TERVE!

Sister Elliott, Sister Kyle Junior, Sister Kyle Senior, Elder Kyle

Terve,

That's Finnish and/or Estonian for hello.  I just feel left out sometimes when I don't know weird greetings in other languages like everyone else so I stole this one from my zone leaders.  They're at the point of breaking out of jail because they've been here so long but they're off next week so they are excited. 

This week was grand as every week in the mtc should be.  I can't help but love this place.  I think what I like the best about learning here is how we teach progressing investigators.  My teachers get in their alter ego mode for us to teach in our companionships.  This way, we learn how to teach to different personalities and we learn how to continue the lessons.  Also every so often we go to another building to teach a real(ish) investigator.  These investigators are kind of like the unit tests.  Teaching our teacher is like a normal test and teaching other missionaries in zone teaching is like a quiz.  I guess teaching in the field will be like... the ACT?  Our real(ish) investigator keeps standing us up.  Everytime we go to teach I feel slightly nervous to do it but also excited.  And everytime I go it's like the teacher's sick so we don't have to take the test... which always seemed to happen to me in real school. I'm always secretly relieved but at the same time I know that we would have benefited from teaching her.  Anywho, Sister Elliott and I learned a lot when we taught James aka Bro Nate this week.  We went in there ready to teach more about the Atonement and about Alma's conversion story.  We went in there and he was super excited to see us.  We committed him to a baptism date right when we started so we were all super pumped.  Then after the prayer he told us that his Mormon roommate told him about the Word of Wisdom and asked if it was true.  I wanted to make sure he was told the truth about it which he was so then I confirmed it.  He immediately got really frustrated.  We continued asking him questions and we tried to read some scriptures with him but he just kept hiding his face and pulling his hair.  He told us that he just doesn't want to do anything anymore.  He told us to forget about his baptism date because he didn't want any part of it anymore.  Everything was so real for all three of us.  We tried really hard to see where he was coming from as well as testify about the power of the Atonement.  He just kept opening the door and asking us to leave.  We stayed as long as we could get away with and were at least able to pray with him again.  I tried to pull the whole, Other side of Heaven thing, where you teach the lesson in the prayer so it was a semi long prayer.  Sis E was in tears this whole time and after the prayer we could tell that his heart was somewhat softened.  Sis E gave her powerful testimony about how God loves James and that he will help him through everything.  After class Bro Nate pulled us aside to make sure we knew that it's not our fault that the lesson went that way.  He explained to us that we got our first taste of why missions are hard.  They're not hard because you have to wake up early and study and walk around all day.  They're hard when you have so much love for the people and they aren't able to receive or understand your message.  So the rest of the day was just kind of low for the two of us.  We prayed pretty hard that we'd be able to know how to teach James next week and that our spirits would be lifted somehow.  Later that night we got to teach a volunteer "investigator" for the first time.  We taught the Restoration and it went really well.  I don't want to measure the Spirit by how many tears come but this investigator who is LDS in real life was touched so much by the simplicity of the message.  So that was definately the cure for the day. 

Welp, I've been capitalizing on the chocolate milk and making the most of the mtc.  I enjoy being a ten year old in the cafeteria and daring people to do awkward things in big groups.  We have a bet going to find out why our teacher Brother Pinnock is so skinny.  I figured it's cuz he's a hard core runner but Sister Reynders thinks he has a secret disease.  So we casually brought up cross country running in class but turns out I was wrong.  We have yet to figure out what disease he suffers from if any.  Hopefully he's not dying. 

Thanks so much for the letters this week!  I love them so much.  Keep 'em coming. 

Love,

Sister Katie