I Want Donny Osmond At My Next Birthday 9/10/2019

Tuesday was p-day (preparation day) so Elder S and I got up at 5am and got a early start at laundry. After that, we went and played kickball with another district. While I was catching a ball, I was running and looking up and a plowed into a sister. I caught the ball but she bounced off me and hit the ground. She was okay thankfully but it certainly was exciting. We also went to the temple. As we were walking in, Elder S realized he had forgot his recommend and so we had to wait for close to 30min for them to find the recorder to let him in. After the temple, we had choir and we sang Joseph Smith's First Prayer. We sang it again during the devotional and I felt the Holy Ghost telling my again that the First Vision happened and I was happy. The speaker for the devotional was Brother Martino of the 70 and he emphasized that we aren't special so don't complain about life being hard. Those are always fun devotionals.

School started for BYU and so lots of the MTC teacher's schedules changed. Because of this, we lost Brother A as our teacher and got Brother M. We decided that Brother A was one of the 3 Nephites. All good things must come to an end I guess. We were all sad but Brother M is also a good teacher so that was nice. In the evening we went to a little hill and studied (see panorama below).

Probably the funniest thing that happened this week happened after kickball. We were going and picking up our stuff afterwards including our nametags. Disaster struck as Elder S grabbed some other sister's nametag. We were almost all the way back to our residency when someone asked him why his nametag said Sister H. We ended up having to walk all the way back and we found the sister and she had grabbed Elder S' tag because she had figured that he took hers. We all got a good laugh out of that one.

We also had a lesson with S again. We were teacher her the restoration but we kind of sped through it which isn't super great. Oh well. At the end of the lesson she agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray which was exciting.

Friday we woke up and did some "service". I put that in quotes because it was more like we woke up at 6am and then we cleaned the bathrooms for an hour and a half. If they called it a cleaning assignment I would be okay but they call it service which makes it sound way more glorious than it actually is. Later that day we had a teaching demonstration and I volunteered to be the person being taught by our teachers. I decided to be Merick, a half british freshman going to college in Maryland who plays hockey for their college. Feel free to guess who I was if you think you know. It was an interesting experience because while I was being taught, my teachers compared baptism to a wedding. That one definitely threw me off. Both baptism and a wedding have procedures (like a walk down the aisle or flower girls) (a prayer, being immersed in water) that ultimately are about the promise that is made during that ceremony. It was a unique way to explain it. Later that day we taught our last lesson to J. We ended up talking a lot about how the Book of Mormon can answer our prayers and invited him to read it. He accepted and that was cool. That evening we watched a broadcast of the 95th birthday celebration of our prophet Russell M Nelson. 95 and he still goes water skiing and runs around. It is a miracle. There was a ton of amazing music with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square teaming up with people like Donny Osmond and Jenny Oaks Baker and other people. We were able to learn more about President Nelson's professional life and his family life. One common thread that I noticed between professional, family, and church life was the amount of love that emminated from him towards everyone around him. This reminded me of Jesus Christ and the incomprehensible amount of love he has for each one of us unconditionally. Just thinking about that makes me happy. I want to share that love with everyone which is why I am serving a mission.

 

For every week that you are at the MTC, you are given $8 every Wednesday on your ID that you can use at that store or to buy snacks and other things. I spend almost none of it the entire time here and since I was leaving Tuesday, I decided to buy something with my money. I ended up buying a Hydroflask and since I had saved up a bunch of money, I only had to pay $7 for it which I felt was a steal. It is light pink and fantastic (see it in picture below). Brother Mshowed us a video called Missionary Work and The Atonement. I would invite everyone to watch it. It talks about why missionary work is hard and explains why. It is super powerful (and has Elder Holland and Elder Eyring). Later, we had a Q and A with 3 teachers about being out in the field which was cool. There were some good questions and some not very good ones as well. That evening we had Salsa Saturday with a bunch of (hint of lime) chips, salsa, cinnamon rolls, and cookies. I like rhinoceroses. Since we have dinner at 4:30, eating a snack before bed is almost a must.

Sunday was a land of a thousand meetings again. In addition to the standard ones, we had 2 extra devotionals for the departing missionaries. Also, we were able to go on a temple walk which was a lot of fun. We were able to walk around it and talk about the symbolism of the temple which was cool. It was super hot which did make it a mess. Something that came up a couple times in the devotionals was that after your mission everything good that happens to you is somehow a result of your mission which I thought was cool.

Monday was interesting as we had classes but there was a lame duck feeling to it. We had a surprise lesson that went pretty well. We talked a lot about prayer and how we can feel close to God. We had some classes and I got a selfie with brother A

which was great. We had to do laundry during exercise time because our p-day is tomorrow but we leave in the morning. Farewell MTC!!! Find the sentence...

Quote of the week: "The Holy Ghost is like beer. It gives you the buzz."

Pictures (in order hopefully)

1. My new hydro flask

2. A view of the MTC

3. Charcoal drawing of Jesus

4. The brother of Jared smelting 16 stones

5. Esther approaching the king

6. Everyone asleep at a meeting (to be fair, it wasn't a super exciting meeting)

7. Moses crossing the Red Sea