Rough Day

Pamilya ko!

I have been here for four weeks and two days! Time flies. Just two more weeks! I leave March 5th. Probably at 3:30am. I am supposed to get my itinerary today. 

Hair flying in the wind!!

Aaron and Austin came and ate lunch with me on Saturday!!
It was so much to see them.

Yesterday was probably the hardest day so far here at the MTC. Two of the districts in our zone left for the Philippines at 3:30 in the morning. It was sad to see them go. The halls seem empty and I keep thinking that I see them in the cafeteria, etc. I miss them. There are so many good people in the world! I feel so blessed to get to know some of the best! Then, on top of that, Brother W (Adam's friend who I met before leaving on my mission) asked us to memorize 50 words. Plus, Sister Lewis and I had a discouraging lesson the night before and have been trying to figure out how to improve. And then I was running low on sleep because of the sisters leaving in the middle of the morning. 

It was just a rough day.

Brother R and Brother S (our teaching for the afternoon class) caught on pretty quickly that we weren't ourselves. The elders in our district got close to no sleep since the elders who left stayed up all night. Our sisters got up around 2am, but I managed to sleep through most of it until I got up to say goodbye. Although it took me a while to fall back asleep...over an hour, actually.

I've never had problems sleeping, until here at the MTC.

Anyway, Brother R decided to take us on a field trip, so we went outside and practiced street contacting, etc. That helped.

Good news though...well, sorta. I took it upon myself to memorize 58 words, since I knew that some of them would probably not stick, and so I thought I would ACTUALLY be able to memorize 50 if I tried memorizing more than 50. Well, I reviewed them this morning, and could only remember 45. But still, not too bad. Now I have a new list of 50 today. Brother Winfield challenged us to continue memorizing 50 until we leave. 

I also memorized the first vision this week, another thing that Brother Winfield challenged us to do. 

Brother Winfield is the most stern of all of our teachers and gives us the most homework. But I'm grateful that he does.

We Skyped for TRC yesterday. Sister Lewis and I both felt we should talk about prayer. When we asked what the other companionships were talking about, two of the three said, "prayer." 

My mission president's wife, Sister Pearce, has been a temple worker for the last two years and said she really encourages us to volunteer as temple workers after our missions. She felt like that would be a really good transition for us after our missions. I was wondering what Jameson's thoughts would be on that. Anyway, she recommended us looking up a talk (she said it was on CD) called "The Gift of the Temple" By Elder Pederson. She said that she and President Pearce went to listen to a fireside he gave, and he completely changed their perspectives on the temple. She said he made powerful promises. They starting going to the temple fasting and praying for specific blessings (especially regarding their somewhat rebellious son). A week later, their son came back from church and said that he had brought home his mission papers to fill out. 

Anyway, the point is that I think it would be great if we went to the temple fasting and praying for Grandpa.

I was reminded after our devotional on Tuesday of a story that Sister A told us. One good and one bad. 

1) There were some missionaries walking down the street. One of them dropped a wrapper on the ground and immediately picked it up. A woman was impressed by that and thought, "If missionaries ever knock on my door, I will let them talk to me." Ten years later, they did know on her door, and she listened, and got baptized. 

People are always watching!

2) Two sister missionaries were out past curfew and their investigator knew it. This investigator thought, "How do these missionaries expect me to keep commitments when they can't even keep their own?" The investigator was so turned off by that that she stopped taking the lessons. 

Sister Lewis and I have been trying to do our best to do what we ask our investigators to do. If we ask them to read a passage, we read it too...in Ilonggo. I feel like we can sympathize with them since the Libro ni Mormon in Ilonggo has a lot of deep, old words that most Philippinos don't know. 

Keep praying for me, please! 

Sister Marriott