Week 7

Hello to everyone! This week has been great but also hard. There always seems to be at least one challenge every week no matter what. Hermana Na'a wrote me and Hermana Hactch letters one morning and told us that she didn't want to go to class. We woke up and she wasn't in our room and she wasn't with her cousin. We had no idea what to do and were of course very concerned. She had gone to the temple with her cousin but didn't tell us so as soon as she got back to MTC we went and got her. We knew something was wrong but she would never tell us anything. Come to find out she didn't understand english well enough to learn spanish from an english teacher. So she was transferred to another district that got here about 3 weeks ago and has some tongan sisters. It will be easier for her so she can catch up and understand more. It was hard for us to see her struggle and not know what we could do to help her. Hermana Hatch was very upset about it but I told her there was nothing more we could do. We did the best we could. Always a lesson to learn somewhere. So last night we had our General Authority devotional and we had a wonderful surprise. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf came with his sweet wife. It was a real treat! His wife talked about how we don't need to worry about how broken our language sounds because no one cares. She said listen to me, my english is no good, I am speaking a foreign language. It was very humbling. President Uchtdorf said any language is easy because the children speak it. They have so much faith in us which is very helpful. He talked about how if at the end of the day we ask our heavenly father to accept the work that we have done for the day he will bless it and it will be good enough. We always worry about being perfect and not being enough but he reminded us that we are perfected through Christ. We can't be without Him and we will be good enough if we do all things through him. It was a great message. He left us with an apostalic blessing and in it he said that he would bless our families at home if we diligently work and give it our all. I will give it my best so that that blessing can be fulfilled for you! Yesterday in class my teacher Hermana Law shared a scripture with us D&C 60:2-3 and said that we need to have faith that we can speak. She then asked everyone if we would agree to only speaking spanish for the time we have left. I agreed so now I am only speaking spanish for the last 2 weeks in the MTC. Can you believe I only have 2 weeks left? I can't! I have a note on my tag that says sorry I can't speak english. It is quite entertaining to try and speak to everyone who doesn't speak spanish. I talked with a sister going to cambodia. She spoke Cambodian to me and I spoke spanish to her. It was pretty interesting. Let's see what else happened this week. Oh Darin left this morning. I am sad I won't see him but I am excited for him and we promised to write. It will be fun for us to share this experience together. On sunday at our fireside the speaker talked about 8 missionaries departing for Baton Rouge. He said that they all fasted that they would be able to leave Thursday instead of the following week so they could start their missions by serving the people and helping them. One hour after the mission president had called and said that he wouldn't be able to take them he called back and said I don't know why but I need them here now. How soon can you get them here? There were miracously 8 seats on 2 flights and they were sent. The mission president said they would sleep on air mattresses at the mission home with 17 other missionaries and 4 senior couples. He didn't know when they would have power or a bed to sleep in. All were anxious. I am so grateful that Drake was among those 8 and had the faith to ask his heavenly father to bless him that he might be able to do his work. It is so great to see the change of heart take place in these young men and in myself. The gospel is true and the work will go forth! I love you all and I miss you! Thanks for your love and support!


*we did get an email from Drake and he is in Louisana and doing well, they have done some service and have started teaching.