I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!
I'm still LOVING the MTC!!! I actually really like having a tight schedule and rules!! No time of the day is wasted, and everyone is expected to have high standards of obedience. Love it! Waking up early isn't so bad! My companion, roommates, and I always have great conversations in the morning getting ready while we practice our Tagalog on each other! Speaking of the language, I'm learning so much!! Sometimes I feel like I don't know enough, but then I realize I've only been here for a little over a week and I am blown away with how much I know in that amount of time. They do a great job teaching us here at the MTC! I love learning the language, and it's challenging and everything, but it didn't make me stress until I had to start teaching in Tagalog! Giving lessons doesn't stress me out... It's just giving them in Tagalog that does right now a little bit haha! ;)
So last Saturday, only about 3 days after arriving here, we got an "investigator" we teach about 3 times a week. I'm pretty positive they are just pretending so we can practice teaching, but even though it's just role play, I can still feel the spirit so much when Sister Lor and I are teaching her! Anyway, her name is Kristina and she only understands Tagalog when we teach her. My companion and I will say a word in English here and there and she'll just repeat the English word all confused hahaha so it's challenging figuring out how to teach her a 20 minute lesson that she can understand! We've taught Kristina about 4 times. The first lesson was definitely a learning experience :') Let's just say there were a few long pauses haha! :) Even though giving lessons to Kristina is kind of challenging right now because we don't know much Tagalog, it's teaching us so much! After the first time, even though it wasn't the greatest, I came out of my lesson and told my companion: "That really makes me want to learn more Tagalog!!!" So it's challenging, but motivating and actually fun! Plus it is helping us study the language more! My companion and I are starting to get a hang of it actually. We got back to class after one of our lessons and then realized we taught a 40 MINUTE LESSON to Kristina! We went way over our time, but it didn't seem like it at all!!! We teach Kristina again tonight!
My first Sunday here was so great! I had so many meetings! I had a Branch Council meeting in the morning, then us sisters went to relief society. One of mine and Sister Lor's responsibilities as Sister Training Leaders is to assign who is teaching the relief society lessons and we conduct relief society each Sunday. After relief society we went to sacrament. Each week, we are supposed to prepare a sacrament talk in Tagalog, and then the Branch Presidency randomly selects 2 missionaries during sacrament to give their talk, giving them no notice. I didn't get picked to speak, but honestly I wanted too! Isn't that weird?! I never thought that I would WANT to give a talk in sacrament haha! I guess when you work hard preparing a talk, you want to share it! After sacraments we had 2 training meetings. Then my companion and I went to choir practice (Oh yeah we joined choir!) before we preformed at the devotional that was that night! Choir is AMAZING. Not only does music make the spirit so strong, but the director tells stories about the songs and about the doctrine in them. I learn so much at choir practice.
So before I talk about the devotional Sunday night, I have to give some background. So, I got so lucky to report at the MTC the time I did!!! The week I came in was when all the new Mission Presidents were here getting trained. Trained by the PROPHET AND APOSTLES. So they were all here at the MTC throughout the week until a couple days ago. I walked by at least half of the apostles. One of those was UCHTDORF! He was so close! Anyway, so you would see them every now and again. CRAZY! So devotionals are usually Tuesdays, but this week it was on Sunday. It was also going to be broadcast LIVE to all the MTCs in the world! We got to the devotional, were sitting down for a minute, and then we all stand up when we see ALL 12 Apostles walk into the room and sit up on the stand. I can't even explain the spirit I felt being gathered together as missionaries with the apostles there. I also can't explain the spirit I felt as I got to sing in the choir to our Apostles. I'm glad I joined choir! Elder Cook spoke. It was really good. He talked about the "loves of missionary work." During the talk, I just thought how missionary work is about serving like Christ, teaching like Christ, ministering lie Christ, and LOVING like Christ. I love how it is emphasized here at the MTC to "Become as He is."
We were able to watch Elder Bednar's talk, "Character of Christ." It was AMAZING. I have had a cold for the past couple days and have been so congested and had the worst runny nose. Watching Bednar's talk made my whole face turn into a fire hose!!! haha! I started crying which made my nose run even more... I was a mess!!! haha! That talk is SO good. I wish I could watch it over and over and over again. His talk was about how we need to become like Christ. He said "Christ turns out, while the natural man turns in." He shared a true story about when he served as Bishop in his ward. A woman called him, notifying him of an accident that happened. Three girls in the ward had gotten into a car accident. Two were in critical condition and 1 of the girls passed away. At that point, they didn't know which girl had died. The woman on the phone with Elder Bednar was one of the mothers of one of the girls in the crash. While on the phone with this woman, Elder Bednar noticed that the mom had answered a call on another phone while she was taking to him. He could hear the other person she was talking to. He heard the new caller tell the mom he was talking to that the girl who has died is her daughter. After hearing that her daughter was the one who just died, she responded, "We have to notify the other mothers right away." At the moment of finding out about the death of her only daughter, she first thought of the other mothers. Not herself. This mother was also the relief society president of her ward. The Sunday after the death of her daughter, a woman stood up in relief society and complained how no one brought her a meal while she had a cold this week. On the mother's way to her daughter's funeral, she brought this complaining woman a meal. This story was just such a great example of what it means to look outside of yourself when the natural man looks in. This story really touched me. The whole talk was just so amazing and full of the spirit. If you can get your hands on a Preach My Gospel, read the Christlike Attributes chapter. After reading it, it helped me better understand the different attributes of Christ and how I can become more like him.
I had the opportunity to talk to one of the sisters in my zone who was struggling. She told me that she is just having a really hard time. I got to share with her something that I thought about this week. I practiced basketball with my dad a lot, and one of the things he helping me with is my shot. He told me that we needed to break down my shot and rebuild it the way it should be so my shot will be stronger and just overall better. I related that to our struggles in the mission, and in life too! When things are hard, Heavenly Father is breaking us down in order to build us back up even stronger than we were before! She thanked me. I am happy I was able to hep her.
Alright, there is still so much I want to say, but this is getting sooo long! haha! I'll end with some nakakatawa (funny) things that happened this week:
Sister Lor and I were preparing a lesson outside on a table, and there was this big, fat, hairy spider!!! We screamed and tried to kill it! We got it on the ground and I threw my notebook on it. I didn't know if that smooshed it or not, so I started slapping the notebook on the ground to make sure it was dead. Some missionaries walked by why this was all going down and asked us: "are you okay?"
We were learning how to pray in Tagalog outside on the grass. Turns out I sat on an ant hill and turned to see about 1 million little aunts crawling all over my legs! I probably looked crazy wacking them all off of me :')
So all 4 of us in my room forgot our room key when we took showers one night. So, we got locked out. Only me and 1 of the other girls had pajamas with us... so we had to go get our room key the next building over in just PJs.... oh boy!!
Well, sorry for the long email!!! I am doing so great here at the MTC! I love and miss you all so much!!!!! :)
Mahal Kita!
-Sister Durrant
Pictures:
1: Tempe this morning with my district!!
2: Morning service!
3: My district studying our Tagalog!
4. My face studying Tagolog
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