As you know, there is a lot of positive energy here, which makes it easy to stay motivated and optomistic. Not gonna lie, the day or so was a little overwhelming. You honestly don´t have time to think about anything much besides, well the mission stuff, untill the 15 minutes you have of ´´quiet´´ time, before lights out. They kind of throw you to the dogs, so to speak, with the language. I heard they changed the teaching program recently, so it is now super language intensive. Day 2...or maybe 3 (all the days run together, and I often can't even remember what happened in the last 24 hours) we gave our first lesson to an "investigator"....in spanish. Thanks to Señor Murray´s 8th grade spanish class, I managed to put some of my thoughts into español. The little Spanish I know has given me a good head start, but even though all we do is study, and eat, and study and eat some more, I feel as though I don´t have time to learn as quickly as I would like.
My companion is Hermana Ericson, from Sandy. It has been a really great learning experience for me. We are about as different as they come, other than we can both talk a lot. I was quickly humbled and learned that nothing in or about "my mission" is about me. I have a tendency to care more about the investigator and the message we are giving them, rather than the quality of our teamwork as a companionship. I wanted to be selfish with my study time and learn the language quickly, but without her knowing how to speak, there's no way we can do this together. So our study time is readjusted to help her improve so we can be more balanced.
This was an interesting week, in that, there were over 100 new mission presidents here having a conference. The whole MTC was able to watch The Other Side of Heaven on Firday night. (music...dancing..kissing...yikes). I thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a firside on tuesday with 10 of the 12 apostles (all but Hales, and Packer, I believe). L. Tom Perry gave a statistical presentation about the differences between Mormon's and the world (health, education, service, etc.) It was very different than we expected, but we discussed it as a District and found ways to apply it to our missionary service.
We listened to an amazing talk by David A. Bednar on Sunday, in which he talked about the character of Christ. It was from an MTC Chirstmas fireside, last year. He said that Christ's character can be explained in by the following: He turns our when you and I, or the natural man, would tun in. He said that a testimony is not enough, but we must be converted. Conversion is being true to what you know, and adopting the character of christ. Repentance is turning toward God, or in other words, turning outward--when we have the tendancy to turn inward. It reminded me of the analogy of the Dead Sea, that had no outlets, compared to the sea of Galilea(sp?), that at an equality in the water coming in vs. out. The things we learn and the love we feel from God and/or the spirit can not be horbored in our mind/hearts. We have open our hearts, and mouths to others--keep the water flowing. I'm not sure if that makes sense to you, but it does to me... Anywho, we to become more like christ we can't wallow in our own sorrows, imperfections, offenses, or busy lifes, but we've gotta make everything about others. It's not about you.
I'm out of time...
Love you All!!!
Hermana Canfield
PS. Dear Elder is pretty great. If you use it I get it the day (after dinner), rather than just on Pday--like with emails. It's really easy to use. My and sister Shumacher(who I love love love) are feeling a little less loved cuz we haven't recieved any. So i'm promoting it.
We went to the Provo temple today. Miss you and love you so much! It´s almost feels like this is for real.
Love,
Hermana Canfield.
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