I Stand All Amazed

Hola amigos y familia,

The MTC just keeps on getting better and better. We had 4 devotionals this week! One Sunday with the MTC presidency, one on Tuesday with Elder S. Gifford Nielsen, and two on Thanksgiving and I’ll tell you guys more about that later...

Elder Nielsen talked a lot about the power of the Book of Mormon and he shared with us 2 Nephi 31:20, which is now one of my favorite verses in the Book of Mormon since it’s so motivational and applicable to persevering through hard times. 

Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.

Elder Nielsen is a former BYU football quarterback and is now in the General Quorum of the 70, so he’s lived a pretty awesome life, and we were lucky to have him that night.

On Wednesday, we had our first lesson with our new investigator, Niky. We talked a lot about the importance of Praying to receive divine help from Heavenly Father. We also testified strongly of the Book of Mormon, and now she is reading everyday.

The thing with investigators in the MTC, is we don’t really know if they are members or not, but that doesn’t make a difference because these are still real feelings of the spirit and real emotions. Teaching has been one of my favorite parts and has definitely helped my Spanish.

Thanksgiving was amazing! So my whole district gets there early to the devotional, so we have great seats. Then as the time gets closer, they announce that our speaker is Elder Bednar! Before Devotionals start, we sing some prelude music and we start singing hymn 193 “I stand all amazed.” 
I was so struck by the spirit as we sung the second verse.

I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine

To rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine,

That he should extend his great love unto such as I,

Sufficient to own, to redeem, and to justify

I already started crying some after we finished singing this verse, and right after the song ended, Elder Bednar entered the room, and everyone stood up, and in that moment, the Spirit distinctly told me that Elder Bednar is a true Apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ and that through the the enabling power of the Atonement, I have been rescued.

Afterwards, we had thanksgiving lunch and it was actually pretty good! After that, we went back to the devotional hall, and we heard from Sharon Eubank, RS general presidency member, and David Green, the CEO of Feeding Children Everywhere. David Green had an amazing conversion story to the Gospel and he was the guy who brought the service project idea to the MTC. 

After that, they split all the missionaries into two groups. The first group started the service project, And the group I was in went to go watch a movie. We watched this movie called “Love, Kennedy” and it was a church movie that was really good, but also really sad and a cried a little. I would recommend everyone watch this movie.

Then we had our thanksgiving sack dinner, which was a little underwhelming. But our district was able to bond together some more. After that, it was our turn to do the service project. We got into assembly lines and we were packing this breakfast food bag. My job was to weigh each bag and to make sure it weighed between 120-130 grams. Once we had 48 breakfast bags packed in a box, we would ring our bell and celebrate for a brief 10 seconds or so. I was also the group hype man, so I was ringing the bell most of the time!! I think we packaged about 6 boxes, so 288 bags of breakfast food. The whole MTC was able to do 350,000 bags of breakfast food, and it was all donated to the Utah Food Bank.

The night ended with the Nashville Tribute Band. And they pretty much “rocked” out for our MTC “concert.” I like a lot of their songs, so it was cool hearing them live and to hear their personal stories. There were two songs that got a little too rowdy, so the MTC presidency wasn’t super pleased hahah. In fact the next day, we got a letter from the MTC presidency that apologized for the music the night before and told us to not listen to any type of music on our mission that does not invite the spirit.

On Friday, we were back to the grind. That night, Elder Larsen and I taught The Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson to one of our teachers and we got a lot of solid feedback afterwards. I’m grateful for my companionship with Elder Larsen because we help bring out the best in each other. 

I have more pictures this week! 

#1- My 4th Great Grandfather, Erastus Snow, has a building named after him at the MTC

#2- Elder Nelson, and I are both heading out to Riverside and we got some mission t shirts

#3- Christmas lights at the MTC

#4 and #5- some pics from our temple walk. I’m wearing Elder Baker’s glasses in one pic and the other one is kinda funny since we were all just laughing and having a good time

#6 - After the temple today

Because I Have Been Given Much

Hola! This email will be longer than normal because I pretty much just condensed my journal for the full week. There were some ups and downs this week, but I learned so much and I’m really happy here on the mission and in the MTC.

Saturday the 11th, 

This was my first P-day, after doing laundry and emailing, me and Elder Larsen got ready to go to the Temple. Before the temple, we did some personal study. I was reading in the Book of Helaman and I was really impressed by the prophet Nephi. After numerous miracles and bearing strong testimony, the people would still not hearken to his words and he felt alone. But then he heard a voice from the Spirit to go back out and preach repentance once again. Nephi is just one of many great examples of Missionary work in the Book of Mormon. It was just what I needed to hear in that moment. The temple session we were in was packed, and it was great to be among so many saints. A lot of the elders in my zone volunteered in the temple laundry room after, and it was a blessing to serve.

Sunday the 12th, 

This whole weekend I had the hymn, “Because I Have Been Given Much” stuck in my head. And it’s a great motivation for me because I have been so blessed by the Lord leading up to this point in my life, and now I too must give. I really enjoyed this Sunday because we just had a lot of time to ponder and reflect. The first few days of classes were a lot to take in at once, so it was nice to ponder about the Gospel and Missionary Work. That night at the devotional, there was a beautiful music arrangement, it was “Come thou fount of every blessing” and “If you could hie to Kolob.” The Spirit was so strong. We also watched the Character of Christ devotional that was given by Elder David A Bednar a few years back. It was life changing and it really just gave me the desire to forget myself and turn outward to serve others as Christ would.

Monday the 13th,

We had a service opportunity in the morning. We pretty much were just in charge of cleaning parts of one of the other Residences. Just some vacuuming, sweeping, taking out the trash, and cleaning sinks. Exercise time usually is in between our two classes, so it’s nice to play some volleyball or soccer to take away from some of the stress. Its getting colder so a lot of us elders are trying to take advantage of using the outdoor field. I’m loving soccer because I was playing a lot of soccer this fall at school, so it’s nice to see that work pay off hahah I’m averaging 2 goals a game so far

Tuesday the 14th,

The other two elders in our room, Elder Nelson and Elder Edge are some funny guys. Elder Nelson is going to Riverside as well and he has some of the best one-liners, so I started to keep a list of his quotes. Elder Edge is going to Fort Worth on his mission, so we talk about Texas quite a bit. That night, Elder Parrella, a new member of the quorum of the seventy, gave a devotional. He talked a lot about faith and hope. With faith, we are able to do miracles according to the Lord’s will. Hope will help us conquer discouragement.

Wednesday the 15th,

We had been teaching our investigator, Patricio, all week, and this was our fourth lesson with him. Elder Larsen and I had the plan of teaching the whole plan of Salvation, but the Spirit lead us to 2 Nephi 2:25-27. These verses really stuck with Patricio, and we spent a lot of time listening to Patricio’s concerns and bore testimony about the Atonement, repentance, the Book of Mormon and eternal families among others. As I was bearing testimony, I felt the gift of tongues. It gives me comfort to know that the Spirit is the ultimate teacher whenever we preach the gospel.

Thursday the 16th,

Up to this point, the week had been pretty great. As the day went on, I honestly just didn’t feel that patient. It’s hard to have the spirit with us if we are lacking patience and charity. It was just one of those days. Right before we were going to go in for our last lesson with Patricio, I wanted to read a little bit out of the Book of Mormon. It got me back in the right state of mind, and we were able to teach a 40 minute lesson, which went really well. Through this whole experience with Patricio, we learned the importance of testifying with the Spirit, extending commitments, and following up in lessons. I probably should’ve mentioned that Patricio was just a Returned Missionary who was just acting as an investigator, but we still were able to gain some confidence.

Friday the 17th,

I got my package sent to me from home with a lot more blister band aids. I got some pretty bad blisters the first few days from trying to break in some new shoes, and I was running out of moleskin, so this was perfect timing. All in all, today was a great day. We found out who our TRC (investigator) is for the next 3 weeks. Her name is Niky, and we will start teaching her next Wednesday. At the end of the day, Elder Larsen and I taught a 10 minute lesson on the Restoration to another companionship, and it went really well. It was really cold today in Provo, so I brought out the winter jacket for a little bit, and I think we even got a few snowflakes later that night. When I compare this day and the day before, I was a lot happier today because I was remembering to pray more, love more, and serve others more.

Ran into The Winston Farley (teammate on BYU Lax - he volunteers/works at MTC)

My companion (Elder Larsen) and me after the Temple last Saturday

This is my district

Habla su idioma

These last few days really have been something. After my first 3 nights in the MTC (Provo Mission Training Center), there has been some homesickness, but also a lot of learning and growth! One of my favorite parts of the day is class time because our district works really hard and I can see the light of Christ in all of them. Both of our teachers, Hermano Bate and Hermano Black are great teachers and they teach us with the Spirit. 

My companion is Elder Larsen and he will be going to the California San Jose Mission! While we may have two completely different personalities, we work well together and we even taught a lesson together Friday night to our “investigator,” Patricio. We were able to teach for 35 minutes all in Spanish after only being in the MTC for 2 days!

Elder Larsen and I really feel the happiest when we are speaking our mission language, which in the MTC is known as “Habla su idioma.” We are both learning lots of new Spanish every day. 

My zone is awesome! Seriously on the first night, they were the biggest help to me as we had our testimony meeting with the elders. Some of the elders in our zone who had been there for 3 weeks bore great testimonies and then they opened it up to the new elders. I bore my testimony on the power of prayer and how it’s helped me a lot throughout my life. Afterwards, I was able to talk to a lot of the other elders and they gave me great advice. One scripture an elder told me to read was DyC 68:6. 

6 Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come.

I really needed to read that and it gave me the motivation knowing the Lord will take care of me. It might take a little longer to get used to the 16 hour days of learning in the MTC, but I know it will be worth it and I will be able to better serve the Lord when I get to California.

I only attached two pictures because we haven’t really taken many yet. One is the view of outside our class window and one is me and my companion, Elder Larsen.

Nos vemos!

Elder Moon

First Post

I'm entering the Provo MTC on Wednesday. Stay updated on this blog for my next post from the MTC!