Friday, August 16, 2013

August 16, 2013

Sister Pehrson has been assigned to serve in the Washington DC SOuth Mission until her visa arrives. This is part of the same Mission her father served in over 30 years ago. Wonderful family, What an incredible last week I've had here. I can't believe the 6 weeks are up! To be honest, I'm a little sad! I'm going to miss my district, my MTC companion especially. She has taught me so much and I know we will be friends for life. I'm grateful that Heavenly Father decided to bless me with my first companion, rather than challenge me. :) Well, I'm going to try to be all chronological in this letter so it's not so confusing. I'll start with Saturday Saturday morning, my companion felt really sick so she stayed in bed while I did my morning study. I was studying diligence since it's our last week and I knew it would be hard to focus. Well Heavenly Father decided to do a little test of my studies like right away! my companion still felt sick so we were going to be spending the next 3 hours in our room rather than in class. She slept and I had to figure out how to be productive without a teacher telling me what to do. I said a prayer and asked for help to figure out something that would be good for me to study. I ended up memorizing 3 of the verb tenses that I didn't get at all before! It was a really cool experience. my companion felt better and so we went to TRC, which is where we teach volunteer portuguese speakers who are like RMs, or just members from around here, or sometimes non members. This was a special TRC though because we got to skype actual Brazillians! Our teacher had his fiancee be one of the volunteers. We did NOT want to teach her because she knows him so well and our Portuguese is still so bad that we just thought it would be so embarrassing. Well, the teacher decided he wanted us to teach her! We taught about families and told her what a great example she is for her family. We had an amazing lesson with her. The spirit was so strong and we were all crying. She told our teacher after that if she were an investigator, she would have been baptized because she felt so much love from us. I really did feel so much love for her and it made me so excited to teach real people next week!!! So Saturday was a great day. Sunday was great as usual. We were woken up Sunday morning by quite possibly the most obnoxious fire alarm I've ever heard! I don't think there was actually a fire. I didn't figure out what happened but that was eventful..On Sundays we have relief society with all the sisters in the MTC and we have a guest speaker. Before Relief society starts, we watch music and the spoken word. I don't know if you've watched it lately, but that host has definitely had some work done. His lips are so weird! my companion and I always get a kick out of that, but the music is really amazing as well! Every Sunday we sing this song in Relief Society and I want you to try and find it because the words are amazing. It's to the tune of "As Sisters in Zion", but it's about missionaries. try to find it! So our speaker this Sunday was the Primary General President!!! She and her husband are such a cute couple! They actually were the Mission President in the DC South mission awhile ago..which wasn't significant to me til now! Anyways she gave an incredible talk. She told this cool story of when her husband was Mission President and it was Thanksgiving and her kids were visiting. the night before Thanksgiving they went to the store and were basically buying everything they could for dinner the next day. it was super busy and she started putting her stuff on the belt and then looked at the sign and it said "10 items or less" she quickly said sorry and told the man working there she'd move to another check out. He stopped her and said "no, please, I would love to help you. The man on your chest is my best friend." she looked down at her name tag and said "oh! which missionary do you know?" he said "no, Jesus Christ. He is my best friend." she smiled and said, "oh, he's my best friend too." The man then said, "yes, I can tell, by the way you treat your daughters." She had many more conversations with that man over the time she served there. She saw a lot of evidence of how he really did know Christ. She talked to us about truly knowing Christ and how we can get to to know him better through our prayers and scripture study. After Relief Society we have a District Meeting and then lunch and then Sacrament Meeting. Sacrament Meeting here is..interesting. You don't know if you're giving a talk until the Bishop calls your name and it's not even before the Sacrament is passed, it's after!! So you have like 0 time to get your nerves out of the way. We prepare a talk each week. I haven't spoken yet thankfully, but we'll see, maybe this week! Monday was a fun-day! I'm sorry to tell you this mom, but I had to go to the doctor. I have a small wart on my thumb that had to get removed (gross) and I have athlete's foot (grosser). I think I got the wart from another Elder. He has a huge one on his thumb and we both got them removed the same day haha! I got some medicine for the foot but I realized yesterday that my hawaii shower shoes are COVERED in mold...seriously they are like blue. So i'm pretty sure that was the issue. Anyways I am taking good care of my feet now so don't worry! my companion and I got to walk off campus to the doctor to pick up my prescription. It was weird, it felt like everyone was staring, even though they definitely weren't since we're in Utah! I'm excited to go out in public with my name tag next week. :) I had a really embarrassing moment in class on Monday. So I'm still learning all the conjucations and grammar stuff. We were talking with our teacher about his fiancee and i was trying to say "I love your fiancee" in Portuguese but I said "eu amo voce" and he starts laughing at me because I said I love you. And then the whole class made fun of me because the teacher is so good looking and everyone knows it. I don't think my face has ever been that red...So we've been teaching our teacher as our investigator Tiago and it's actually an investigator he had on his mission. Tuesday was incredible. We always do service, which is just cleaning our residence. My companion and I have lucked out and have never had to do bathrooms (hopefully I won't have to this tuesday..) But tuesday night we have devotional. Everyone kept saying "it's an apostle coming" and so we were all really excited. Well guess who came? RICHARD G. SCOTT!!! Oh my gosh it was incredible. The moment he walked in the spirit just filled the room and I felt so much love from him. He spoke about prayer and it was so incredible. It's one thing to hear them speak at general conference, but at MTC devotional it's just so cool because they're speaking only to us! It was cool because it was the first ever international MTC Broadcast. Elder Scott started by saying that every good thing that has happened in his life happened because of his choice to serve a mission. He talked about how the mission will bless our future families and bless us so much more than we can ever imagine. He talked about goal setting and said "to reach a goal never before attained, one must do what one has never done." then he preceded to speak specifically to us missionaries learning a language. he said "I invoke a blessing on those of you learning a language, with apostolic authority, that you will be able to develop the gift of tongues according to your studies and faith." WOW. WOW WOW WOW. I was like "did that just happen?" yeah. it did. He is such a sweet spirit and I feel so blessed to have been able to hear him speak! He talked about how we really need to trust Heavenly Father and tell him everything in our prayers. It was amazing that out of all the things he could speak to us on, he chose prayer. I think that really shows how the basic doctrines of the gospel are SO important. I've been trying to be better in my prayers about telling heavenly father about my days and about really thinking about what i pray to him about and making it a true conversation. it really has made a huge difference already. Elder Scott talked about how when we ask for things, we can't just expect him to answer right away. in fact answers rarely come that soon. We need to act and then seek for the approval and pay attention to what the spirit is telling you. He told us that the Lord has called us. The Lord will fit the tasks he gives us to our capacity. there was so much cool stuff i wish i could write it all! Anyways, he finished by telling us that the first presidency and 12 always pray for us when they meet in the temple (awesome). and then he again invoked that blessing on us language speakers. then he said "you've probably noticed how i am very emotional tonight. you may be wondering why. My wife passed away in 1995, but I feel that tonight, the Lord was able to lift the veil and allowed her presence to be here with us." I love him and the love that he has for his wife. he is a precious man and if I didn't have a testimony of apostolic authority before, i sure do have one now! Wednesday was great, we had classes and worked a lot on the language. We had a cool experience. We teach the other missionaries in our district as investigators, as i told you about last week. We were teaching some Elder's and while we taught, one couldn't stop crying. it was really cool to see how strong the spirit was just in practicing teaching each other. I've never been in such a spiritual place as the MTC, I'm almost a little afraid to leave. We had another funny experience teaching them though. We went to read the scripture James 1:5 which in portuguese is Tiago 1:5. He asked if we liked the bible and I said "sim , eu amo Tiago." which is like "yes, I love james (the book)" but of course the teacher was RIGHT NEXT to us and started cracking up because of when I said I loved him on monday,and our investigator, which is him is Tiago. Hope that made sense, it was funny though! We also got to host again wednesday. I looooove hosting! I hosted 4 girls this time. The first was from italy and spoke very little english, but she was so sweet and has been assigned to serve at Temple Square for her mission. I love sharing my excitement for the MTC with these new missionaries. I remember coming here and being so nervous, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what to do! Hosting is a great opportunity because it allows me to really get out of my shell and do everythign i can to make these new sisters not be nervous. It's so much fun and now whenever I see them they wave at me and I feel really popular ;) Thursday...thursday was so cool! we had in field orientation so we basically were in this class from 8 in the morning til 5:30...it was so long but really, really good. we would go to different work shops too so it wasn't too bad. One of the missionaries from the district taught us!! I controlled my beieber fever though. I didn't even ask for a picture. :) It made me really excited for the field though. we basically just learned about working with members and how they are really essential in the work. how is that going in our ward? You guys should try and find some referalls for the missionaries! So the highlight of thursday was obviously the reassignments! the crazy thing is, we expected them today (friday), not yesterday. we were eating dinner and this missionary from the other district who arrived here the same day as us, comes running up and says "we got our reassignments!!!" We all ate super fast and were trying not to get our hopes up too much. An Elder ran to the mailbox and came out with them! we all were screaming! We got in trouble for that. Then we ran to the classroom and opened them all one by one. I will send you the video probably on the flash drive, it doesn't fit in the email but it was honestly one of the coolest experiences i've had. we started with a prayer. the spirit was almost tangible in the room as each person opened their call. i felt so much love and joy for each person. I could feel the spirit testify to me that i was going exactly where he needed me, and so is everyone else. other districts here have all had people recieve visas and leave, but my district hasn't had anyone leave. I know that's for a reason, and I have learned so much from each of them and I love them all so much. they are my brothers and sisters, and I am so grateful for the time i've had here with them. I'm so glad we're not saying good bye for forever and that we're all eventually going to Fortaleza. The MTC is a place of God. I could never experience these things anywhere else. I feel so privileged and honored to be counted among one of God's servants, and I am grateful for the people I am serving with and will serve with. I get to go to the temple at 1:45 today! I am so excited to visit the temple again! I hope your weeks go amazing. Tasha and Davey- good luck with the wedding. I love you both so much and I know you're making the best choice of your lives by being sealed in the temple. Mom and Dad- I love you both so much as well and am grateful for the support I have felt from you throughout this journey. I wouldn't be who I am without all of you! Stay sweet, make good choices! don't get too overwhelmed with all the wedding stuff this week, and most of all have so much fun! Love you all to the moon and back! Love, Sister Pehrson

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