One More Week to Go!

Hey guys! I hope everyone has had a great week! My week was pretty

good. It was pretty  Kemal here at the MTC. Not much has happened.

Pretty much just class eating semi good food and more class. Oh and

teaching investigators!

So this week was the week we taught our TRC! It was so sad. On

Thursday we had a lesson with a member present. It was so nice because

he wasn't the normal member present volunteer. He was a dad with a

couple kids, one is back from a mission and one is on a mission and one is

getting ready to go on a mission. But that's not why he was nice to

have with us. It was because he was a grown up and was married.

Because at the beginning of the lesson we were asking about how her

reading was going and stuff and then she went off on some stuff. She

said her family and friends were telling her that mormons like to

marry lots of wives. And she was pretty concerned and stuff. So first

off we are like oh crap! It just came so far out of the blue it was

crazy! So the guy was able to talk to her about all that stuff and we

were able to read some stuff to her from the scriptures but it was so

hard. And then she asked if we sacrifice animals in the temple and we

are like oh boy.. so then we talked about the temple too but it was

nice! And then yesterday was the last time we taught her. We taught for

an hour and ten min which was 20 min over time. And half of it was

trying to explain the word of wisdom. She was shocked when we said we

don't drink coffee and we invited her to do her best to stop. She said

she will try her very best and that's all we could ask of her so it

went good as well!

So on Sunday this singer musician guy came for our devotional. His

name was Kenneth Cope. He is so talented!! He sang and the spirit was

really strong and I loved it!!! It was so good. Some things he sang

about and said were stuff like "could it be that God loves broken

things" we are all broken so it was really good to here. He also sang

stuff like "the Holy Ghost doesn't have a body, he can use mine","the

Holy Ghost doesn't have a mouth, he can use mine." He sang a lot more

but it's a lot to write so yeah there you go!

Also on Tuesday night a member of the 70 came, Elder Clayton. He is so

amazing and spiritual! It was so cool!! Some stuff he said is "Christ

can perform miracles through us and bless others" and "He wants our

time and our talents, but what he mostly wants is a broken heart and a

contrite spirit." I loved those! It's just so simple! But we need to

be worthy. One other great thing he said was "there is nothing that can

cut off the light and power of Christ." I loved that it's so amazing

and true.

On Wednesday we also had our first skype TRC and we will have one more

next week. So me and my comp got to Skype someone that is fluent in

Spanish and they are all members too. They were from Florida. It was so

cool!!  A companionship in my district said that their guy was giving

his testimony and at the end was telling a story and said "I don't

know how to say this in Spanish" and went off in English. They said it

was hilarious!

Well I've pretty much ran out of things to say so I guess this is the

end of this weeks email! I know that this church is true. Christ does

live. He leads this church and deals with all of its affairs. We have

a true living prophet today and is guided by our Heavenly Father. I

know I am where I'm supposed to be. Till next week! Oh yeah I got my

flight plans to Ecuador yesterday so that's pretty cool. Alright now

it's done. Bye!!

My classroom view!  We can see the whole valley and BYU campus.

My afternoon study time!  It's beautiful!

Flight Plans!

Me and a statue of the Prophet of the restoration, Joseph Smith.  It was after the Skype TRC.

We leave the MTC at 3:30. And yeah I forgot to send another pic in it so I'll send it in this email. But yeah I'm excited to! And yeah I got a hair cut! On Tuesday. The one with the statue is with the haircut.

 This was before anyone left our district. Our two teachers on the ends!! I love the one on the right! He is a spiritual genius!! I'm sad we are leaving him! Only two left from our district. One of the elders and then the sister in the black dress. But is was our whole district picture! 

The Eclipse  

MTC Grind

Hey guys!! This week has been a lot like the others but a couple new

things have happened. First off, I'm doing good. I can definitely tell

that my Spanish is getting way better! It still sucks but it's getting

better. I feel like I can speak it better then I can understand it.

It's really weird! Especially when my comp and I are teaching our TRC

or Ronald (our teacher) because the spirit is there and helping us out

a ton!! Our lessons wouldn't go nearly as well as they would have if

the spirit wasn't there. Other then teaching I just go to class and

study and stuff like that you know. Class is really fun! I love it so

much. It just makes me super happy. Sometimes I don't understand due

to The Spanish barrier. But it's all good. At the end of the day we

have exercise time which is nice cause we can just unwind and have

fun. We play a lot of spike ball, basketball and go to the weight room

and lift. The weight room isn't very good though. The new buildings

here are just so pretty. I love it cause we just study here and stuff.

Last Sunday for the afternoon devotional we had one of the 12 apostles

come!! M. Russel Ballard. He gave a super good talk! Something that I

wrote down that I really like was " ye are chosen out of the world to

declare my gospel (the Lord) with the sound of rejoicing." Another

thing I thought was important was "conversion always begins with what

people feel then with what people know." And then he talked a lot

about how we need to lock our hearts. Pretty much like when it comes

to girls and stuff.. and with the sisters when it comes to guys. He

gave us a commandment that says "thou shalt not flirt." It was a good

talk! But as you can tell he was just talking to missionaries. And

then on Tuesday night we had another apostle come!! It was so cool!

This time it was Neil L. Anderson. He gave an amazing talk as well!

Before he talked I prayed he would talk about stuff I needed to hear.

And his whole talk was exactly what I needed to hear! He talked a

little about prayer and pointed out that it's not like we have to set

an appointment with him. He is a loving God and allows us to talk to

him whenever we want to. And he will answer. As he was talking to us

missionaries he would say that it's a sacred charge. We represent

Jesus Christ, THE SON OF GOD. He also said in his talk that one day

every person in this life will confess that he is the Christ. He also

said that faith can cause things to happen that wouldn't normally

happen but needs to happen. He also said another thing that really

shocked me cause it seemed kind of bold and I wouldn't feel good

enough to do this, I don't know how to explain how it shocked me but

he said this, "Ask for Miracles.... Expect Miracles." Yeah that caught

my eye and I thought that was super cool! Because that statement is

true.

Alright so here is a sweet story!! So we have two main teachers

(Hermano Gerhing and Hermano Garcia)  and another teacher that will

come in every once and a while and help out and his name is Hermano

Clayton. He is super cool! Any ways we found out on Thursday that he

was engaged and getting married on Friday. We were like no way,

congrats and yeah you know but we asked if we could go to the part

where they come out of the temple and take tons of pics and stuff. He

and all the other teachers said I don't know and didn't really answer.

Actually I don't remember what they said.  So after our TRC lesson we

went strait over to the Provo temple where they were getting married

and went and saw him. When we walked up they were taking a huge family

picture and I saw him look past the photographer right at us. He got

the biggest smile and was super happy! So yeah we went up and gave him

a hug and stuff and took a picture! After that we walked around the

temple and looked around and then went and ate lunch.. it was dope.

So that was pretty much my week. More things happened but I can't

remember right now so oh well. Just remember to always be happy and

keep the Lord and Jesus Christ in your hearts and thoughts! It always

makes your day happier and you'll make better choices and he will

bless you. So really only good things come out of it and it's really

easy to do so it must be worth it right? Well the church is true! Love

you guys!

My Week

This week went by so fast! It's crazy how fast time goes by here. The

days are some what long and the weeks are short. I'm half way done with

the MTC! My zone and district are amazing. All of them are super cool!

My district is amazing because we are best friends and just love each

other. The other day was pretty sad though. Someone in my zone was

called to the travel office and they gave him flight plans and said

that he was flying to the Guatemala City MTC. Its super sad cause he

is just the best and a dear friend! His name is Elder Solomon. I love

him, he's so cool!  So that sucked.

This week me and my comp got a new investigator to teach! Her name is

Diana Hernandez. She is from El Salvador, I think, I'm pretty sure

that's it. Anyway she is so amazing. She has been here for a year for

school. She's going to school here at BYU and starts class in

September. This will be her second year at BYU. She's only studying

English. But yeah my comp and I teach her 3 days a week and it's kinda

rough cause we don't know Spanish very well but we are still able to

communicate and we can understand her pretty well. Kinda. But yeah we

can't get out point across and help her understand. Yesterday we spent

35 min just teaching her about the Book of Mormon and tried to help

her understand it and about Joseph Smith and stuff. But it's going

good. When we aren't teaching her we teach our teacher. Usually we

will have two lessons a day, one with Diana and one with our teacher.

His back story is pretty cool. His name is Ronald, he's from Bolivia,

he knows no English, and is a taxi driver now here in Provo, and is a

Catholic. There's more but yeah that's the main idea. It's fun. We

only teach him for 20 min but we usually go over the time.

All is well. The Spanish is coming along but very very very slowly.

I'm getting better at understanding but it's still hard to talk. Last

Sunday David A. Bednar came to our Sunday night devotional and it was

amazing!! He pretty much just did a question and answer thing like he

usually does and it was pretty cool. All the things he said was so

powerful. The moment he walked in the spirit was just super strong! I

loved it! At the end he bore his testimony and it was so powerful and

amazing to hear one of the 12 apostles testimony.

So this week we did some in class teaching things where one person

would act as an investigator and the other would give them the

baptismal invitation. The investigator says no and then you talk about

why and stuff like that. So I was paired up with one of my teachers. I

was the investigator and he asked me the invitation and I said no and

he said Why? I told him why and that I was scared and didn't know a

lot about the church and I didn't think I could do and stuff. And he

made me feel so comforted and said that God loves me and his love is a

perfect love and stuff like that. Then he said, "I don't know where

the scripture is at, but it says this. A perfect love casteth away all

fear." And then the roll play stuff ended and the timer went off but

the spirit was so strong. Even though it was a fake little thing the

spirit was so strong and I will always remember that. It's awesome

because God is perfect and he has perfect love and he loves us so much

it's incomprehensible. But yeah that's just one of the little

spiritual stories.

Anyway I know that I'm suppose to be here. I love it more and more

every day! It's amazing how much you will see the Lords hand in your

every day life if you will just stop and look. If you pray and ask God

to show you then he will show you. I definitely would not be doing so

well without his help. There's also another thing I heard earlier this

week that I really loved. It says "Pray as if everything depends on

the Lord and then work as if everything depends on you."

Jim and Anny's Family with Grandma and Jett Johnson and his mom Michelle went through the MTC open house and saw Jackson and Max.  We got to see pictures and Jim FaceTime with us so we could see him too.  :)  So fun!

Elder Solomon

Week and a half In

Hey! This past week and a half has been super long but it's gone by really fast! My comp, zone and district are so cool! That really helps for how hard the language is and stuff. We are always laughing and having a good time when we aren't in class and studying and stuff. I have class two times a day. 3 hours in the morning 8:30-11:30 and then another three in the after noon 1:30-4:30. It's not so bad. Right now I am doing laundry! I woke up at 5 to get here and there was already a ton of people! But I'm so pumped cause I've had to re wear a lot of my clothes. So now I'm going to be fresh and ready to go again and I'm so pumped! 

After last Sunday it's been so much easier. Easier as in getting through the day and dealing with being away from home, family, friends, etc. my days are so busy I never really have time to think about those things anyway. But when I do I get kinda home sick. So to deal with that I just write a ton in my journal. Like 2-3 pages. Its so nice cause I can just let everything out and no one has to hear about it. I had to buy another journal just to have in case I fill up my other two. 

So I think it was the third day where we had to start teaching an investigator in Spanish. It was so rough at first but it was so amazing! His name was Jorge. It was hard to communicate with him but the gift of tongues works wonders. I always thought the gift of tongues was to speak the language and stuff but that wasn't the case. I learned the gift of tongues meant that if you can't speak the language and you can't communicate with words then it's the spirit that communicates between us, the investigator and the Lord. The spirit communicates what I am saying even though they may not understand the words I'm saying. We both understand each other on a spiritual level. I'm really bad at explaining things so I hope you kinda understood that. But that's what I have learned about the gift of tongues. Yes the language matters but not very much. It's the spirit that teaches we are just there to help them feel the spirit and bring it in. So yeah anyway we had around 5-6 lessons with Jorge and he was a member the whole time! We kinda knew since we could kind of tell that he had garments. But yesterday he walked into class in the morning and well I guess now he is our teacher! Haha that's awesome! He's so cool and when I walked into class he gave me the biggest hug! Well he gave everyone one but yeah it was awesome. 

The past week and a half have been pretty darn good! It's hard but pretty good. We have three three nerf guns and a small door basketball hoop to pass the time. That's fun! But all is well and life is good. It's easier being here knowing why I'm here. To invite people to come unto Christ.