Week Two

 

 

Today was temple day and it was so great! I went with my zone, and it was fun to see all my friends there. I definitely love having the temple across the street.

 

This week has been really great. Tuesday was devotional, and we could all just feel like it was going to be somebody good.  So we waited in line for an hour to get a seat, and waited for the speaker to finally come in.  Everyone automatically stands up, in the middle of a song we were singing, it was really cool. We heard from Elder Ballard.  It was such a great talk.  How many times will an apostle read from his scriptures 3rd Nephi 11 to everyone?!   It was great. The MTC choir sang “Consider the Lillies” and it made me think of dad. We also heard from Sister Mary Cook - 1st Counselor of the YW general presidency.

We were getting ready to give a discussion to our investigator Martin, when all of a sudden who walks into the room?  Martin. Ha!  He's our new teacher now!  So now we have two teachers, and we teach both Hermana Child and Hermano Dean (aka Martin).  It's pretty fun.  So now I'm teaching Raul and Susana.  We've started our 3rd week here now, and people who just barely got here are coming into our classroom and teaching us Spanish. It's funny and insulting haha! –

So you heard about two new missions in Arizona, ya? They've told us that some of us will end up serving in the Gilbert mission, now.  I'm hoping that I will be able to.  They're getting a new temple in September and I want to be able to go!  And they have cooler weather.  haha.   I can't wait to get to Arizona though. My skin is sickly white and I'm in need of some sun.

I see Kim Johnson a lot and it's really nice!  It's fun to see people from Walla, it's like a little slice of home.  I also saw Briana Fulbright here, she's in our stake, which was super cool.  I haven't seen Jeremy yet, but I'll keep my eyes open. I really can't wait until Courtney gets here though. The day she gets here is the one and only day that I'm allowed to welcome the new missionaries, so I'm really excited about that.

My branch president, President Collett (he is SO amazing - one of the best leaders I've had) - had a conference thing and met with President Uchtdorf.   President Collett said he spoke with him about our zone for quite a bit, and President Uchtdorf said that there has literally never been a better time to be a missionary and that he sends his love to all of us.

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!! I think about you a lot and hope you're doing well :)

Love, Hermana Shelbs

 

Week One - Part II

The spirit is really strong here. A couple of days ago some of the people from our zone left, so we made a circle around them and sang God be with you til we meet again. It was pretty powerful.

Spanish is getting better. Sometimes I feel like I study it so much that English doesn't make sense haha. I really can't wait until I leave for Arizona. It's been snowing here and it sucks.

 

If you get the chance, watch the video on Joseph Smith that they play in the Joseph Smith building. It's now one of my favorites, it's so powerful. My testimony not only of Jesus Christ has been strengthening, but especially of Joseph Smith, what an amazing man!

First Week at the MTC

Hola! :-)  Things here are great!

The MTC has been great!  First day was a blurr. My companion is Hermana *** from North Salt Lake.  We started off kind of rough, but as the days pass it's getting better. I absolutely LOVE my district. The Elders are my favorite, I think I may like them more than the Hermanas.  If I'm having a bad day or anything I know that when I go to class that they'll make me laugh the whole time. It's great.  All of the Elders in our disctrict are going to Argentina. I love our teacher Maestra Child. She's amazing and so fun. On day 1.5 we had to teach our first investigator, Martin - in Spanish.  Talk about getting right into it.  But we've been teaching him every day since then and it's been getting better. I can understand what he is saying and what Hermana *** is saying, but it's hard for me to speak. But like you said, I just need to practice! Hermana *** took Spanish in college so she speaks really well.

I kind of feel like I'm in the hunger games. We're in districts and strange voices come on the intercom randomly, and I look out the gates to the mountains and all I want to do sometimes is sneak out, haha. Elder *** wrote his mom asking her to send him Dr. Peppers.  The next day came two huge packages of Dr. Pepper ha.   Elder O'Hanley likes to take his fake epi pin and stick people with it, he likes to see their reaction of "i'm going to die". I think our Elders are borderline retarded, in the good way thought.

It's not too crowded, but then again I don't know any better. We have four girls in our room, and an empy bunk bed which is reallly nice. We were supposed to get a sister yesterday but she never showed up, I dont mind cause that just means more space for us!

While I've been here, for Relief Society I got to hear from Sister Reeves, the second counselor of the general Relief Society presidency.  Her son(?) served in kennewick), and for devo I heard Elder Christensen from the presidency of the 70 come speak.  Pretty cool stuff.

Well, I have to write other people. but I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!! thank you for the letters and everything!!! I'll write you next week, and I'll probably send you a letter today of things I forgot to tell you :) - oh and if you post my pictures or blogs on fb can you tag me so courtney and others can see it too?? thank you :)

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!

Hermana Limburg