Hola! Como estan ustedes? Come fue su semana? In order to not sound repetitive, I won't mention how fast time is going by. But it is. Usually I will take notes throughout the week about things I want to mention in e-mails, but I didn't do that this week, so I'm going off of whatever is in my head right now. We had a great devotional last week. L. Aldin Porter. We seem to be getting a lot of emeritus members of the seventy. I'm not so sure what emeritus means, but they're usually good speakers. Mostly he spoke on teaching by the spirit and working to receive that spirit in your life. He quoted Brigham Young when he was talking about the missionaries who taught him. He said that he could've spoken better than the missionaries and they weren't sophisticated but "their testimony was like fire to my bones...it bore witness to my spirit and that was enough for me." I really liked that. Fire to my bones. That's what we're all working really hard to have happen here, learning how to really teach with the spirit. Which is obviously what Predicad Mi Evangelio is really about. But it's still hard. Because we still get used to our lessons and the order they are in, and some people really struggle with the idea that it's okay to leave certain parts of the lesson out, if it doesn't feel like the "investigator" needs to hear it. The second lesson is still hard. We're better at it than before, but it's still a struggle to feel like you're not just pushing doctrine on people and giving them way too much info. Because that's not the point. We've also begun to teach the first lesson in Spanish. I don't find that too hard at this point. Yeah, there are parts that I'm less sure about, but I try to just come up with stuff out of my head.
We've also started doing this "progressive investigator" thing here. You go teach a teacher as if they're investigators and you keep going back and teaching them and they don't really give you feedback-it's supposed to be as real as we can get in the CCM. So we did that on Monday. I think it went well. His name is "Miguel" and we taught the first lesson. I was really pushing for us to not cover the entire first lesson because I knew that if we tried to start and cover every principle, then we wouldn't get to the restoration and then what's the point of the lesson? H. Chriswell was a little hesitant, but we did do it and committed him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Whether or not he will really "do" it, we'll see. But he said yes. He asked us some random questions like "I know popes aren't apostles, but I thought Peter gave his authority to Linus (or whoever)" and he quoted the scripture in Matthew that said that Peter is the rock and the church would be built upon him and the gates of hell wouldn't prevail. Yeah, I tried my best to give him an answer for that one. It was a good experience to do. And yesterday we went and worked with a teacher on contacting. He gave us lots of good advice. Contacting is hard! And we're only in the CCM (read: MTC). So it will be harder I'm sure. We're just trying to use our resources now.
What else. Um, one of our districts-the oldest one is still here. They were "supposed" to go to Mexico this week but visas are hard to get so they'll be here in the CCM for probably 3 extra weeks, and then maybe get sent somewhere in UT until their visas arrive. Plus last Friday one of them found out that he had torn his ACL the week before so that very night he went home (his dad lives in SLC) so he could get surgery and start recovering. They're hoping that about the same time he's all good to go, that they'll have their visas. That would be soooo hard. We haven't gotten a new district for a while because we don't have "room" for one. But this oldest district doesn't have a teacher anymore, they have to supervise all of their own studies at this point. That would also be hard. They're trying to be optimistic though. H. Chriswell made a deal with one of them. She's always complaining that she eats too much sugar, so she's not eating sugar the rest of the time here, and one of the elders isn't allowed to complain at all because he's in the Mexico group and it would be understandable that you'd get a little discouraged. I wouldn't make that type of deal! No sugar? But sugar to her means just that she can't have candy or dessert. Ha ha ha. So I sang in the choir for the devotional last night. I had my curly eighties hair-that is significant for this story. H. Chriswell was going to sing with me, and we were at practice, but when we came back from dinner, these new girls had taken our seats (I was a little bugged) and didn't say anything so there was only one seat left so H. Chriswell just didn't get to sing in the choir. And so we're singing. And they have these big screens that have video of the choirs and I happened to sort of look over, and right at the second they switched from a view of the entire choir to one of those close up shots were they start on someone, and then zoom out. And of course it was me. Fantastic. But I was sneaky and looked in the right direction at the right second. I think they picked me because of my eighties hair. I think I almost threw up. Apparently it made my zone laugh though. I'm happy to make them proud and represent. No, no, I'm not. I think I've fulfilled my choir aspirations now.
But the MTC is great. Missionary work is great.
Thank you everyone who loves me and writes me and thank you for the packages-I love them always and appreciate everything you all do. Thank you mis padres! I love you! I'll try to write some letters today too, because I'm sure I can say more. I have less than a month and I'll be in CA. I'm already working on my neck tan line here. It's exciting. But then I'll be sweating and sharing the gospel. What better life can there be? Okay, mucho mucho love for everyone! Thank you for you support and prayers and love and EVERYTHING! Love love love! ~H. Emily
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