Okay! First week! I can't believe that it's only been
one week, it feels like I've gone for at least a month! sounds like the beach
was fun, glad mom and dad could go and relax :) Has it cooled down over there?
Utah it's definitely fall, and I love it! .
The MTC is incredible! And yes, the food is yummy ;)
My teachers Bro. Whiting and Sis. Westover are amazing, like, AH-MAZING. Ah,
the whole district just loves them and how much they are teaching us on how to
become better teachers/missionaries. In my district there are four elders all
going to SLC West, Sister Wright who is also going to Sacramento and Sister
Schellenberg that is going to Houston. The elders are fantastic and all have
desires to be here and to be serving, one of them is from England and is so
stinkin' funny.
So here's the sad story, Sister Sapoi (my assigned MTC companion) left. For the
sake of time I'll just summarize but on thursday/friday she started opening up
to me that she's been having a hard time and feels inadequate being here. She
received a blessing and said that things were starting to get better but then on Sunday we were studying and she said she was having a hard time focusing again
on the work and kept thinking about her family and missing them. She went and
talked with the branch president and he committed her to staying until this
coming Tuesday (yesterday) and then they would talk then. I went in and met with
the president after for about ten minutes, when I came back she was gone. The
others had noticed she had walked out but thought that she was coming to meet
me. One of the other sisters and I walked around the floor looking for her, then
came back to our room to tell the elders we couldn't find her. We all knelt down
and prayed as a district ( we do that A LOT here, it's the best) that we would
find her. One sister stayed with the president while the elders looked on the
other floors and the other sister and I went back to our dorm. When we got
there, we saw that all of her things were gone and went to one of the main
buildings up on campus where we saw her sitting with a member of the branch
presidency's wives where she was meeting to wait with the district president
(who had given her a blessing earlier that week--sorry it's kind of confusing!)
While she was in the meeting the sister who had been sitting with her told us
that she had been driving to the MTC campus when she saw Sister Sapoi walking
down the road with her luggage looking for a bus...WHAT. Seriously though, what
a miracle that she was found on the road. Had it not been that exact moment one
was walking and one was driving they would have missed each other
completely.
It broke my heart. She left that day and said that she wants to come back but said she needed more time and closure with her family members before leaving. I felt like it was my fault as her companion but there was so much emotional history with her family that there really wouldn't have been much that i could have done to help her except love her. She has an incredible testimony and I wish she was still here but we all pray for her everyday that she will be comforted. So it's the other 2 sisters and myself as a companion ship and like...20 other elders in our zone. HA! but it's hilarious working with the elders.
Part of the MTC we have investigators that are members
or non-members (they don't tell you) that we have the opportunity to teach. So
the other sisters and I have been working with a girl named Olivia who has been
searching for a church for several years now and wanted to know more about
missionaries because one of her friends is on his mission. Man, she is deep!
Asking all of these deep questions about life after death and the apostasy. It
definitely gives us a taste of what it's going to be like in the field...but the
spirit is so strong! I love being a missionary, how corny am I? But really, i
love it! It's definitely hard work...teaching by the spirit and learning the
lessons and making sure that the investigator can understand the book of Mormon
and it's role but also to understand our purpose as missionaries and making sure
that we are teaching effectively it's overwhelming. But it gets better each day
as I study the scriptures and PMG more and more. It's so humbling, and little
Sister Allen here needed some haha. The teachers here are always reminding us
how important our purpose is as missionaries and how it plays so much in each
lesson and I'm still trying to grasp that...the light switch hasn't flipped but
it will soon.
On Sunday we watched the recorded video of elder B
ednar's devotional he gave a few years on the character of Christ. Family. That
was such a wonderful message and oh how I needed it. Huuuge slices of humble pie
right there. His message explained that christ, ALWAYS turned outwards. He never
turned inwards and that to be like christ we need to turn outwards. That the
natural man would turn inwards and feel sorry for himself and want praise etc
but our missions right now aren't about us. They're about the people we are
working with and turning to them. I wish that I had more time to write about it
but it was an incredible lesson and a great way to start my second week and
really change my overall attitude about this mission.
I attached a few pictures...one of the other sisters has a picture with
sister Sapoi but she hasn't sent it to me yet, so I'll try to do that on my next
p-day but those are the two other sisters I'm with now: Sister Wright going to
sac. with me is the taller one with the glasses and Sis Schellengberg is the
shorter one. We have so much fun!
I'm leaving on Tuesday morning for Sacramento! Can you believe it?! The
time has flown by and a week from today and I'll be there! I'm still trying to
figure out when I can call you because of the time difference...so when I get
back on to figure out the license signatures I'll make sure to have the times
figured out when I'll be calling.
Well, that's really about it for now, but I love you all and I love this
gospel and getting to be here. It's exactly where I need to be and look forward
to what the Lord has in store.
Much love,
Sister Allen
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