Dajia hao! (Hey everyone)
This week's been rather unusual, because the MTC's hosting a large training conference for all the mission presidents who go into the field in the next year. This means that there are large sections of the MTC where we're not allowed to go anymore, and apostles are regularly on campus. For some reason, they decided to cover our cafeteria in fake walls and turn it into a meeting room for the mission presidents. Since we no longer have a cafeteria, a temporary eating area has been set up in a large meeting room in another building. Why they couldn't have the mission presidents meet in the meeting room and have us eat in the cafeteria, I don't know, but the new room's a lot closer to our classroom, so I'm not complaining. No one's allowed to go into the cafeteria building while the meetings are in session, including the cleaning people. This meant that the other night during our service project, we were given the extra task of going to help clean up after the mission presidents and apostles. We vacuumed the cafeteria, and it was crazy how much it's changed. There's a stage, and a huge lights systems, and raised seating in the back. No one would ever guess that a week ago we were eating lunch in there. The coolest part was that on the stage were chairs for all the apostles, with a nametag under each one. I'm not bragging or anything, but I did get to vacuum where the apostles walked so....
Since there are so many apostles on campus, we've had several lectures about proper behavior when we see them. We're not supposed to make a fuss, or rush up to them. If they invite us up to shake their hand, we can, but otherwise we're supposed to leave them alone. Last night after the devotional a group of us from my zone were gathered in one of the courtyards to chat and reflect, and we saw Elder Bednar a little ways off. We saw a lot of other people congregating several yards away from him, looking really excited. We decided to be obedient, and give him some space. Unfortunately, Elder Bednar invited the large, excited group to come shake his hand, and we were just far enough away that we weren't invited. We hoped that since we were obedient we'd be blessed and he'd miraculously come talk to us, but no such luck. That's the closest I've gotten to an apostle here. It could be worse though. One elder in our zone shook hands with Gary L. Stevenson and didn't realize he was an apostle until afterwards when he mentioned it and we freaked out. Still, I love the apostles, and it's exciting that so many of them are here with us, all focused on the same work.
The other day, the elders in our district challenged the oldest district in our zone to a competition to speak Chinese all day. Since we were in their district, we got dragged into it. It was actually kind of fun! Xie jiemei and I had to be super creative to say everything we wanted, but we managed to plan out an entire lesson using only Chinese. The main challenge was that we weren't allowed to speak Chinese to anyone, so we resorted to charades a lot with people outside of our district. By about 3:00, we were all exhausted. Thankfully, the other district called it off, so we were free to speak whatever language we liked for the rest of the day. Even though I was tired and a little grouchy by the end of it, it was encouraging to know that I really can make sense in Chinese if I need to.
I had a cool experience the other day with the spirit. We're pretty tired every day because we are so busy, but that day in particular, I was just exhausted. Unfortunately, that day our teacher had asked us to prepare a lesson teaching him instead of an investigator he was roleplaying. Since he's already gone on a mission, and knows the normal lessons we teach better than we do, we had to come up with a lesson completely from scratch, based on what we thought he needed to hear. During our personal study time, I was trying really hard to figure out what we should teach, but I had no idea. I kept trying to pray about it, but I kept dozing off mid-prayer. I was trying really hard to trust that the Spirit would help me teach, but I didn't feel like I even felt the Spirit. Finally, by the end of the hour of personal study, all I had to go on was a vague idea about teaching about the atonement or about Jesus Christ. I said a prayer to Heavenly Father and told him that I was going to trust him and roll with that, so if it was the wrong idea he'd better tell me. I met with my companion, and she ended up having very similar ideas. We had an incredibly spiritual planning time, and the lesson went wonderfully. I feel like we really uplifted our teacher and helped him feel Christ's love. This was cool because I know that none of that lesson came from me. When I started planning, I couldn't even say a full prayer without falling asleep! With the Spirit though, the lesson was incredible.
Yesterday's devotional more than made up for last Sunday's rather peculiar one. The speakers were a district president and his wife: President and Sister Lords. They spoke about fully dedicating ourselves to our missions, and gaining the light of Christ in our lives as a guiding and directing influence. It was kinda cute-- President Lords spoke after his wife, and when he started his talk he said, "I love my companion. And when I get home, I'm going to kiss her on the mouth. ...Don't you dare do the same!"
One final triumph: Xie Jiemei managed to memorize Joseph Smith's first vision in Chinese in an hour while we were working out, so we're pretty cool. At the MTC we get an hour to work out every day, so I'll pretty much be ready to star in a Fast and Furious movie by the time I get home.
Hope everything goes well for you guys this week! Lots of love!
Hull Jiemei
Pics (sorry they're sideways, I couldn't figure out how to fix them):
1: These are all the girls I room with. From the left, Sister Chan, Sister Jackson, Sister Fisher (My comp), me, Sister Hansen, and Sister Sorensen. They are all wonderful and delightful, and it's great to chat with them about random crap at the end of a long day.
2 and 3: This is the view from the windows right next to our classroom. You can see most of the MTC from the third photo. It's pretty incredible. I hate to admit it, but BYU's mountains are definitely more pretty than the U of U's. That's it though, I swear.
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