Hola everyone!! How're you all doing? I hope you're doing great because I'm doing awesome!!! XD However, I am also very sad because this is my last Pday here in the MTC and I will seriously miss everyone in my Zone and District. Especially mi companera who I love soo much! She's like a cousin I've never had XD Funny story about that. I had almost accidentally called her my cousin when I meant to say "This is my companera" I said "This is my cousin- I mean my companion" XD So, just for fun that day, we made up our whole back story of how we are cousins. Here's our story that we agreed on telling if anyone asked within the next couple of days in the MTC: Our grandpa married a filipina, her dad married and american woman and my mom married a filipino/japanese man, and we act and do a lot of the same things because we're so close to each other, and we put our papers in at the same time and somehow ended up as MTC companions speaking the same language in the same zone and district. What a big coincidence XD We have not been able to test out our made up story, but it was fun making it up X3
So, on to my weekly update!!
Saturday was the usual schedule with,
Sunday was very cool with being able to go on the temple walk with the new district and having pictures with them,
Monday was the start of our district's last full week. Noo!! So we taught Areli/our teacher Hermana Estrada, committing her to read the LdM (BoM) because she finally felt something in her determination to believe in Heavenly Father and have faith in Jesus Christ. Me and Hermana Otte are really starting to get better at our teaching in Spanish. I so happy I'm able to help her out a bit, if only just participate a little bit more in teaching than when I first did when 'Enrique'/our other teacher Hermano Ralphs. Had a small prank war with each other in our district throughout the day, but of course we made sure we were still focused on our studies.
Tuesday was early morning service where we swept the stairs (had a sneezing fit because of that), changed the toilet papers and paper towels, cleaned the chalkboards and whiteboards for the next class, and when we had a little extra time, me and my companion messed a little bit on the piano. Though, we accidentally took the toilet paper key with us to our dorm, and then locked ourselves out of the dorm and yeah. But everything got resolved, don't worry, we got dressed in time for breakfast and class. Rest of the day was another spiritual high with teaching and lessons and language study. Night time was fun though. So, apparently our district has a thing for intresting handshakes. There's the Dead Fish where when you shake hands, you don't grip their hand or shake back, you just let them shake your hand and your hand goes limp. There's the Bullet, where you tuck you thumb to your palm so that the other person catches your wrist instead of your hand. There's the Kiss the Royal Hand, when you pop your wrist up so that they're holding your hand as if they were going to kiss any rings on it. There's the Finger Hold, where you take your index finger and thumb and only shake their pointer finger. And then there's my favorite: The Wolf/Snake bite, depending on how you do it. Before you make contact you use either use two fingers to the palm for a Snake Bite, or use all of your fingers and clamp down on each side quickly for a Wolf Bite XD It's really funny when it's done either way
Wednesday we did traffic hosting again and got to see the new missionaries and welcome them. Once again, no traffic accidents. Well, on myside of the drop off area. Don't know about the others. Jk.
Now yesterday, Thursday was the most interesting day so far. So we had something called in-field orientation where they teach us for more than half of the day about things that we should know out in the field that we haven't been taught yet during classes. In our classes we focus more on how to teach and language study and planning. in the In-Field Orientation they taught us how to find people, how to includ members in missionary work, how to use our planners, etc. It was a cool experience. I hadn't slept well the night before then, Wednesday night, but the leaders kept it interesting with activities and moving around from different rooms.
Also, yesterday evening, after In-Field Orientation and dinner, was the most interesting of all. So usually whenever we teach in the MTC, it's usually a member playing investigator or teacher playing investigator, or sometimes members who just come over to help us learn to teach and practice our languages. This African American girl named Carla, who's muslim and studies law in BYU, came into our room to ask a question. She had a gold nametag meaning that she's not supposed to go into the MTC buildings except for TRC, but she came in and the Elders in our district started talking to her and teaching/answering her question about General Conference. Because all three of our elders, 4 for a bit then back to 3, me and Hermana Otte sat back and watched them teach. Mostly because she wasn't feeling very good earlier and were just going to have an evaluation talk with Hermana Estrada instead of teaching Areli. Later on, our teacher Hermana Estrada came in after playing as Areli with the other Hermanas and sat with us to watch the Elders in how they taught. It was the elders' almost first real teaching with an actual investigator.
Afterwards Hermana Estrada was able to give the elders feedback on how they taught Carla. By watching the elders teach, me and the other Hermanas agreed that there's a reason why two of the elders are not companions. Elders Tolton and Hirschi (Hershey) were a little too logical in their explanations for the what and why of her question while Elders Barry and Armstrong (Their respective companions) were really trying to teach the way that we've been taught. Hermana Estrada also talked with us, and since she was really trying to tell us something important, we got to hear her speak english for 15 mins straight. She was telling us, long story short, that as long as we teach the basics, know who God is, and help build a testimony, nothing else matters. And then, just before Hermana Estrada talked to all of us about what happened last night, one of the Elders, Armstrong, said something to his companion and Elder Tolton asking them a question of when did they testify when they were talking to Carla, cause they really didn't, and we all could just feel the spirit very strongly from him and yeah, We just had a very interesting night.'
Even though me and the other Hermanas weren't teaching, I know that we all learned something last night with that experience. Usually when teaching 'investigators' in the MTC, they can sort of help you steer back to how we are to properly teach, but with an actual real, non-member investigator, it was really interesting to watch how things worked out. Of course we would've taught differently cause we don't know much about the Muslim religion, but... yeah. It was just really cool.
Well, that's it for my weekly update. Once again, long, but there's just so much awesomeness going on. Well, gotta go. Laundry to do and a bit of packing up. Here's some pics!!
(Random bird that was just standing on a small boulder staring at us until it flew away on our way to the temple)
