August 2, 2013 Post From Provo, Utah

Que isso familia?! It's been another amazing week here at the MTC! I really don't know why some people don't like it here. It's so much fun! But most of all it's just so spiritually uplifting. I always write high lights of the week in my journal to send to you, but in reality that's not even half of what I am experiencing! It's so amazing being here and I'm so glad I chose to serve. I have lots of exciting stories this week! First of all, I have one that mom will love!! So you know the show that missionaries watch - The District? Well, yesterday we were walking to dinner and I saw one of them. The cute blonde missionary who served with the cute brunette one!! I was speechless! and I just pointed at him so my companion would see. I'm pretty sure I experienced what Beiber Fever feels like, except for it was the guy in the district! haha so that was really fun. Another funny thing that happens all the time in the MTC is this weird thing sisters do where they harmonize in the showers! They have great acoustics, yes, but it's ridiculous how much sisters sing in there. So the other day I hear these two sisters talking to each other from separate showers, choosing what song they want to sing. They decided on Come Thou Fount... haha. Alright onto more spiritual matters! We had devotional this week and it was AMAZING. The speaker was an ameritus general authority H Bryan Richards. His talk was so encouraging and I just felt so pumped to go into the field. But he shared part of a talk that Elder Holland gave and he talked about how we're not the first ones to ask "couldn't this be easier?" The atonement applies so much to missionary work, more than I ever would have thought. Elder Holland said in order to more fully appreciate the Atonement in our lives, we must experience a few of those minutes in Gethsemane, just a few steps up the hill to Calvary. Sometimes even in the MTC the work seems really difficult, especially in Portuguese. But knowing that the Savior has stood where I have, and has gone through everything I have makes it so much easier. Our teacher gave us a really cool sort of motivational speech about how Heavenly Father wants us to speak portuguese. Heavenly Father is sad when we don't try our hardest to learn this language. It was really inspiring to me that I need to give it my all every minute of the way or else I will have regrets. Church on sunday was also centered around the atonement. We have the best branch presidency ever. One of the counselors wives gave a talk and said she was so scared to give her talk but it was so amazing. She talked about a lesson she had in RS years ago. The teacher took a 4x6 and hammered a bunch of nails into it. then she removed all the nails and held up the board, full of holes and said "the Atonement removes the nails, but the holes will always be there and be felt." This really bothered her and she thought about it alot through the years. Years later were serving in the East Europe Area Presidency and Elder Holland came and spoke to the mission presidencies there. He told them he wanted to talk to them about this object lesson he'd heard was going around, and it was the 4x6 object lesson. He started weeping, and told them never to use this object lesson because through the atonement those holes can be filled and we are left with a board just as beautiful and shiny as when we started. Obivoulsy Elder Holland understands the atonement very well, but I just thought that was a really inspiring message and will be for many of the people that I teach. I am so excited to be able to share this wonderful message of the gospel! I finished the Book of Mormon this week! i'm going to try and finish it once more before I leave the MTC. It's so cool to see how much I can get out of it every time I read. I just barely restarted and am finding new things already. I want to challenge you to start reading the Book of Mormon, you obviously won't have time to finish it in 3 weeks like I did, but just see how much you can read every day. It brings so much peace and happiness to me and I know that through reading the book of mormon, heavenly father will teach us new things and make our lives even better than they already are! So we teach investigators here in the MTC, which are actually our teachers just acting as people that they actually taught. My teacher was playing the role girl who texted through our lessons and just wasn't really into it at all. It was so hard because we didn't know how to reach her or anything. We had a pretty bad attitude about it. But we talked to out other teacher and he said "you have to find out why she has this wall up. she has something soft underneath everything else and your job is to find it". So our next lesson we just talked to (the investigator) and told her we want to know more about her. We found out her parents had died and she didn't understand why. We had planned talking about the atonement this lesson so it was perfect. We first just shared experiences where we felt Gods love, and then had her share. then we talked about how Jesus Christ knows exactly what she went through, because he experienced it. We testified that her family is with Heavnely Father now and that she can live there too through the atonement of Jesus Christ. it was so cool to see how one question can open a person up and how the spirit works in such different ways for everyone. We are also practice teaching a guy who's wife is an inactive member. He's basically a golden investigator and does everything we ask but it was still weird because we didn't have a good personal connection with him. We were teaching him yesterday and all of a sudden I remembered a couple I know very well who were in the same situation years ago! So I told him about how mom joined the church and how much it influenced my life and what a great effect it's had on so many people! It really brought the spirit to the lesson and made me so grateful that I was raised in the family I was! There are probably lots of experiences I've had up to this point that are going to help me so much on my mission. I love you all so much and am grateful to have you. On sunday mornings we have a district meeting and we discuss a gospel principle. this week we talked about having faith in Christ and how that pertains to missionary work. A Sister told us how her sons patriarchal blessing told him he needed to serve a mission and be in the right place, on the right corner, at the right time because there was someone he needed to meet there. She talked about how we all have people like that. we had friends before this life. We all got our "calls" to come to the earth and we were so excited to see we'd have the gospel in our lives. Our friends might not have been as lucky. At that time, we promised them we'd do whatever it took-we'd learn languages, travel to different countries-to find them and bring them the gospel on the earth. I thought that was so inspiring and it will be amazing to see people on my mission who I will feel I have known before this life! One cool teaching opportunity we have here is TRC. People come here and we teach them the lessons as themselves. Some are members, some are non members, some are Stake Presidents. It's just a good opportunity to listen to and speak the language. guess who my companion and i taught this week? A Temple Sealer from Brazil! I was like, wow you should probably be teaching us. it was funny though because we said, do you read the scriptures daily? And he's said, well i'm a temple sealer so..yeah. haha but he was such a sweet guy and even though i didn't understand most of what he said, i felt the spirit very strongly and it was such a special experience. so something i would like is hydrogen poroxide. anotehr sister uses it to whiten her teeth and it works super well. so yeah just random but besides that i am doing great. i love you so much, all the letters you send me make me so happy and help me so much! thanks for being who you are and for supporting me in all that I do. let me know if you need anything! please write my address, email, and dear elder on facebook so more of my friends can write..hint hint :) love love love you!! eu amo voces!! Sister Pehrson