Second week in the MTC

 

 

(July 20 Letter) Yay so this week was great! It went by quicker than last week and we did lots of cool things. I'll start with the highlight. Sunday for devotional they said we were going to watch the Character of Christ video by Elder Bednar. We watched it last week for the Sunday night movie thing but I was still pumped to watch it again. We watched it and it was just as good, if not better, than the first time! I learned so much. Then after the video, IN WALKS ELDER BEDNAR! WHAAAAAAT it was so so so so cool. The whole room stood up and got silent and my face was like :O. Actually everyone's face was like that. My notes say "ELDER BEDNAR IS *HERE*!!"We had a Q&A session with him about the Character of Christ and basically anything else we wanted. It was so so so so cool. Felt the spirit so strong and I was so excited to change some things to become a more successful missionary. The coolest thing I learned that I'm most excited to try to apply is to acknowledge that we need complete dependence on the Lord to do basically everything. I've been trying to work on not having judgemental thoughts toward people and I haven't found a way to do it.. until this week! I've been praying and putting all my faith toward Christ and I'm actually seeing success. I'm excited to keep relying on the Lord!

So more about the MTC. It's pretty cool I guess, I'm not even too sick of it but I'm excited to go to Ohio IN ONE WEEK! My least favorite thing is how much time we spend in the classroom. Literally spend more time in there than in my bed :'(. There's a cool spirit here and everyone is so nice and friendly. I love my goofy district so much! Hopefully pictures will work this week so you can see. 

Sister Laidlaw and I are still having a blast! The smallpox didn't give us smallpox... just a nasty cold. I'm not sure it's from that because basically everyone in the whole MTC is sick, but I'm blaming it on the used blanket. Definitely washing them all today. I was sitting on my bed last week and my nose just started to run. It felt like a bloody nose but it was just snot, gross huh? I got a blessing the next night and was SO DEAD the next day. Like I had -4 energy but it was okay. The next day I woke up feeling great! My nose is just a little congested now but I'm taking drugs for it no worries. The priesthood is pretty cool! I took nyquil one night at like 11 (bad idea) and was kinda knocked out the next day.. haha oh well, people said I was hilarious.

Oh I remembered something! So you know how in the MTC, everyone is supposed to prepare a talk? Well I figured it wouldn't be me because what are the odds? Turns out they called on me. As the first speaker! I had thought about the subject a little bit (obedience) but that's about it. Good thing I could kind of relate it to my farewell talk on choices. I just kinda came up with it on the spot and it was great. Went by the spirit, the best way to do it! People say it was good though.

Sunday before the huge Bednar surprise, we went to choir practice! (Oh cool story we were there like super early and were on the second row of choir seats.... good thing because we got to keep those seats for when Elder Bednar came! So cool.) But we were practicing a bunch of the Nashville Tribute band's songs. I guess they're coming on Sunday to celebrate the 24th with us. We're going to be the background singers for them! Watch for videos, they maybe will post them if they're decent. So yeah, that'll be a pretty neat last Sunday in the MTC!

Hmm hmm hmmm.. investigators! We had a COOl one last week and a kinda lame one. The cool one was so open to us and had so many questions and we just had awesome experiences and discussions with her. The other just sat on her phone and was only taking the lessons becuase she lives in Provo and is surrounded by members, and because her BF is a member (idk why he didn't just teach her.. probs because she's not that interested but kinda just pretends to care. This week our investigators are awesome. Jen is a recovering drug addict who's divorsed to her psycho drug dealer abusive husband. She's only 22 and she really just needs to be able to see God's love in her life. She also lived in Columbus for a while and told us all about it! Especially the druggy cities to stay away from haha bless her soul. Pray for her and our ability to invite the spirit to teach her. Sydney is an older lady who's awesome and is kind of like Joseph Smith searching for truth. We teach her again tonight! 

Our teachers are still great. Sister Martin went home to...somewhere... I forgot. But we got a new teacher! Brother Mazankowski. He's awesome. I still love Sister Linford! They're so patient with our kinda rowdy district, and they're so in tune and teach us so much. Oh also another teacher who kinda goes around to different classes comes in to ours a bunch. Her name is Sister Killpack... as in Alli's mission presidents! Her husband's aunt and uncle were the Killpacks Allison knows. Small world!

I'm glad to hear things are going well back home! Thanks for the letters and packages, I love them all! I can't believe I'll be on a flight to Ohio this time next week. Because of that, I'll miss P-day. So you'll hear from me in August! (acutally I'll call from an airport somewhere..potentially SLC at like 6:30 am. get ready for that ;).) I love you all and pray for you often!! Thanks for being the best support ever.

Love, Sister Barnes