MTC Week 3

MTC Week 3

9/24/14

Dear all,

This week has been another super good one. First things first, Elder Sanchez and I got "promoted" so we are now the zone leaders. Which is kinda cool I guess. Mostly just means more meetings and longer prayers but still I feel honored for the opportunity to serve even more people directly. Also it means that we got in inherit all of the old zone leader's food, and that was a lot. And its all good. We have a stack in our shelf about a foot high of bags of cookies... :)

So my teacher that I told you about last week. He is seriously the man. Like wow. If I could grow up and be like him that would be the dream. For the past two days he's taken like an hour of class each time he teaches just to talk about scriptures that he's been thinking about. Super deep and super powerful. That man knows how to study the word of God. Also, one of his companions was Adam Hine and he has been keeping me semi updated on the Cougs so there's some extra cool points. He also had another money quote this week. "Grace isn't the light at the end of the tunnel, but the train that takes us there." Wow.

We started doing this thing this week called TRC. I'm not sure what it stands for, but it's basically volunteers that come in and let us teach them. The first time we did it the people were members and just acting like themselves, so we just basically had a little devotional for them. The first guy we taught was named Doug, but he said his name didn't sound good in Spanish and told us to call him Pedro. He served his mission in 1961 I think but he said that he still knows Spanish cause every night he prays in Spanish and reads his Spanish scriptures. Cool guy. At the end he gave Elder Sanchez and I homemade cards with all of the articles of faith on em in Spanish. Also very cool. Then the next time we did TRC, we had people who were either real investigators of members of the church pretending to be investigators. And that's where we met Javier. He is by far the hardest investigator we have had here, and it's not like he's only hard for us, he has a legend around his name. It's good though, I've had to study super hard and learn lots of new Spanish to be able to answer his questions, which basically challenge not only the basis of our church, but all religion. It's frustrating. Plus he's from Spain so he speaks that weird lispy Spanish and idk it just doesn't sound right. That doesn't matter though haha

On Sunday we had a pretty cool opportunity. The Ogden Temple got rededicated and the Brethren authorized the MTC as an extension of the temple so we all got to go to that. Seeing 2,000+ missionaries doing the Hosanna Shout is a sight to behold lemme just tell ya. And then on Tuesday for Devotional, we got to hear Elder Ballard speak to us, which was way cool. He began by saying that he didn't have any notes, but he just wanted to talk to us like a Grandpa would speak to his Grandchildren. Tan poderoso.

Ok so some other things. I'm like 30% sure my toe is maybe slightly broken. But it's ok it only hurts when I walk weird and it's been less and less each day so I'm not worried. Also yesterday while playing basketball I got hit in the mouth with an elbow. I didn't think too much of it until I tasted blood and then I wiped my mouth with my hand and my palm was straight red. So yeah my right check is super swollen and half of my bottom lip is blue. Not purple, not red, blue. Navy freaking blue. It's awesome. I look so tough. But don't worry about me I promise I'm ok.

Ok so is BYU like making SportsCenter and stuff? Cause from what I'm gathering they are looking really really good. I wish I could just watch the games haha the Senior Missionaries all get to go. Maybe ill just buy and old guy mask and make elder sanchez wear a dress. Idk.

The MTC is really really awesome and I'm having a blast. Hope you are all feeling the same way. Also sidenote I found out that my branch is moving to Main Campus the day after I leave. So heck yeah I don't have to deal with that place. West Campus is where it's at.

Con amor,

Elder Rawlings