MTC Week 2

Here's Elder Gerrard's email for this week!

Hey Everyone!

Soo holy cow! The days fly by! But boy oh boy they are soo so good! 

For starters I'd like to share the funny experience of the day... so today we got the pleasant surprise getting notified that we had until 4:30 to evacuate all our things out of this building since the Sister missionaries had bats in their dorms so we were notified around 3:00. So it looked as though the world was ending in our residency just a couple of hours ago! If you want to watch something funny, just watch the havoc ensue when you tell a bunch of missionaries they have to move their stuff with out the assistance of their moms to help get their stuff back into the suit cases they came in!

I also broke a chair today by sitting in it to eat my ice cream after the stressful experience of moving all that stuff over to a new building... so for all those that didn't believe it when I said I would gain 20-30 lbs on the mission.. the chair says otherwise.

Other than those experiences the week has been just as unique and wonderful as you might expect being in training center full of 18,19, and 20 year old Elders and Sisters who have willingly accepted the call to serve the Lord to help other people in there respective missions! Highlights from this week would be the opportunity to go to the Provo Temple again and probably my last time going to a temple for who knows how long, but I can add my testimony that Temples are essential for our ability to one day live with our Father in Heaven again. The feelings of peace and love residing in those sacred buildings make them the best haven we have from worldly issues and contention. I would recommend all of us to take some time for ourselves and go to the temple for those that have a recommend to do so or to just visit the grounds if you don't currently have a recommend.. regardless temples are amazing and wonderful things we have on the earth today!

As far as investigators and learning how to become a better teacher for the Holy Ghost or Spirit to testify through me, I have learned how important it is to truly just listen to the person your talking to and not be to worried about how to respond to them while they are talking. Especially when we know that person is in a time of need where they are asking for your help and need to know what to do.. I know the Spirit can give us the very thing we should say to them if we just stop and listen after we hear their thoughts. Its amazing how this works when talking to investigators and scriptures just pop in your head that can really help them through the struggles they are experiencing right now. When things aren't going as we would hope them to be we just have to remember that sometimes we must press forward with faith acknowledging that the Savior hasn't abandoned us, and when we do this we will be able to look back at that tough time and see we were really blessed in those moments!

This Sunday we had a really amazing talk given by a Brother Watson who is one of the individuals responsible for the curriculum taught here in the MTC. And we were able to meet two of the sister missionaries as well as a real convert from the upcoming District 3 (which is basically 30-45 min videos following missionaries in their actual missions having lessons with non-members who have agreed to have the missionaries teach them and record it so missionaries like me can learn from them!) The purpose of Brother Watson from having us meet these two sisters and investigators to help us understand how important it is as Missionaries to spend ALL of our time thinking about our investigators so we can teach to the things they stand in need of rather than just tell them about the message we have to share. At the end of the day missionaries never are there to convince someone why they should be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, instead if we teach to their needs it allows the Spirit to work within that person to the point they start seeing for themselves that there is a different feeling, or light about those two other-wise complete goofball missionaries sitting across the room teaching them.. Its the spirit that does the work not me or any missionary and thats what we learn here at the MTC how to teach with power but by using very few of our own words!

We also heard from Elder Maynes who is in the quorum of the Presidency of the Seventy. He had us read a really cool talk about Joseph Smith and the First Vision before he spoke on Sunday. The talk is called "The Truth Restored". Highly recommend those to read if they have time but he ultimately talked to us about why its important to teach from the Book of Mormon... It has Power. It is another Testament of Jesus Christ so we need to create a strong desire for ourselves as well as everyone we come in contact with to one day help them realize how amazing the Book of Mormon is in relating to our lives and then he talked about the importance of how even bringing one person back into the church the effect that can have in their family to come and he said that from just one person he baptized on his mission 400 people have joined the church. How amazing is that! 

I wish I had more time but thats all I got for this week Love you all!