8/28/2013

We got our first e-mail from Sister Platt!!!  

   Well, my first day at the MTC was grand!! I'm obsessed with it here!! I'm not on the main campus; we are actually living in family housing which is weird cause I haven't even seen the main campus, but I love living in the apartments! :) We have our classes in different apartments as well and they have provided a cafeteria here. 

    My companion, Sister Brunner is AMAZING!! I love her!! She totally looks like Sarah Newcomb from my LCC basketball team. All of the companion ships are truly inspired. Ah. It's so hard to tell you all what has been going on, but I am busy literally every minute of every day and I am loving it!!! 

    Sister Brunner and I are teaching an "investigator" (who's actually one of our teachers). Her name is Shirley and she is the sweetest lady ever! She has a son named Owen and is single. We committed her to baptism on our second visit!! WAHOOO!!! We were going to commit her on the first day, but she had no clue who God even was or how to pray to Him. It is crazy how confident I am starting to feel with teaching others about this gospel. I have learned that we really do need to rely on the spirit and ask the investigator questions to get to know them better so that we can help them. I have also come to understand how IMPORTANT and CRITICAL it is for us as missionaries to direct every lesson back to the atonement. 

   Our district is teaching a man(Really an actor) from Jamaica and we gave him the Book of Mormon!! He doesn't understand why we believe that Jesus Christ is so important so we gave him the book of mormon and told him that we can't force him to believe in anything, but that we would just be guides in helping him and that if he wanted to know that it is true, he would have to read it for himself. I challenged him to read Ether 12 as it talks about faith and how we can't receive an answer until we have faith!!! Dear friends who are reading this who are not mormon, I would challenge you to read the Book of Mormon and see for yourself what you learn and pay attention to how you feel when you read it!!! 

  The first 3 days were REALLY slow because I didn't know what was going on and where I was supposed to be. Everyone told me to just make it to sunday and everything will start to go by really fast. Boy, were they right!! This week has already gone by so so so fast!!! My mind is about to explode with the information that I am learning. I really do grow every day and I am just getting so excited to be in Alabama!!! On sunday, we watched a talk titled, "Characters of Christ" by Bednar and OH MY. EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. JUST GO ON YOUTUBE. It will honestly change your life. One thing that I loved that he said is that we need to LEARN of Jesus Christ and not just know things about him. That's all I will say about that one.

  Tuesday night, (last night) we had devotional! My whole district decided to sing in the choir in which we sang the song, "Lead thou Me on". The spirit was so powerful in that room. Neil L. Andersen spoke!!!! He mentioned how there are 4,108 missionaries at the Provo MTC right now and how there are over a 1,000 at the other MTC's!! The biggest it has ever been! It feels so great to be a part of this work :) Andersen's talk was titled, "First Love, Then Sacrifice." He explained how we will touch the lives of others and not even realize it and that we "sacrifice for the things we love and love what we sacrifice for" He also explained that our greatest responsibility on this earth that we have is to love God! How true is that? If you think about it: if we have love for God, then we will have love for everything else in life :) 

I know that as we sacrifice, the Lord notices and will bless us :) 

   Sister Brunner and I are living in an apartment with 4 other girls!! 2 girls are going to Alabama as well as us and the other two are going to Albania!! I have learned so many words in Albanian like: 

"Po"=Yes

"Yo" = No

"Multra" =Sister

"Ciene" = How are you

heheh so sometimes, sister Brunner and I go around and just yell out random Albanian words to missionaries walking by.

   We just got back from doing a session in the provo temple which was amazing!!! I read D&C, chapter 6 and received an answer that Heavenly Father is aware of us and knows us so well and is proud of us!!!! Please take a chance to read it if you can :)))) 

Gracie leaves for Alabama on the 3rd.  We can't wait for her phone call from the airport.  She sounds so happy and excited.  We are so proud of her.  

Keep sending her letters!  She loves it.

Here are some pictures of Gracie before heading into the MTC: