Another Great MTC Week

Hello all of my lovely family! Another great week! They're all great. They're all different and they all go by waaay to fast. We got our new district last week-they all seem sort of afraid still, even a week later. And we get another district today. I have to go introduce myself to the new districts-even when there aren't any hermanas. I tell them all about preparation day! Hooray! I think that's probably what they most want to know about anyway. So now we will have about 55 or so elders and 4 hermanas. Our other hermana just left to the Guatemala MTC on Monday so our companionships got a little rearranged and now only H. Chriswell and I are together. I think our teachers were apprehensive about the change because the other two sisters are the ones who have more trouble with the Spanish. H. Chriswell is doing really well; I've really noticed her progression. So they probably wanted to split us up and put us with the other sisters. But it was up the branch president and he chose it the other way. I was also a little bit apprehensive because we're the two with the "stronger" personalities, but I now realize that this is probably the best way because we both need to learn how to compromise better. And we've both been a lot more efficient with our plans in the last three days. It's crazy. Now the other two sisters are both Polynesian (H. Brown is Samoan, but from Australia, and H. Nuku is from Tonga) so they both are pretty laid back and are usually walking 100 yards behind everybody else just laughing. They're funny. And I think they're good for each other because they've both had to take more responsibility for what they do because they usually had companions who decided it for them. Basically it's all working. We taught lesson 1 on Friday again in the TRC and taught this little (very old) couple. It really felt good and our companionship (at this point the three of us) had really improved in unity and flow and teaching by the spirit. Our teacher who observed us later told us that we did really well and that the old man comes every week to volunteer and every week he falls asleep during someone's lesson. But he never fell asleep in ours and our teacher was really surprised. So that was an odd compliment for us. But now we're on L2-The Plan of Salvation. I feel good about it because I feel like I really have a testimony of it, but it's still hard to teach because there is sooo much in it. And we're used to getting into the doctrine of it all, but really, we should be teaching it simply, like to little kids. We try to go on "verb walks" just so we can go outside and walk around, quizzing each other on words. And we go to a computer lab and listen to stuff in Spanish. They have little "instructional" videos and it was funny, one of the girls in the video is someone that I know. Weird. Once again I got the pleasure of sight reading through some songs for the meeting, but I made one the new elders play one of the songs because I didn't feel like it. And our district also sang. We sang "te necessito si." "I need thee every hour." Um, it was okay. We practiced better. But that's typical. Every week we have to prepare a talk in Spanish (4 minutes or so) on an appointed topic and then the branch president just gets up and lets you know right then who is going to give the talk that day. So you just have to be ready. Only two talks a Sunday, so obviously all the elders won't speak, but definitely all the sisters will. I didn't do it this Sunday, but I won't be surprised if I do the next. It's easy to pick on 4 hermanas. Then we have district meetings-which is just Sunday school with your district. We all sort of took parts of the second lesson and taught them to each other. Then we went up to the temple and sat there for a while, then dinner, then fireside, then a movie then bed. Last night at devotional, Richard G. Clarke spoke. It was a really good talk. He spoke about SKWASH-spirituality, knowledge, work, attitude, skills, and habits. And he told all these stories and it really reminded me of you, dad, about how your attitude can really change your circumstances, and you need to work hard. If anybody has any advice on object lessons or stories or whatever on how to teach the plan of salvation or any of the next couple of lessons, then please send them my way! I think I heard another rumor that on Friday we get to watch the stadium of fire fireworks from the MTC field. Who knows. That would be past our bedtime. By the way, I haven't had any problems with getting up on time. I'm usually the first one out of bed every day and I've had zero naps and I really don't feel tired at all. Blessings? Miracles? Yeah, probably. The Spanish keeps coming along well. I'm trying to make sure I keep myself challenged. Thanks for all your love and support! Once again, I love it here, everyone's amazing, I'm learning a lot, and it's hard and I have a lot of areas to improve in, but it will happen, I'm not toooo worried. Please send me REAL letters if you at all can! But still, I love you oodles and boodles! Love your Hermana Emily.