! They're like missionary allstars. They should send them back on missions because I don't know how anyone could say no to them haha. The way they have us learn is but doing what they call "role plays" It sounds like it would just be fake and like acting which I guess it is a little bit, but seriously it's crazy how real it feels too! Our teachers pretend to be someone who they personally taught on their missions and then we teach them just like if it were a real investigator. My companions and I have had such amazing experiences doing this! In the beginning it felt hard because I was so concerned that I didn't know what to teach them or couldn't answer their questions but once you come to realize that YOU aren't teaching and the SPIRIT is.. its' so amazing. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that if I prepare and my companions and I prepare for the lesson then the spirit will guide us. Its crazy how when we go into teach them it feels so real and I have really come to love the people the are pretending to be. I've had times where I really feel the spirit telling me exactly what to say and then after the lesson I don't even remember what I said but when I needed it the words were there. We have 3 different "investigators" we are teaching right now and two are almost ready to commit to baptism! woo hoo! haha it really is awesome though.
In a devotional on Sunday I had a pretty neat experience that I want to share and the lesson I learned was to always follow my promptings. Sunday evenings they have devotionals for all the missionaries. This Sunday the speaker was Elder Ellis. He gave such a great talk! Earlier in the week though we watched a video of a talk Elder Bednar gave once and in it he said that when you're listening to talks not to take notes on what the speaker is saying but to write down the things that the spirit is telling you. So I decided to try and do that and really listen to the spirit during Elder Ellis's talk. ( side note, my computer just shut down while I was typing and I had FREAKED out! luckily all of this saved in drafts when I switched computers! ah!) okay so in the talk he was teaching us that God sometimes has multiple goals in His agendas. He related this to the story of Nephi going to get the plates and all the obstacles he faced in order to get them. He said that yes, the goal was for Nephi to obtain the plates but also he wanted a stronger Nephi. By over coming the doubt of his brothers and having to kill Laban.. the Lord not achieved getting the plates but he also got a stronger Nephi. This made so much sense to me and why we go through trials and sometimes it seems like everything bad is happening at once, especially when we're just trying to do a good thing. (like serve a mission! haha) but that God is trying to build us up in the process.
So the talk went on and lots of other great things were said but about two thirds through the talk I began to be so distracted by the Sister sitting in front of me and what she was doing. I then realized I shouldn't be paying attention to her and needed to focus. So I started to say a silent prayer to myself that I could refocus but as I was talking in my head I realized I kept saying the word "strength" and I was like well what in the world would I be praying for strength for. I began to have a prompting that I needed to tell her something. You know when you have to bare your testimony and you stomach feels like its going to jump right out of your body? Thats what was happening! What I was being prompted to tell her felt so out of my comfort zone and like it was NOT my place to say anything but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to say it. I started to tell my companion how I was feeling and just as I did Brother Ellis said "WE MUST ALWAYS FOLLOW OUR PROMPTINGS" talk about about not gut wrench. At this point my legs litterally hurt I felt so badly that I just needed to step out side of my comfort zone and tell her this. Finally I decided I would just write it down and pass her a note at the end of the meeting. So I did and then I made my companions book it out of there with me as fast as we could haha. I felt almost immediate relief after wards and knew I would have been sorry if I hadn't have listened to the spirit. I don't know that what I told that Sister will make a difference to her but I know that the Lord works ways that we can't always understand. By following my prompting I know that I have been strenghthened and that as we listen to what the spirit tells us then it will make it easier and easier each time. After that devotional we went straight to a Zone Leadership Meeting. The entire meeting was on listening to promptings! They even shared a video about president Monson stopping in the street to talk to a family just because he felt he needed to but at the time didn't know why. It was so neat to have that lesson after the experience I had just had.
I am so grateful for the spirit and the amazing ways I have been taught through it this week. I know that if I will endure well through the experiences the Lord presents me and listen to my promptings then I can become strong just like the Lord wanted a stronger Nephi.
okay ah! my time is up!! I hope this all made sense. I love you all so much and miss you and pray for you every day! Thank you for the emails! I love to hear from you and will respond as soon as I can!!
Love,
Sister Hendrix
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