This week consisted of lots and lots of work, but that's the MTC life for you! I'm finally getting used to everything, so that's been a huge blessing thus far. Study, work, learn, eat, sleep, repeat is the gist of our daily schedule. I love it but I definitely know why It's called Missionary WORK.
We taught our investigator Era SO much this week, which has been great because she's the only investigator that we've had for more than three lessons. Our teacher Sister O'Neil is the one who acts as Era and she does such a great job at pretending to be a stubborn investigator. During one of our lessons Sister O'Neil full-on started choking on something and we had to have an unscheduled intermission so that she wouldn't die. We didn't have to do the Heimlich or anything, but she was still sort of choking even after she got back from the break. This is going to sound horrible but I had to try so hard to keep from laughing when Sister O'Neil broke character and tried to contain her coughing. The lessons are still pretty rough as a whole, but not as bad as last week. We're slowly getting better!
We got a new teacher this week to replace one of the Sisters who will be moving in the next couple of weeks. Her name is Sister Lund and she is one of the sweetest people I have ever met in my life. She just got back from serving in Samara about 2 or 3 months ago, so I will definitely have to pick at her brain before I leave the MTC.
Spiritual experience! One day Sister McKell and I were studying outside when a lone Elder came up to us. No idea where his companion was. This Elder changed my whole attitude on teaching with the spirit. I don't remember his name, but I do know that he is from Brazil and he received his call to serve in the Atlanta Georgia mission, English speaking. He probably spoke Portuguese before he came to the MTC, so he was in the same boat as us in terms of learning a new language. This Elder asked if he could share a message with us and of course we agreed. He shared such a short, sweet message about reaching our potential and I felt the spirit so strong. His grammar wasn't perfect, he didn't pronounce every word correctly, he couldn't remember a lot of words, but that didn't matter because I could feel that he genuinely believed in what he was saying and wanted us to believe it too. His lesson taught me so much more than just doctrine; he taught me that the language doesn't matter as much as the spirit. As long as you feel the spirit and try your best, they will feel it too. The language, grammar, and pronunciation is just a small part of a big picture. It was so great to witness that from the flip side.
Fun fact! Most of my fun facts have to do with the Elders in my district because the sisters don't have time to participate in any shenanigans when it's time to go back to our dorms at night. Anyways, every night the Elders in our zone have told us that they will do one of the following before quiet time: have a Jedi battle in the hallway, have a Harry Potter battle in the hallway, have a TRON war in their individual rooms, or pull their mattresses into the hallway and have a wresting battle. Super spiritual, right? The Jedi and Harry Potter battles consist of throwing invisible force fields or spells at each other and then acting them out when they get hit. Sounds very entertaining to watch. The TRON war is what gets them in big trouble. One of the Elders has a rubber frisbee that they take turns chucking against the wall to see who can hit the most people via ricochet. Lots of Elders have come to class with many bruises. They get in trouble because... A. It involves people getting hurt, and B. The frisbee takes chunks out of the ceiling and walls. You'd think that would keep them from playing it, but it doesn't. The wresting battle is mostly the Poly missionaries' (Polynesian) idea. I've heard that they get super into it and start singing stuff that sounds like sacrificial rituals. Awesome.
Sister McKell and I had so much planned for us to get done on this P-day until we were walking by some other Russian Sisters's dorm and noticed that they were climbing all over stuff for some reason. When we asked what they were up to, one of them said that her journal had fallen down a crack between the wall and the closet, so they were trying to figure out a way to get it out. Since Sister McKell and I are so charitable and humble, we decided to help out. Our first plan was to straiten out some wire hangers and use that as a platform that would be lowered down with two chains of belts and shimmied under the journal. After about 20 tries, we decided that that wasn't going to work. After that, about an hour of our effort was spent shoving long strands of straightened out hangers underneath the journal and trying to hoist it up. That didn't work either. We ended up ripping out a strip of plywood that connects the dresser to the wall and just pulling it out from there. The sister who owned the journal offered to pay for the damage if anyone called us out on it since it would only cost like 20 dollars to fix. That was a fun 2 hour adventure.
I think that's all for this week! It did get really stormy a couple of times last week, but it was nothing flood-worthy. There was a ton of thunder and lightning which is always cool. Anyways, choir is still really amazing, the devotionals are great, and my companion is sent from above. The choir director said that if we are going to sing in General Conference, we would know within the next couple of weeks. For now it's a no, but that could change in the near future. I hope you all have the most wonderful of weeks!
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Cectpa Wagstaff
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