Tuesday Feb. 28,2017

 

Hello! What a week! Wednesday after being off was crazy but they have a great system where your first two and a half days of being there they keep you so busy that you don't even have time to think about whether or not you're homesick! The first day was a lot of meeting people and going to meetings where they give you a brief rundown of how things are going to work, I honestly was so overwhelmed I can't remember anything they told me. I did get to meet my companion right up front and her name is Sister McDonald, she is AMAZING! I don't think I could love her anymore than I do right now. She keeps me sane. The other girls in my district are great too! There are three Sister companionships in my district, Sister McDonald and I, Sister Naegle and Sister Pratt and then Sister Eastman and Sister Rhodus. We have gotten to know each other really well! We also have two elder companionships in our district. They are fabulous as well! I have so much love in my heart for my district it's crazy! Our zone was fabulous too! The girls were amazing and just made us feel so welcome! We actually became really good friends with some of the Elders too! 

 




 

  My first full day in the MTC was good! We got thrown right into training and we got to teach our first "investigator" who was actually just our teacher but it was still a good experience. We got in there and our lesson was not good at all. We didn't know how to teach or how to rely on the spirit and so we went in there and gave a twenty minute lesson, left no time for questions and he literally sat there and stared at us like we were crazy. It was a bit discouraging to say the least. We got to teach to him once a day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and our lessons slowly improved. On Saturday we went in and we were planning on teaching him prayer and I felt prompted to ask him if he knew he was a Child of God and I was fully expecting him to say yes, he said he had never thought about it before. Sister McDonald tried to continue on with the lesson but I felt so strongly that if nothing else I NEEDED him to know he was a child of God. So I back tracked a little bit and said "I notice you seem confused by the idea of being a child of God. Tell me why that is" after he explained it he basically felt uncomfortable with it because Christ was the son of God because he was born of Heavenly Father and Mary and where he had two earthly parents he didn't feel he was also a child of God. I had no clue what to say. I had never even thought about it because I grew up being taught and somehow just knowing in my heart that I'm a child of God. I opened my mouth and just started talking. The spirit is an amazing teaching tool. The spirit spoke through me and was able to use the creation story in Genesis in the Bible (He believes in the Bible) to explain to him that we are all children of God. Everything that came out of my mouth was things I had never even thought about. I was so amazed at the things I was learning while I was teaching. At the end of my explanation I was a little nervous that he would think it was silly or not believe it but he looked at me and said "Oh! That makes sense!" Let me tell you, there is no better feeling in the whole world than knowing that you taught someone that they are a child of God and he loves them. I am so humbled that I got that opportunity. It was something I think I will treasure all my life.  

   

  All week that I've been here all the missionaries who find out that I'm a newby in the MTC have said "Oh! Just make it till Sunday and you'll be fine!" I'm not entirely sure why this is but I was expecting to wake up on Sunday and feel like I was on top of the world and have a renewed sense of confidence and just KNOW that I could do this. Wrong. I woke up on Sunday feeling more homesick than I ever have in my life. I went to classes and just kept my head down trying to just make it through the day. I got into a meeting about Dress and Grooming and was fine until the closing song, we listened to David Archuleta sing "If the Savior stood beside me" and I seriously lost it. I felt the spirit so strong and I am a crier anyway, I was bawling. It was totally humiliating. One Sister named Sister Pulley came over and gave me a big hug and asked me what was wrong. I told her I just really missed my family and she hugged me even tighter and said "I'll be your stand in mom for the day" I said thank you and the Branch Presidents wife came up and hugged me too. I went through the rest of my day okay, just homesick. I looked at my pictures of home that night though and that helped but was still hard. I was still homesick yesterday pretty bad and the experiences I had yesterday didn't help. 

   

  We have other investigators that we are assigned to teach in the MTC and they are called TRC's. Sister McDonald and I went to our first TRC and it went fantastic! He had questions he wanted us to teach him about in our next lessons and he had one question for yesterday and it was about the plan of salvation. I just happened to have thought to grab my plan of salvation diagram set I got from the Radmalls and so I had that to whip out and help us teach him. The spirit was so strong! It was amazing! Then we had a second TRC and it was less that great. We walked in and the spirit wasn't there and I could tell from the moment we sat down it wasn't going to be great... and it wasn't. We tried to get to know her and she told us a few things but nothing we could connect with her on and then she told us that she doesn't believe in God and that she doesn't believe there's really any way to know if anything is true, at all, ever. We were trying to teach her that God loves her for the second half of the lesson.... as you can guess it's hard to teach someone that God loves them if they don't believe in God. She was nice but we could tell it wasn't a great experience for her or us. We left very discouraged and had no idea where to go from there in our next lesson. We're still not sure but we have an idea we are playing with. I'll let you know how it goes next Tuesday! ;)

     

 The plague (Influenza) is going around the MTC and a few missionaries have been quarantined but it hasn't touched anyone in my residence hall floor that I know of and I've been staying healthy! I run a mile everytime we have exercise time and then I usually do another workout (abs, arms, elliptical, something like that). Everyone sings in the showers which is weird but fun. I'm happy, healthy and feeling the spirit and my testimony of the enabling power of the Atonement has increased so much because I know that there is no way I would still be here if Jesus Christ weren't helping me. I am honored to wear his name on my chest and I am humbled to have the opportunity to be a representative of him. How great is my calling! I love you guys so much! I miss you guys like crazy and I can't wait to talk to you guys next week! Thanks for the emails! I have an Ipad in the MTC so I can read emails as soon as I get them, I just can't respond  till P-day! Thanks for the mail from those of you who sent it! I love getting mail, and if you want to send me little letters there's a website called DearElder.com that lets you send me letters and I will get them that day! I can respond till 6 today so feel free to message me! Love you guys lots! Bigger than the whole sky!

~ Sister Lloyd

   (Maddie)