MTC Week 1

Family!

Monday is my Pday! So this is around when I'll be emailing for the next 6 weeks.

I left my address book in my residence hall so I hope that I got all of your emails right. If not, please forward to everyone for me :)

First off, thank you Dad for sending me letters on DearElder. They were awesome. Yes I have seen the Riding boy in passing/in the cafeteria but that's it. He says hi to me whenever he sees me. I also saw Kristy Titensor and we talked for a little bit. 

So my class at the MTC consists of my district which is 4 Hermanas and 4 Elderes. We are in the same little classroom everyday so we leave our stuff in there. For about 3 hours a day on most days our teacher--Hermana F. -is there. 99% of the time she speaks Spanish to us. I love it and can understand most of it, but for the people who didn't ever take Spanish it's not as fun haha. My companion is Hermana L. and she is awesome. She and I compliment each other in everything we do because we both understand about the same level of Spanish and we just work really well together. We're the only two in our district going to Comodoro. Everyone else is going to Bahia Blanca, Argentina and we have not found any other missionaries going to our mission.Our measure of success in Spanish so far is that we have our missionary purpose memorized, an excerpt of the first vision memorized, and we can pray in Spanish :) So yeah that's awesome. Literally every prayer whether it's in class, with our companions, or personal prayer, we pray for el don del lenguas because we literally need as much help we can get. For you gringos, that's the gift of tongues. And man, it's already worked miracles for Hermana L. and I, but I'll get to that later.

For our first two days at the MTC we went to a seminar about People and Your Purpose where an MTC worker took on the role of an investigator and we got to practice teaching. That was hard in a big group. But it helped get us ready for our first investigator--Daniel. Hermana L. and I taught Daniel on Friday. It went really well. I mean we prepared and prepared for this lesson (in espanol of course). But because we had been praying for the el espiritu and el don del lenguas we were truly blessed during our lesson. We were able to answer questions we weren't prepared for and words that we needed came to our minds. We had learned them before in high school but had forgotten them. But when we needed them, we were able to speak. Blessings. We'll continue teaching Daniel for the next week and we are hoping that it continues to go well. 

Sunday morning we had a Mission Conference for the whole MTC. Something that I learned was that you can't do anything about the length of your mission, but you can do something about it's width and depth. Sunday afternoon we walked to the temple. After that, we had Sacrament meeting with our Branch. Our branch is our zone, which is three districts. One district--the native speakers--left last night. But anyways, people were bearing their testimonies in Spanish and Hermana Littlefield and I had written ours down on notecards. I decided to get up and bear my testimony and it went well :) one of the native sisters told me that it was really cute. 

At the fireside on Sunday night, the MTC president asked this elder (Elder A.) from Syria to come and speak. Everyone was in tears when he told us about some of the trials his family has had to go through. He's the first missionary from Syria. Something he said was that all the time we ask for second chances. Isn't it fair that we give a 1st chance to other people? I really loved that. 

Tanner. Something for you. We have a TON of books and one of them is a Spanish-English dictionary. On my first day I was opening it and it went straight to the page with "nugget." Thought you would appreciate that.

Oh and on our first day at the MTC we sang "We'll Bring the World His Truth" but changed the line to "we are NOW the Lord's missionaries!" It doesn't feel like it, but we are. 

I'm working as hard as I can!!! It's busy here. We never really have free time. Ever haha. But it's good. I love you guys. I know that the atonement of Jesus Christ is personal. The Lord's ministry focused on the one. 3 Nephi 11:15

Estoy agradecida por el amor de nuestro Padre Celestial. Yo se que Dios es amoroso y que dio el evangelio porque el quiere que nosotros seamos felices. Yo se que Jesucristo es nuestro Redentor. Se que esto es verdad al sentir el Espiritu Santo.

Can't wait to hear how you guys are doing! Love you!!

- Hermana Martin