MTC - Week 5 - Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas!

This is unfortunately going to be short, so I wanted to bear my testimony. The MTC has really been a testimony builder, and I'm glad because that was always part of the reason I wanted to serve a mission. My testimony has really grown of Jesus Christ. I feel kind of silly that my testimony didn't have more emphasis on Him before. For awhile, I remember trying to strengthen my testimony of prayer or reading my scriptures, which is important, but Jesus Christ is really what you need a testimony of first.

Since my zone is a "choir zone" I've been singing every week in MTC choir, and obviously we've sang a lot of Christmas /Baby Jesus songs. I thought about what Mary must have been thinking those first weeks and months of having her baby. She must have loved that baby SO much. It must have been an entirely different perspective knowing what Jesus would do for her and everyone else 30 years later. It's such an incredible gift Jesus Christ gave us. And He did it completely out of love for us. Without the atonement, we'd be stuck after we die. There would be no hope of changing for the better because we'd be stuck with our sins forever.

I really do love Jesus Christ. I know He is real and if you do things to grow closer to Him you WILL be happier. All He wants is for us to "come follow Him" and love him more than any worldly thing that would take us further from Him.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas! Take some time in a prayer today and thank God for sending us his only begotten ;) I love you!!!!

<3 / Hermana Harper

MTC - Week 5

Feliz Navidad!

With Christmas coming up tomorrow, I have a little time to write today, and I'll have a little time tomorrow to respond to emails and write letters :)

One cool thing we did yesterday was skype with members in another country. My companion and I  talked to this dad in Mexico. It was pretty cool! Right before class, we were role playing with our teacher, Bro Zuzunaga, and he was playing one of his friends named Sandy that he grew up with in Peru. She doesn't believe in God, and he was kind of using us for ideas on how to talk to her because he's tried everything. It can be super hard knowing how to say something or what to say to certain people. Obviously you have to completely rely on the spirit, but it can be hard!
Anyway, in skype time afterwards, one of the other companionships was having trouble connecting with the person they were supposed to, so Bro Zuzunaga joked, maybe my friend Sandy will be available! The other teacher was like, yeah! So he texted her and it actually worked out perrrfectly. Zuzunaga was SUPER nervous that she might be a little rude if the missionaries brought up God, but she was super nice. She's just a normal girl, doesn't believe in God. I guess to the missionaries Sandy said she "sometimes" believes in God. Zuzunaga was freaking out because he's tried forever to talk to her and get her to open up to the idea that God exists. It was super cool because it was totally a real missionary experience. Instead of having the fake teacher investigators, Bro. Zuzunaga got it approved for us to skype his friends who aren't members. It's kind of a tricky thing because Bro. Zuzunaga just says "hey, will you help my missionaries practice their spanish?" So we have to very smoothly bring in the gospel, which is easier than I thought. This morning our class skyped his friend Enrique from Peru. Before it worked, we were having lots of technical problems, so we prayed, and figured it out. Power of prayer is really cool:) Enrique is in California right now living with his friend. It was awesome because  Bro. Zuzunaga "wasn't there" and we just talked to him and eventually got it to the point where we asked if he'd pray on his own. He wants a stronger relationship with God, so he said yes! We set up another skype date for thursday. Bro. Zuzunaga is so, so excited about all this. He said he hasn't talked religion much with Enrique and it's way cool that we're beginning to "change" Enrique through committments.

That is probably my most exciting news! Tomorrow for Christmas we are going up to Main Campus all day for a program and to hear a general authority.  I think there is a general authority coming tonight too, since it's devotional night AND christmas eve!

Hope you all have a happy holiday!

Hermana Harper
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

MTC - Week 4

Hola!

Ok so first thing, Me and my companion are sister training leaders for our zone! The branch president gave us the assignment Sunday. We're basically zone leaders, but for the sisters. All we do is go to meetings and interview the girls once a week. Pretty exciting. Right now we have 4 districts in our zone. Two of complete elders. Mine, which is all sisters since our two elders left us for the Colombia MTC a few days ago. And our newest district which is about half elders and half sisters. One of the girls I knew from USU. She knows my first roommate Christy really well too!

Yesterday I went to VEGAS! I had to be ready and waiting for the bus at 4:30am. My group consisted of like 9ish elders and one other sister. We are all going to the same mission, same day, so that instantly bonded us I think. It was fun being at the airport in the real world! Everyone knows the missionaries it seems like, so we talked to lots of people.

Flight to Las Vegas

The flight was only like 50 min, so that was nice. When we got there, there was this grandpa service missionary who picked us up. We drove in his big van to Del Taco and got our food to-go. Then went to the Institute building in Paradise, NV and ate while he talked to us. He just went on and on about Mexico and what he thought we should know. One of the Elders was like, "So you've been to the Yucatan?" And he's just like, no a different part. So half of what he said probably wasn't relevant. He was weird too because he didn't care if we slept, but he said we should be taking notes rather than snacking on the candy this elder brought. One of the elders literally filled his bag up with snacks and candy; it was pretty funny. After 3 hours of grandpa teaching us about Mexico and the Old Testament, we finally went to the Mexican consultant or whatever it's called. Our grandpa guide guy made it seem like such a serious thing. He told us when we got in there, we were on Mexico territory so we had to be on our best behavior and be SUPER respectful. It felt like a DMV, but in Mexico. Nothing was in English, so they'd call numbers for people to come to different windows and stuff all in Spanish. Missionaries do it differently than everyone else though. Once the guy was ready for us, we went up one by one to get a picture and have our finger scanned. And that was it. Then we all waited for our visas. We were probably there about an hour. I sat by this one lady and she asked if I was a lawyer. Except I didn't know the word for lawyer, so I was trying to get her to give an example or something so I could figure it out. The grandpa missionary who brought us whispered "lawyer" to me, so then I was like, "oh no, I'm a missionary!" to her, but then the grandpa told me "no proselyting!" so I kinda stopped talking to her. She was so nice and would have kept talking to me, but I didn't trust my Spanish enough. The elders thought it was cool I talked to someone there for a second because I think the rest of them were scared to, especially since we got warned to be on our very best behavior.

Las Vegas Airport

After all that, we got to hang out at the airport for a while, then we flew home! It was super funny watching some of the missionaries try and start gospel conversations. One of the elders held one on the whole flight home with this guy. He tried to give him a BOM on the plane, but the guy "forgot" it. Luckily we made friends with some members too, and they had been watching, so they ran to "return" the forgotten BOM haha. It was a really fun trip! It was cool how good of friends I got to be with them after just a day. A couple of them told me all about how decided to come on a mission and cool things that had happened already in the MTC. Sweet elders, haha.

LOVE YOU GUYS! Hope you enjoyed my rambling...I'll try and send more spiritual messages from now on haha :) FELIZ NAVIDAD IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK :)

<3 / Hermana Harper

MTC - Elder Fogamomi

Elder Fogamomi and Hermana Harper

December 18, 2013
I happened to be on main campus last Wednesday and I saw a bunch of new missionaries.  I spotted Steven immediately.  Crazy!!!

(Elder Fogamomi is a young man from our ward here in Orem.  He reported to the MTC on December 18th and will be serving in the Samoa Apia Mission!  Good Luck Elder Fogamomi!!!)

MTC - Week 3

(We didn't get a full email from Hilary this week. Here are a few paragraphs from some of her messages)

MTC Family

Spanish is REALLY hard still. If I was English speaking I think I'd be way better because I could apply what I learn more. Everything in Spanish is so much slower. I'm not sure exactly what we do for Christmas... on Thanksgiving we watched Ephraim's Rescue up at main campus.  That was pretty fun. Everyone got either milk duds or jr. mints for the movie too. Plus general authorities of course! I imagine Christmas will be similar. I think it'll be really fun. Plus my district is starting to feel like a little family, so that makes it easier. It's exactly how I felt when I had roommates.  

I haven't found the cream soda tree yet, but i for sure will before i leave! Hopefully it still smells in the winter. The tree is at main campus, so i have to make time to go up there. (Before she left for the MTC, some friends told her there was a tree on the MTC campus that smelled like cream soda.  She was excited to find it and smell it!!!)

MTC - Week 2

Here is my attempt at doing a mass email!

So things are good! Today is my two week mark. A typical day usually consists of classes, studying, gym time, meals...obviously. Haha

My companion's name is Hermana Christen and she is like 5' 2" and from Mapelton. I really love her! She's super easy going and she helps me with my spanish a lot. She's really focused, but can have fun too which I'm really glad for!

MTC Companions

Some highlights of my time here:
A few days ago we were going on a walk with our teacher because we wanted a little break and it was nice outside. There were these 6 Mexicans who were working on the roof of our apartment building and they were on their lunch break. Our teacher asked them if we could practice our spanish with tem, so we just talked to them for a little bit. My teacher was my "companion" for the few minutes.  As wee talked to them we found out they were all from Mexico and all family. They didn't speak much english and were catholic...I don't think they knew much about mormons even though they were working on the MTC. haha. It was really cool because it just felt like how I picture my mission will be. I was able to ask one of the men some stuff and he asked me some stuff. It was just really cool. We actually went back to our classroom to get some pass-a-long cards for them, but by the time we made it back they were back up on the roof again.

That whole experience was with our teacher Hermana Young. Our other teacher is Hermano Zuzunaga. He is from Peru and speaks pretty fast spanish. He's honestly an incredible teacher, but he's intimidating because he doesn't like us goofing off and he expects us to study hard. I can tell he really loves us but I think some of the people in my district just think he's mean. The other day, we were trying to learn about how to apply principle to meet peoples needs. It's really hard. We'd take a principle like "the apostasy" and try and turn it into an answer to meet people's needs if that makes sense. To practice, he told us to just try and ask him questions about him and his life and try and think of his real needs. As we talked to him we really got to know his personality better and past experiences and everything. He was super honest with us which was cool. No one had really asked about his love life, so I was like hey that's something worth knowing to try and learn about what he needs. So I attempted to ask him, "Have you had many girlfriends?" But I conjugated wrong and asked if he currently has many girlfriends. He was instantly like no no no! Like, I'm not that kind of person! I didn't get what I did wrong right away, but then someone whispered to me. Everyone laughed WAY hard about that. Haha!, Whoops!

That same teacher is also acting as our second investigator. All the investigators are teachers and they act as a real investigator they had on their mission. Hermano Zuzunaga had a really tough mission and so consequently, when he is an investigator for us, he makes it really hard too. When we went to "his door" like 2 days ago I think we totally failed. He's a different person for all the other companionships in the district and the rest of them did okay with him, but we didn't. We got there and he was just like, oh i'm catholic. Oh, i'm baptized. No I don't need anything, I'm good. I just don't know how to tell someone what they really need is what we can teach them. I got really frustrated after that little visit because not only can I not talk to him how I normally would, but as a missionary I didn't really know what to do either. It's tough because it is totally a realistic situation. I'm learning though! We have to go back again and it'll be harder because he'll be like, you're back??

Another thing we do here at the MTC is a thing called TRC. I forgot what it stands for. Basically we just talk to real members who speak our language and have a little visiting teaching message or something. Hermano Zuzunaga told us to ask questions that can help even a member be better. Everyone can improve and change something to be closer to Christ and really our goal is to find out what that can be with the member. That was really fun because the members are so nice and love missionaries. One guy we talked to had only been a convert for a year and is from Chile.  He was SO nice and has such a strong convert testimony.

Well that's probably all I have time for. I love all of you! Let me know how you're doing!

Hermana Harper