Shake and Bake

This week marked my halfway point at the MTC! I have mixed emotions about leaving the MTC in less than 3 weeks. On one hand, I would love a change of scenery (outside of Provo) and to be able to start helping others in the mission field. On the other hand, the Spirit here in the MTC is everywhere, it’s undeniable and I still have a lot to learn before I arrive in Riverside.

By far the best day of the week was Wednesday! Probably because it was the busiest and we taught 2 lessons/helped teach two more! I’ll give some background context...

All the new missionaries do an activity on their first night in the MTC called People and Your Purpose. There are about 60 new missionaries to a room, one moderator that helps lead the activity, one investigator, and 2 missionaries (who have had a few weeks in the MTC) who will begin the lesson. 

My district was chosen to be those missionaries who help begin the lesson!! So our objective was to get to know our investigator and ask thought provoking questions about their relationship with God and their interest in the Church. We asked questions for about 5 minutes, but we were explicitly told to not teach any doctrine.

We were only to gather information about our investigator, so that the new missionaries could have some info, and they could be the teachers! So after our 5 minutes was up, the moderator stopped us and gave the mics to the missionaries in the crowd, so that they could ask more questions, teach, and bear testimony. 

It was an awesome event, and a great opportunity for everyone there!

One of the greatest miracles since I’ve been here in the MTC happened that night though. We have a new investigator named Hishám who is from Honduras. Elder Larsen and I were teaching him and getting to know him and he expressed his concern and his doubt on how Jesus Christ can help him with all the problems in his life. He told us that since Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago, he didn’t believe he could receive any sort of divine help. He had a hard time understanding the concept of the Atonement essentially, but through the Power of the Holy Ghost, we were both able to boldly testify of the Savior in a way that we have never before been able to do. After the lesson, I really felt that we needed to find a quiet place to pray together and give thanks for the Spiritual gifts in our lives. So now we started to do that after all of our lessons. Like last week with Elder Bednar’s Devotional, it was one of those spiritual moments and testimony builders that I won’t forget.

Thursday morning, we taught Niky for the 4th time, but this time we had a member with us to help! Hermana Gutman was the member that taught with us, and she had a great testimony of the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and keeping the Sabbath day holy. Her testimony helped us and helped Niky even more. Niky is really diligent and is always eager to share her favorite parts of the Book of Mormon with us. She is definitely progressing, and hopefully she can attend church this weekend! 

I also finished the Book of Mormon again on Thursday, so now I plan on reading the Book of Mormon in both English and Spanish everyday, hand in hand. Being able to read the words of the prophets Mormon, Ether and Moroni these last few days have given me a lot of strength. Moroni 10:32 is my verse of the week

To recap the rest of the week, we had Sister Joy D. Jones, Primary President, and her husband for our Tuesday Devotional. Brother Jones had an incredible conversion story. When he was 17, he was in Chemistry class and his lab partner would always be sleeping. One day he asked the guy, “why are you always so tired?” He said he goes to early morning seminary. That sparked an interest with Brother Jones, so he started attending seminary. From there, he went to church regularly, was baptized, and served a mission when he turned 19. God definitely works in mysterious ways sometimes, and it’s really cool to hear about conversion stories like that.

Sister Jones talked a lot about Thomas S. Monson and some of his prophetic promises to us. My favorite quote from her part was, “We can always be a little more obedient, courageous, and dependent on the Lord’s power.”

On a more light hearted note, some interesting things happened this week. We had a lot of missionaries from our zone leave for the mission field. We shared a lot of great memories with those elders, but we have 8 new elders in our zone that arrived this week. They are all really cool and have great desires to be here and hopefully we can  all help each other out.

Exercise Time now is pretty much limited to the indoor gym now, and me and Elder Snow (Elder from my district) are the deadliest duo on the volleyball court haha we are pretty much the only ones who try to set each other up for spikes while everyone else just pretty much throws the ball over the net. We are Shake and Bake. I’m definitely going to miss balling out everyday at exercise time once my MTC transfer is over with.

We also have a lot of “traditions” in our zone among the elders. One of which is on P-day, and at 6:30 am we get everyone up and we sing our P day song. It’s to the tune of “battle hymn of the republic” and it gets everyone excited for the day and more importantly, awake hahah. Well I got passed down the responsibility of leading this, and this morning was really hype since we got most of the newer missionaries to join in!

Lastly,

Tengo una preuganta para ustedes... Cómo ha cambiado para ser más como Cristo esta semana?

En ingles: how have you changed to be more like Christ this week?

I know I have tried to be more patient with everyone around me, and as I’ve done that, I’ve felt a Christlike love for them.

Hope everyone had a great week!!

Elder Moon

Pictures: 

#1 The view after the temple is the best

#2 the good thing about serving stateside, is that your flag is always flying at the MTC

#3 Elder Larsen is the man. Love being his companion